Saturday, April 25, 2020

Letter to My Younger Self

Dear Younger Barb,

Keep your diary. You'll be a writer eventually and you'll regret throwing it away.

Your father is wrong about the Beatles, but he is right about almost everything else.

You can do math despite your grades. You just find it boring.

Even the worst experience and the meanest people can be writing material.

Travel as much as you can while you still have your health.

Take more photos of your family and friends. Keep printed photos. Don't put important memories exclusively onto technology that will disappear.

Keep paper copies of all your writing. One day floppy disks will be unusable.

You'll go on a lot of blind dates. Most will be okay, a few good, one horrid-but-hilarious (good material!), and you'll hit the jackpot with one.

The blind date experience is also good practice for writing query letters. Keep submitting.

Keep up your fitness routine. But avoid the high-impact stuff (jogging, skipping, step aerobics) and protect your knees.

Love,

Barb










6 comments:

  1. Ditto to MY younger self for many of these :D
    I've only ever been on one blind date, and it qualified in the horrible/kind-of good story material category. To me, everything is material for storytelling ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm lucky that my one horrid blind date didn't scare me off from taking a chance again! But even while I was going through that surreal experience I could see the absurdity.

      Delete
  2. I love these! Your blind date as good experience for querying was too funny. I've never been on one. And amen to the printed photos!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Where's a good time machine when you need one? :-)

      Delete
  3. I could relate to a lot of these as well. I wish I hadn't gotten rid of all my journals and short stories when I was in college. But they probably wouldn't be anything to write home about. Love what you said about blind dates and querying. And yes, everything is material! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Some of my early short stories were less than wonderful. But a couple could have been revised and submitted somewhere.

    ReplyDelete

Give a hoot.