Dear 17-year-old Eric:
Greetings from the future. I know it’s probably weird getting a letter from someone so old, especially when the oldster is yourself. Yes, I am your older self writing from the year 2025. No, we don’t have flying cars, but the computers talk. And robots vaccuum the carpets. And people are angrier for some reason. It’s not the cyberpunk reality from Blade Runner; it’s more like the dystopia from Brazil, except that movie made more sense than this timeline.
I know you have this insane notion that you’ll be a writer. You’re restless. You’re afraid of the future. Most of the time you’re lonely. You want to escape this plastic prison of suburbia, to leave those safe and comforting streets and live a carefree life, one filled with adventure and success. However, the youthful haze of bygone years clouds one’s vision, making them blind to immutable scars.
You will leave suburbia. There are times – quiet and reflective times – when you’ll miss the streetlights at night, your parent’s swimming pool with its too chlorinated smell, and goofing around the Bob’s Big Boy parking lot with your friends.
You’ll get married and then divorced. It’ll be hurtful and bitter. You will leave with half the china set and an antique telephone. You’ll cry in the dark. You’ll get angry and hurt yourself. But mostly, you’ll wish you were never born.
You’ll get a shitty apartment and lose everything in a hurricane. Sentimental photographs will suffer damage. Irreplacable objects will become ruined. You’ll have to reboot your life, but you realize material objects don’t make a life. Material objects hold us down, keep us submissive and obedient to the past. By letting go, you can move on.
You will fall in love again with someone you know. She sought you out and you reconnect in an improbable way. One in a billion chance, but there it is. Love is the spinning roulette wheel, daring you to place your bet. You take a chance and it works. She comforts you, and slowly as the years pass, a miraculous thing happens: you forget your past pain. You stop blaming yourself and live in the moment.
Maturity brings responsibility. You work for several small newspapers. It’s fun at first; interviewing important people, writing articles, winning awards. But as time goes by, the novelty wears thin. You’re abused at the office. Insults, pettiness, threats. Stress takes its toll. Your blood pressure spikes. You gain weight. You’re not happy. You spend a few days in the hospital, convinced you’re on death’s door. You sour on journalism quickly after that and go through the motions. A corpse behind a computer mindlessly typing, making it through another day. Selling your soul for a paycheck.
Writing fiction is your lifelong dream. You’d like to be a novelist like Stephen King or Kurt Vonnegut or Ray Bradbury. You write a few short stories and they’re awful. Tedious. Hackneyed. You abandon your literary aspirations and lose yourself in role-playing games. A Deadlands group opens up at a local game shop. You run a few games, leading players on a series of adventures. When the opportunity comes along, you write your own game, a pulp-inspired science fiction game called Ravaged Earth. It takes a few years but you find a publisher. The game is released and sells out. A second revised edition is published. You attend a few conventions and promote the game, but the thought of writing fiction never leaves you.
In your late forties, you go back to school for a Master’s degree. While still a student, your first short story is published in a magazine. It’s retro-futuristic science fiction with plenty of silver jumpsuits and rocketpacks. Then, as if the floodgates opened, a second story, a horror tale in the style of H.P. Lovecraft is accepted. A year after that and another story lands in an anthology. Then you get your first book publishing contract for a steampunk fantasy.
Reality sets in. The book doesn’t sell well. In fact, none of your indie published books sell well. You’re struggling. Words don’t come as fluidly as they once did. Writer’s block kicked you in the balls. Paralyzed with self-doubt and self-loathing, you waste years writing for yourself, and worry if anyone reads your work.
Depression. You think you’ll never be good enough, that getting published in the first place was a fluke, a grotesque cosmic joke. Are you a mediocre hack destined to watch others succeed where you failed? Each story crashes and burns on the slush pile. Is writing about storytelling or selling books? Do those hours you spend at the keyboard really matter if nobody enjoyes your stories enough to review them? Why write in a post-literate age, in unpopular hybrid genres?
Does anything matter anymore?
I want you to understand that life isn’t easy. You’ll face struggles and challenges from your worst nightmares. The fraction of how bad you think life gets is multiplied by a million, and you’ll have a rough ballpark figure of the shitstorm you’re walking into.
Despite these setbacks, you persevere. What else can we do? But let me tell you, the books we write are astounding. You would be impressed by how much we learn. Even though the rejections stack up, we still stubbornly continue. We send out our work and hope for an editor who gets us.
My advice to you, pie-in-the-sky daydreamer teenaged Eric, is this: Keep on following your dreams, even if they don’t work out exactly how you envisioned. Don’t be afraid to improvise and get creative. Creativity is unique to us all. Harness that shit. Make it your own. Never listen to the critics. They never had to stumble in the same darkness we did, fumbling for the lightswitch. Let your pain energize you. Burn the pain away like fuel for your creative engine. You’re not the greatest writer on the planet, but you’re unique. You’re writing what you want, trapping those wild ideas on the page. Finish what you start. Don’t procrastinate. The Muse doesn’t wait; she’s on rollerskates and screaming past you. Chase her. Chase the Muse until she plunks an idea into your head, then run with it.
And lastly, don’t be so sad. Don’t feel hopeless. Things work out after many years of torture and pain. Story rejections are a bright summer’s day compared to the Hell you endured. Let that trauma be your armor and ride into battle. Keep fighting and keep writing.
Sincerely,
Your older self
Eric Avedissian 