the boys i've loved and the end of the world

to all young writers and poets

it has taken me a long time to develop my writing style. when i first started writing poetry, shortly before i entered high school, my poems were full of clichés and every line oozed unoriginality. it took me several months, nearly a year, before i really began to get a feel for writing prose and poetry. even now, after four years, i am still changing and growing as a writer.

my message to you is to not give up. if your work seems cliché or boring, keep writing. if nobody seems to like it, keep writing. even when you have writer's block and nothing you write is decent, keep writing. that is how you grow.

emily dickinson did not stop writing. sara teasdale did not stop writing. robert frost and edgar allen poe did not stop writing. pablo neruda, maya angelou, e.e. cummings, langston hughes; these are our predecessors. and as for the poets who come after us: we are theirs.

something i have learned through sharing my writing is that oftentimes, your writing will never be good enough in your eyes. you will always find something missing. it is very rare that you will write something that will make you say, "there is nothing i would add to this. it has portrayed everything i have wanted it to."

but that doesn't mean it isn't good enough in the eyes of somebody else. to somebody else, that poem, that piece of prose, could be exactly what they are feeling. it could resonate with them. it could make them feel.

and that, above all else, is the most important part of writing. if you write with feeling, and if you can make somebody else smile, or cry, or think, then you have succeeded.

i hope that i have succeeded, just as i hope you will too.