Shannon Dittemore is the author of the Angel Eyes trilogy. She has an overactive imagination and a passion for truth. Her lifelong journey to combine the two is responsible for a stint at Portland Bible College, performances with local theater companies, and a love of all things literary. When she isn’t writing, she spends her days with her husband, Matt, imagining things unseen and chasing their two children around their home in Northern California. To connect with Shan, check out her website, FB, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest.
My house is full of Christmas already. Yours?
I know not everyone celebrates Christmas in the same way and some of you may not celebrate Christmas at all, but as we round out 2015, I find myself wishing all sorts of things for the young writers that surround me.
For you, dear writer, I hope that writing will always be a source of joy. Not happiness necessarily because happiness can be a flighty thing and most always our writing requires more out of us than flighty emotions. And so while you may delve into dungeons of despair and hot fiery hells, while your writing might allow you to soar into adventures of peril, I hope that those moments–locked away in your writing cave–bring you a deep sense of satisfaction. A joy only the teller of stories can ever know.
And for you, young wordsmith, I wish you words upon words. That they would arrive in your soul in various states of dress–with their definitions firmly attached or begging to be understood. That you would open fictions and sift through histories to find shimmering arrangements of letters that will brighten your collection. Don’t adopt the habits of an old gent though, collecting coins only to lock them away behind glass. Display your word collection proudly, first this way and then that. Take them out and use them for everyday living, will you? Play with them and turn them on your tongue. And for certain, write them on paper. Shape them in ways that make you smile or cringe or cry out in agony.
And please, please share them.
To those who worry about it all. About your voice and the time and the commitment and the craft, I pray you find another soul who understands. A creative heart you can depend on to inspire and motivate, to listen and truly hear how the worry feels inside your bones. I wish you the pleasure of being the answer to another creative soul’s whispered prayer and I hope your writing is enriched by the conversations the two of you are certain to have.
To the ambitious crazy man inside your chest, the one who bangs against your ribs with his little fists and shouts about relevance and career paths and the talentless peons excelling in your place–yes, for the crazy man inside all of us, I wish a year of silence. Silence so that you can relish the words all around you, the stories waiting to be plucked from the air. Silence so you can converse with the slightly less crazy characters who desperately want to sit you down and tell you of the mischief they’ve got planned.
To those wondering if you’ll ever know anything worth telling, worth sharing, worth writing, I say this: live. I wish you the kind of journeys you have to take with your own two feet. The kind that take place outside of stories. I wish you bravery in the face of the monsters and boldness when your voice is necessary. And I wish you would not worry so about mattering. You matter. Your voice matters. Some stories take longer to tell than others. Let the words steep inside you, like a good strong tea. When they’re ready, when you’ve collected enough of the right ones, the sentences won’t be so hard to come by.
And to the teenager who only has a handful of years to be a teenager (yes, you!), I hope the stories you’re writing will enhance your youth and not keep you from it. Beware the heroes and heroines that steal you away from your own adventures for too long. You have stories inside your skin that must be lived. This next year, go live them.