Dear Miss R，
At seventeen， the future is apt to seem formidable， even depressing. You should see the pages of my journal circa 1916.
You asked me about writing how I did it. There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write， you write， no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed. I must have written half a million words (mostly in my journal) before I had anything published， save for a couple of short items in St. Nicholas. If you want to write about feelings， about the end of summer， about growing， write about it. A great deal of writing is not plotted， most of my essays have no plot structure， they are a ramble in the woods， or a ramble in the basement of my mind. You ask. Who cares？ Everybody cares. You say. It's been written before. Everything has been written before.