Have you ever felt like you weren’t smart enough to be a writer? That in order to be a writer you have to be educated, well versed in literature. That you have to know all the big words and have intelligent things to say and ideas that verge on genius?

Maybe you came from meager beginnings, and education wasn’t prioritized because you and your family were burdened by the reality of staying fed and alive. Maybe you have a learning disorder that makes it hard for you to memorize, engage, focus. Or maybe every test you’ve ever taken you’ve failed.

Sarah Lawrence College is known to be a very competitive school, and having been a student there myself I can only be honest in saying that its student are really damn smart. You might be under the assumption then, that I am smart too. But what if I was to tell you you were wrong? Here’s my story on how I got accepted into Sarah Lawrence College:

High school sucked for me. I got kicked out of two of them before I landed into something called “The Alternative High School”, which was a very nice way of saying, “The Fallen Through the Cracks Holding Cell” The school was an amalgamation of students who had been kicked out of the main district schools–they had either failed out, were truant, delinquent; some were expecting mothers, some were felons awaiting jail time, and some were suffering from emotional and/or mental disorders.

We were misfit toys if ever there were any. We met five days a week for two hours a day, and although our teachers were dedicated to our education and personal growth, most of us were already too far gone. I scored miserably low on my SATs and when the time came to receive my diploma I never walked with my class. I didn’t really feel like I had earned a diploma.

Basically I felt like a failure.

Some years later, when I was about twenty years old, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Having already lost my father at a very young age I understood that if I lost her I would be in very dire circumstances. When I was twenty two she passed.

I lost the home I grew up in, the luxury to call myself someone’s child, and above all, I lost the love of my life.

So one day, while I was sitting at the check out desk at the library where I worked, I was overcome by the sensation of exile. (Think Sandra Bullock in “Gravity”) Far out in space, far far from home and the woman I loved. In response to that sensation I was then consumed by a desire to write of that love, that home I longed to go back to.

And so I did.

It was about two scrap-pages long, it was grammatically incorrect, syntactically awkward–but damnit, it was my heart. So I took the two scraps of paper I wrote this on and I brought them back to the alternative program and I gave them to my favorite teacher there, Mrs. Thanhauser (a woman who was like a mother to me.) I told her, “I wrote this thing and it feels like I just ripped a piece of my own flesh off, so I don’t want to just throw it in the trash, you know. I feel like I have to give it to someone else to read. And since you always told me I was a good writer, you were the only person I could think of to give it to.” She took it graciosuly, thankfully and with great love.

Shorty after, Mrs. Thanhauser passed it on to my highschool guidance couselor, Marian Bauer, and Marian said “Damit. This kid can write. I’m sending it out.”

One of the places she sent it to was Sarah Lawrence College and not long after they received it I received a phone call from them. They had liked my story very much. It didn’t matter to them that I wasn’t educated, that I had a miserable SAT score. They didn’t care that I wasn’t the queen of grammar, that my vocabulary was weak. They just wanted to know more about that woman in the kitchen jotted on those scraps of paper. They wanted to know more about that love. They invited me to their college and asked me if I would like to try out a non-credit class or two, to see if I might write some more.

Yes, was my answer. And without knowledge of the mountains of blood, sweat and tears that lay before me, I jumped right in. I would cross a million mountains and never stop if it meant getting to the heart of that story I had begun.

I was going to have to work harder than I had ever worked before to learn the craft and mature as an intellect and thinker. But the main ingredient was there.

So this is my advise to you if you, who are reading this, don’t think you’re smart enough but want to write. LOCATE YOUR UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. You have to think really hard about what it is in this life that you love. Wether it be a person, or an animal, or a sunny sky on a lonely day. That if you lost that thing, everything around you would go spinning out of control and the only way you knew how to stop the dizziness was through telling the world how much it was precious to you…

For me it was my mother.

Love is the greatest tool any writer can have. Just think about all of the literary greats who are placed on the shelves of the Classics. Go back into the canon and look at who those writers were. All of those people loved someone or something like you would never beleive. They would die for that love. They knew its value.

You need to locate that love, and always harness the power that lives in that love, when you write.

If you can do this, there will be no limit on what you can create. The other stuff can be taught in time. But the essense of the writing and the power can only come from that one place. This is why I say anyone can write the next great novel. No matter our social or economic standing–love is the great equalizer. We were all born with it, and although we live in a world that does not seem to allow us the time or space to harness and experience that love, it is there all the same.

Go get it honey. It’s waiting for you. It’s the tool of kings and queens. It is what frees us from the fear of death.

Take some time now to write a love letter to that person, place or thing. Try to picture yourself like Sandra Bullock, far out in space kept away from that thing. Tell it what you need to tell it from way far out there. Imagine you might never get back. Imagine you might never see it again.

Be brave when you write. Put yourself-full hearted into it. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. Write until your wrist gets tired. And if you come out with something that makes you feel completely naked and almost embarrassed–like a piece of your flesh was just left on the page–why then, I think you might just have something–I think you might have touched upon your genius.