I'm going to dig out my old notebooks tonight... there'll be some crap coming your way soon enough!

Wooo-hoo! Zeebah in the ha-yowse! Yippie!

Please ask your visitors to be kind, fair maid. Young folks tripping over the site might get the wrong idea and feel inhibited from writing in their journals because it might sound silly 10 years from now. Kids that age need more encouragement and support, not less. Else they may devolve over time into waste of flesh/Post-Modern Urban Detritus/aging hipsters.

I would guess most of those making snide comments wouldn't want their current deathless tortured prose ridiculed by someone 10-15 years older...even it was an older version of themselves. Yeah, it's your own stuff...but every age has its wisdom. Believe me, parts of what anybody earnestly writes seems vaguely ridiculous to those 20 years older. And if it is just ironic pap, well, refer to PMUD above.

But don't stop writing...

Interesting take... you see the contest as a potential danger to the delicate egos of youth, whereas I see it as an exaltation of their minds, words and spirit; a respect and admiration of human process as a whole.

I mean this most sincerely, and with respect, but I think perhaps you might underestimate the immovable nature of a teen, the absolute belief at that time in our lives that human experience is singular and unique . Have you even known a teen who did not feel alone? Misunderstood? Have you ever known ANYTHING to convince that teen to the contrary? When you were assigned Romeo And Juliet in high school, did you draw a connection between the plight of the protagonists and your own? Did you exclaim, "Oh, I get it, teens have ALWAYS felt like their parents are overbearing and controlling and destroying their lives; their love..." If you did, bully for you, you were quite erudite indeed. The rest of us sat there and bitched about the archaic English and how boring it was, and how we couldn't go hang out with our friends that weekend because we had to read that stupid book.

All I'm saying is if it were that easy to change the mindset of a teen, to make them 'inhibited' as you said, by showing them examples of the relativity of human experience, we wouldn't have any teen pregnancies, drug overdoses, gang-bangers, or drop-outs.

I suggest we focus our energies on the really potentially dangerous things 'young folks' might find themselves 'tripping over' on the net... instead of worrying that a tiny little website might be the first thing in history to make a kid changes his behavior out of fear of repercussions ten years in the future.

{oh, p.s. Yes. Everything, even this, will seem ridiculous 20 years from now, as a matter of fact it does already... but I won't stop writing as per your request.}

Best wishes,
Kd.

You mean we stop feeling misunderstood and alone after some level of experience and hindsight? In all seriousness, I was delighted to see your project and I think the idea of enjoying self-submitted, over-dramatic teen prose is wonderful.

I also have to disagree with Rog's assessment that this will in some way discourage teens from writing. Every high school kid is caught in the immediacy of that stage in their lives and isn't usually concerned in the far future. It is also a silly thought to think that the concept could in some way could cause a teen with raging hormones and wild mood swings to stop writing. You are obviously too far removed from what it was like to be young. Finally, I question the educational merit of 100 angst-riddled thoughts scribbled in notebooks during algebra class in the first place (other than being a 'capture a moment in life' exercise).

Anyway, my point is that I hope you carry on with your experiment. I think it is noble and quite hilarious. I am just lamenting the fact that I don't have any of my ridiculous high school writing left to submit.

See...Siggy gets it...