Magic from Miggo:

Dear OYAN:

Feel free to read this whenever you get a chance. I wrote it this morning after talking to some of your lovely faces yesterday and I just really wanted to give you all something to chew on.

Some days you'll feel an ache welling up beneath your skin and you feel this knot forming in your chest. Some nights the pain simply won't go away and you think to yourself that whoever coined that moniker, "night is always darkest before the dawn," had to be lying because the night is always darkest much, much earlier and sometimes the dawn is shrouded in nothing but clouds that hang low and heavy over the face of the sun. Sometimes, for no distinguishable reason, old hurts begin to hurt again and you can't explain the feeling. You can only accept the pain and keep on keeping on.

The worst part isn't the fact that you hurt, though. It's the fact that for so long, you've done it alone. And, yeah, it's begun to suck a little.

Then you came here, to home. You might have been without one so long that you don't even remember what home feels like, not as a physical place filled with real people, however. You've had snatches of this feeling before, in the yellow pages of your favorite book, in the draft coming up from a half empty cup of tea, in friends you used to spend every day with. But the books had endings, the tea ran out, and the friends always said goodbye, sometimes involuntarily.

It's no wonder you can't picture home.

What is home? It's a place, yes, but the place itself is not what makes a home. It's what you associate with that place. It could be the smell of your mother's pecan pies or the familiar scent of your old man's cologne. For some, it's the smell of a couple hundred sweaty and stinky kids dressed as ninjas and statues crammed into the same room together. Because these aren't just a random group of kids you met over the internet that you happened to interact with for shady purposes. Somehow, and you can't even pinpoint or remember a single instant when, this quirky little group became your family. And home is where you and your strange, little family cook up the memories.

OYAN is a special group in that it's attracted all sorts of people to the same place because of one very minuscule similarity: we all needed or wanted to take a writing curriculum. Often times, we forget that. Oh, right. OYAN, it's "just" this amazing curriculum written by a guy with cool facial hair. He sometimes hosts webinars with his wife who dresses up as a pirate and then there's this forum where you can post your chapters as you write them or argue about cheese. Oh, and the best part is that it shows you how to write a novel in a year!

Take a break and think about that a moment. Seriously, take a break and really think. Writing a novel in a year? So many men and women three times your age have decided to just get up and write a novel. What were you thinking? But you didn't just dream about to happen in another ten years. You actually did it. Maybe you had to drag your feet a bit, or your "mom made you do it," but you still made or are making it happen.

That, in of itself, is a beautiful thing.

But for some of us, OYAN has done the strangest thing and become a part of our lives in a way that your high school Algebra text book never could.

Now despite our one vague similarity, OYAN has a lot of other features that tie us together. Picture for a moment our understanding of the average OYANer: home-schooled, wearing hand me down pants or patchwork skirts, likely a Christian, and perhaps a little awkward socially.

Of course we also have the misfits. The ones who wear, God forbid, goth style clothing, have more than two piercings, don't like Christian books, and most certainly love metal over CCM.

And of course there are the other misfits and the old farts, but the old farts don't count.

I know despite our close relationships built through and in OYAN, that we haven't exactly always been the model or perfect American family (apologies to the Brit, Taiwanese, Canageese, Zealanders, etc., etc.). It's true, we haven't always been loving. We've excluded people, hurt people (sometimes intentionally), and have downright cruel to each other. And no, I'm not just referring to the random spats that we then further spat about whether they are flame wars or not.

That said, I realize that when I say home and OYAN in the same sentence, you might feel a little bitter. Maybe you're not the OYANer who found home here. Maybe instead it was a battleground. You might be sitting in a room watching everyone having the time of their lives and, damn it all, you're hurting and no one cares.

But we do.

Sometimes we're never going to agree about language in stories (why can't I use English?) and certain relationships fall apart and certain questions will always be asked (1st person???) and there's nothing you can do to change that. That's okay. We never were meant to be a perfect family. In fact, beneath the glomps and overuse of smileys, we're pretty broken. But that's what makes you guys beautiful. We aren't all here because we've got it all together. We're here because we don't. But ordinary, broken pieces of glass make an extraordinary mosaic. Even the weakest strands threaded together will make a rope not easily severed.

You entered OYAN like lambs, some of you lost, some you maybe a little more innocent, some you dragging a broken foot, some of you betrayed by the wolves, some of you becoming the wolves. But, you are lambs with the faces of lions. You have bitten back, learned to trust again, healed in your bones, opened your heart, found your way back home.

Oh, you're not quite there yet. We know. It takes a long time for the pain to fade, and sometimes the scars never do. But don't feel like you have to go it alone because you don't. We've proven that.

Whether it's in writing your novel down to the last seconds before the deadline (you know who you are), staying up until three in the morning to comfort a friend, or simply being there for your friend to hide the tears in while the rest of the world keeps spinning around. You do not have to do this alone. Because lions are known for their bravery, but lambs are never without their herd or their Shepard.

So enjoy your time with one another, cherish each other. Do not dread the times to come, because even though friends leave, family has a weird way of sitting in the heart. Reconnect with people you've drifted from, treasure those faces who have done so much even despite having never met you face to face before, reach out to someone new, talk to somehow who looks intimidating. None of them bite. Most of all, love each other.

I believe the theme of this year is Ordinary Heroes? You guys have been talking about some of the greatest literary examples: Frodo, Luke Skywalker, Scrooge, and a Garcia, I believe. They were all ordinary people with damaged pasts who had strange little quirks; in other words, a lot more similar to you than you realize. Frodo was an orphan, Luke had the dark emperor for a dad, Scrooge lost his love to money, Garcia had to face the giant of WW2.

I don't know if you have or will be talking about this particular character, but let me just say he's probably the biggest one. If you want ordinary, he was the epitome of ordinary. He did nothing but woodwork for thirty years and grew up in what was at the time one of the smallest, overlooked, unappreciated towns. He decides to shake the world and his reward at the end of it all is death. But if you look at his two greatest commandments, they don't say be great, or to be well versed, or to conquer the world. They simply command us to love.

For if we have any sort of gift or greatness or power, but not love, then what are we? We're just an ordinary teenage writing group full of broken people with our own strange little quirks.

And maybe that's just enough to build something on. Maybe that's just enough to shake a dark and lonely world. Hello there, world. Hear OYAN roar.

Yours very affectionately,
Miguel Flores