Here’s Dana Stevens, on Slate this morning.  I thought about just tweeting — but the letter is too good.  In case you did not see it on Slate, look at it here.  It appears that Ebert wrote it to the young Stevens somewhere around 1977-1979.

Stevens, the movie critic at Slate, included this to introduce the letter:

I’m in the midst of writing a longer reflection on Ebert’s life—not an easy task to carry out while refreshing Twitter and crying—but since so many people are exchanging stories about how he touched their lives, I thought I’d share a copy of his warm and generous note to a preteen movie geek in Texas.

Ebert’s letter includes this advice:

Take lots of English and writing courses.  Write-write-write for anyplace that will print your stuff.

Here’s the letter.  It really is worth reading.