People I love are sick, have lost their home to a hurricane, struggle with depression. Others have fallen into a deep pit of misinformation that has led them to push relationships to a breaking point. The world is burning. So why write?
I’ve been asking myself the same old questions:
Why does writing matter?
Does my writing matter?
I won’t rehash all the reasons, but the past few years have been hard for most of us. I’ve had a hard time maintaining the self-discipline it takes to sit at the keyboard each day. I mean, the world is burning. Shouldn’t I spend my time gardening, protesting against fascist politicians, or getting drunk and building a backyard bunker?
Someone no longer with us once told me, “You can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want.” I’m at the point in my life where I see more years behind me than I’m likely to have ahead. That’s OK. If we’re lucky, that’s what happens. I recognize this year as the one when I realized that I can’t do everything I’ve ever dreamed of doing with the time remaining. So, I have to choose wisely.
I’m flipping through the pages of the stack of personal journals accumulated over the years and thinking, What a knucklehead I was. What if I could send messages to my past self? Would I have listened to a future version of me?
I think so. In fact, looking back, it’s clear that a lot of my trouble was a product of learning by trial and error. I didn’t have a lot of guidance as a young person, and that’s what I needed most.
Past Me spilled a lot of ink recording events and feelings, in detail, for future reference. I’m grateful to have those journals. For one thing, they show that my memory is untrustworthy. I’ve read things I wrote long ago that surprised me by telling a completely different story than the one I remembered. That’s one reason I urge my children to keep a journal. If you can see—in your own handwriting—where you came from, you’re bound to know yourself with a clarity you’d otherwise lack.
My old journals are full of beliefs I no longer have, avoidable self-inflicted emotional wounds, and an embarrassing lack of self-confidence. But despite their cringe-worthiness, it’s enlightening to pull out the old map and look over the path that wore out so many pairs of boots getting me to where I stand.
So what about now?
I write nearly every day, usually when I’m wide awake at 4:30am and can’t get back to sleep. I don’t even want to get back to sleep; I want to write about what’s going on in my head. This is known to some as “morning pages,” but I call it the Wee Hours Drill. It looks something like this:
I’m awake. If I’m still awake in a half hour, I’ll get up and write.
Still awake. Make coffee.
Mmm, coffee. Time to write whatever shoots out of my fingertips.
Now it’s eight o’clock—time for breakfast, exercise, paying work, and the thousands of things that take up our days.
I haven’t written anything here on Substack for quite awhile because I haven’t come up with a clear purpose for writing a blog or a newsletter. But waiting for a flash of inspiration isn’t working for me. You might think, “No shit, Sherlock,” but keep in mind that in my former career, nothing was done without having planned it in detail according to task and purpose. I’m still recovering from all that, and I’m learning that it’s alright to be spontaneous.
Writing is worthwhile for its own sake. If you’re still reading, maybe you agree.
“When writers die they become books, which is,
after all, not too bad an incarnation." —Jorge Luís Bórges
I’m working on short stories, which distract me from a novel that’s coming together about as quickly as a glacier slides down a mountain. I’m still freelancing to help keep the lights on—editing and occasionally writing content for a pretty wide variety of websites. I haven’t published anything in a couple of years, but I look forward to small victories soon.
A world on fire needs art and human connection. Whether we write fiction to help people process reality or temporarily escape from it, or simply speak the truth day after day—even if no one listens—writing is essential. Not everyone can do it, and fewer still can do it well. For those who can, it’s seems like a duty.
So yes, writing matters. It’s how we humans convey civilization and culture from one generation to the next, teaching ourselves, over generations, to be better, kinder than we used to be, and always curious. Writing nourishes our souls and, sometimes, we need stories to simply take us to somewhere we can rest between shifts at the salt mine.
And your writing matters for the same reason mine does—your unique perspective and experience. Nothing is more human than telling stories, and nothing is more civilized than writing them down.