I want to do something splendid . . .
Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten
after I’m dead . . . I think I shall write books.
– – – Louisa May Alcott
When I learned to read in the first grade, my mother and I visited our local library twice a day until the librarian changed the rules for me, allowing me to take out four books at a time instead of the
designated two. I devoured the entire children’s section, reading voraciously. Throughout my life, books have offered me solace, richness, surprises and magic. They have opened brand new worlds to me. I can’t imagine my childhood without Alice in Wonderland, Charlotte’s Web, and The Secret Garden. Who would I be without Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With the Wind? What if I hadn’t met Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy from Little Women or Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter? These books taught me about love, connection, isolation, morality, good and evil, what it means to be a friend, and the consequences of lying.
The more I read back then, the more I wanted to write my own stories so when I got home from school, I’d sit on the little red cane chair in my bedroom and write poems. About anything. It happened so organically, I never stopped to figure out whether I was good or bad. I didn’t show my poems to anyone so I didn’t get any feedback. I didn’t build up expectations or suffer trauma and criticisms. No one encouraged me but no one discouraged me either. I just wrote every day, not because I thought I should. Not because I wanted to shore up my stamina or get approval from anyone. It felt good to me so I kept on doing it. I didn’t fantasize becoming a writer when I grew up. I left myself alone and watched the words appear on the page, all by themselves.
These days, some of my writing students have great stories and a burning desire to tell them, but they don’t know how to begin. They are finding it next to impossible to get to the computer and put some words on the page. I wanted to find a way to help them tap into a friendly wave length that could transform their inner critic from a demanding ogre, into an encouraging fairy godmother. I suggested they stop judging and start doing the thing they feared the most. I suggested they do what it takes to get the momentum going and they’ll be surprised what comes to the surface.
Gillian Flynn who wrote the bestseller, Gone Girl, said, “I spent a lot of time before I actually wrote my first book going, ‘How do you write a book?’ The answer is, “you just write.”
A character named Johann Veraguth in Hermann Hesses’s book Roshalde, says, “I paint because I have no tail to wag.”
To me, that means he needed an outlet for his emotions. The act of artistic expression in all of its varied forms, can provide that.
There are many reasons to write, some of them are worthwhile and others not so much. If you’re writing for approval, wealth or to teach something you don’t know, you’re on the wrong track. Writing has so much more to it than getting attention and approval and spouting intelligence. Especially the false kind.
The late feminine activist, Gloria Steinem said, “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel like I should be doing something else.”
When you make it into the zone, you’re fashioning your own private world where you get to make up the rules or define the boundaries. You can stay there as long as you want and leave whenever you like. You decide who is welcome and who is not, who is guilty and who is innocent. No one gets to add or subtract anything in your world without first getting permission from you. You are jury and judge of your own internal reality so you might as well be a kind one.
How often does that occur in life, where you are the sole creator of a reality that is yours and yours alone? Whether you feel ecstatic or intimidated, just remember that the ultimate reward is in the doing. It has to be, because there’s no telling if your work will find a home other than your own. There’s
no telling if it will reach a thousand people or twenty-five. Or only a few close friends. Just do it for its own sake and see what happens. Sit in your equivalent of my little red cane chair and write because you want to. Or paint. Or sing. Feel the relief of expressing yourself when the world around you is overwhelming. Forget about good or bad. There is no obvious beginning or ending. There is only your soul’s expression. You don’t ever have to show someone what you’re doing if you don’t want to. You don’t have to get approval from anyone or criticism from someone who knows less than you do. Whatever you do, it will help you find meaning in your life.
The late concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl, said,
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
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