Call of the Writer

Some time ago, I was asked what I wished to do with my life, and to my shock I had nothing to say. Those who have been subjected to my writing before might find this doubtful, but the reality was that until recently I did not realize to the full extent I was disregarding the obvious: I am a writer.

There is great fear in laying claim to the title. To call yourself a writer is to join a religion in which you are the god, devil, priesthood and hapless laity. You accept a precarious bundle of hopes and beliefs — yours — which at any moment may fall out of your arms. It requires a strong faith in the good you are declaring to exist in the world; for the moment you doubt it, your ability turns on you and you imagine the evil which it had kept at bay. A nightmare lurks behind every flinch of faith; if you are not consciously creating, you are unconsciously destroying.

A writer has this in common with God: whatever he speaks comes into existence, if only in his own life. This is a power far more terrible than can be imagined — except that a writer will imagine it. “There is a bad sense of lostness,” lamented critic and Kenyon College figurehead John Crowe Ransom. “[He]… is going to have many moments asking himself if he sees what he thinks he sees, and if this is really the life for him.”

Sometimes, writing will comfort you out of this worry; it is the life for you, you have created a beautiful thing. It is not as regular as commerce, or anything offered by California; but it is infinitely more palpable when you have succeeded. Or failed. To those considering it, Ransom gives an assurance which does not inspire but is complete: “[he] is a man of integrity pursuing an uncertain career. He will not go mad.”

Sometimes a lost writer will be blasted back into it by the dynamite of reality: a profound discontent in what you are doing, the sudden shock that a world you had created when a writer is now vanishing because you grew idle. And in these worst of times, writing will come back to you.

It will not be easy or comforting, but it is necessary. It will be the only thing which allows you to forget what was outside of you before you began to write. And so you start anew, and pray the good you knew once sprung from your words will find its way back into what you are making now, like old friends thought dead. You wait for the next glorious moment. You hope that the good you are proclaiming to be, will be. That this time, you will not go mad