May 2020

Please join me in congratulating the first place winner of our annual writing contest, Henry Gasko! For me, this is one of the best articles on writing I have ever read and I find it more than worthy of first place. For such a short post, it sure packs a wallop. Henry will inspire you to pick up that pen of yours and write something that matters, to you.

I hate writing.

I hate the fact that sometimes I do it to just impress my friends. I hate that I sometimes do it because it’s the only way an old man might, belatedly, become noticed by the world. And sometimes I do it from simple habit, to hide the fact that today I have nothing else to do and so I will write, even though I have nothing much to say.

But all the books say to do it anyway. They say that if I practice diligently enough for long enough, something consequential will magically appear. And so I do it, even though I suspect that I am merely getting faster at writing rubbish.
I hate the self-doubt that overcomes me every time I sit down and try to get some good words on the screen. Not just any words. Some good words. Hemingway killed himself when the right words would no longer come. I hate that I don’t have that kind of courage.

And, no, I can’t write about just anything and pretend it matters. Not about hard-boiled detectives with surnames that you remind you of guns or minerals, or secret agents who are practically super-heroes. And certainly not dragons or elves or vampires or zombies. I hate the fact that I can’t write about these fantasies. I just physically can’t. If I could, if I would embrace escapism and fantasy and magical realism and all the other ways of hiding from the reality of this world, and I would have a million plots available to me. None of them would reflect the world I live in but that wouldn’t matter. I could pretend that somehow — metaphorically or allegorically — they did.

But I am seventy years old, and have tried all those escapes, and I can’t do it. I can’t embrace the certain victories that always occur realms such as Mordor or Hogwarts, or the safely externalized demons of The Overlook. If there are demons in the world, they cannot be out there, they must be in here.

But, just maybe, if I write often enough and long enough, a few words might come that explain why my life is worth living, words that might answer the only question that really matters: “Why bother.”

And then I would have something that I would show my children and my grandchildren. And I could look back on my life without the creeping depression of a life unfulfilled, and I could look forward to my death knowing that I have left a valuable gift, however small, for my children.

That’s why I write.

Today I am happy to announce our 2nd place winner of our annual writing contest, Rachel Macdonald! Please help me congratulate her. 1st place will be announced next week.

I haven’t written a single word in over a month; haven’t edited the book it took me three years to write, haven’t put a scratch in my journal or a jot in my notepad of ideas. And today I am feeling sure I have the best excuse ever creatively conceived–life. I have six children (including two college students) all living at home, my husband is working two jobs, and our house is in the midst of the remodel it has earned trying to contain eight people for fourteen years. And I mean really, how many more excuses does a person need?

On top of that, a stingy, unrelenting inner voice has been whispering that there is no time, no point, and no worth in the book I have given sleepless nights to record. And I believe it. Until a chimney sweep knocks on my door.

But he’s no chimney sweep from Mary Poppins. His arms, legs, and neck are stamped with a rainbow of life history. His bandanna covers everything on his head that isn’t the ponytail touching the center of his back, and his eyes crinkle above a dirt-blond beard. He laughs when he tells me the worn antique bench sitting at the front of my house (the one I’ve told myself I’ll paint someday) might go missing if I’m not careful. He says it’s just the kind of thing he wants to put on his truck and take home to his wife. He adds that he enjoys finding pieces like these and making them beautiful again to gift to her. His voice booms but his smile is kind. So, I think, an artistic, happily married pirate has come to clean my chimneys.

But there’s more. There is always more. While a hose inserted into the upstairs fireplace sucks away years of ashes, we stand and talk. He wants to know about the beautiful building pictured on my wall. “My husband and I were married there,” I tell him. He nods and says he’s done repair work on buildings such as that one. He then firmly declares himself a spiritual man and explains how in places like those he feels closer to heaven. It’s a major contrast to the feelings he experienced amid the noise and chaos of The Gulf War. He says he did work there too. Just a different kind.

In circumstances like war, I think, a person has two choices–to become hardened and bitter, or to become strong and hopeful. And when he pulls down his t-shirt collar to show me his tattoos, I can see which one he has chosen.

Two hearts over his heart. “Because my daughters have my heart,” he explains. One bear claw on his left shoulder blade. “And my son has my back,” he says. A cross on each forearm and a giant cross at the top of his back between his shoulder blades. “Because God has my soul,” he finishes.

“I’m not going to tattoo myself with naked women,” he adds solemnly. “I want tattoos that mean something more. That say something important.”

Just thirty minutes with this stranger and for the first time in weeks, I notice my heart is beating. My brain feels like it’s coming out of a poisoned-apple induced sleep. And all of this is telling me what I almost forgot. I have something important to say too.

It’s something I’ve known since first grade. When seven-year-old me bit my lip and jiggled my legs and gripped my book. My book. I had written and illustrated a whole story which I was about to read aloud to my fellow first-graders. The story opened with a girl who loved to have her bed made and her clothes folded, but when she came home to the room she shared with her little sister and found the whole place a disaster, again, she knew something had to change. This began a journey in which she struggled for a better world. One where she could come home to her very own room. One where the dolls and stuffed animals would stay neatly lined against her pillow.

As my story unfolded, so did the keen awareness of watching my classmates smile, or laugh, or listen solemnly and lean forward to see the pictures. It was a new feeling for me that I could not have written or crayoned at the time, but it rang true. It was that of the human experience being shared and being received. I had shared a piece of myself–my thoughts, and feelings, and a possible end to my journey and solution to a problem that mirrored my own real-life problem. And they had listened. I wanted to do it again.

I have journaled, and written stories ever since. Though I have not shared every word I have ever written, I always write with the intent to share; to add my stamp to the world’s colorful history with the hope that someone, someday, will pick up my published book or my scribbled journal entry and will feel less alone.

This is the why behind my writing. The same creatively conceived excuse I was using not write was the same excuse I had to write–Life.

And my new chimney sweep, veteran, artist friend has reminded me. True story, real story, bumps us up against each other. And it is an unexpected, messy, and glorious process to be a part of.

My chimney is now clean, so I show this man to the door and we say goodbye. Then I go to my computer and sit down to do my part.