The Writing Life (Essay for Submission to Writer's Digest)

“We’re on a mission from God!” explains Jake and Elwood Blues to the Mother Superior.  This is exactly what comes to mind when I consider the innate gifting of pen God has bestowed upon me.  The parable of the talents in the Gospel of Matthew continually stares me in the face, as well.  At the other extreme, I also feel a Jonah-esque attitude run destructively through my temperament at what I feel so untrained and under-educated for.  Yet, I must become willingly obedient to the higher way of life.  Joy and peace will soon follow, if I don’t seek bitter and resentful refuge under the withering vine as Jonah did.  Thankfully the writer’s life is played out in generous pasture.

Defeat usually stares at me in the form of a blank Microsoft Word document.  Attempting to thwart intimidation and an attitude of surrender, giving up before I ever get started, I repeat to myself some sage advice: “The best way to overcome writer’s block is by writing.”; “Good writer’s write every day.”; “Don’t self-edit while writing…simply let the words flow.”  The first word begets the second, then the third, until the colors begin flying on to the canvas like a Jackson Pollock painting.  A far cry from “Jack the Dripper”, I can continue to unleash this creative aura by simply allowing the germ of the story to gain traction on paper.  Another piece of advice is to write what I know.  No one can tell the stories of another person, only their own.  The seeds of “the story” have been planted in my soul waiting for culmination in the soil of the written page.  Yes, I am the primary eye witness to the events that come together in the telling of the saga.  These may be the very cousins to the painted canvases of other’s who yearn for the display of the art in their lives.  “See the art in me!  I am a vessel of clay on this journey to self-actualization.  Appreciate the contribution of skills and talents I have been endowed with!” cries the inner-soul of those who are experiencing the same angst as yours truly.  That is the great contribution of art.  Leo Tolstoy’s book attempts an answer to the glaring question What is Art?  I find Art is the very flowering of personhood on to the world stage in whatever form that may take.  The challenge for me is to exercise the calling of writing in whatever form the opportunity clothes itself in.  As much as I can, I take my creativity to task with exercises in word prompts, capturing pictures with a descriptive line, discussing the life of a writer in six hundred words or less, and so much more.  Similar to the newborn child, becoming a seasoned writer doesn’t happen overnight, even though there are child prodigies once or twice in a generation.  Bear with me, and also become encouraged by, these first few baby steps.  To not write stagnates the creativity that is bulging at the seams of this infant writer’s clothes.  This is a new way of life of which I must now grow accustomed.  I must keep processing the milk of the writer lifestyle, and eventually I will be able to consume the meat of a brave new world.  Sooner than I realize, I may hear the words of the One to whom I diligently work, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou in to the joy of the Lord.”  (Matthew 25:21 KJV)