Today I answered the question “Why is writing important to you?” on Twitter@Writer’sDigest@BrianKlems.
Most people had responded with the ways that writing fed their soul or their creativity or their need for release. For me the answer was different. Writing is important to me because it is the one thing I have never given up on completely.
It seems that most of us go through life looking for the elusive ‘it’. The thing that makes us who we are. The thing that makes us tick. We assume that if we find it we will also be successful at it. It is a recipe for disappointment. None of us can live up to the expectations we place on ourselves in this regard. And yet there is the small voice that won’t be squelched no matter how many times we fail or how long it takes us to start. It is the little voice that dares us to dream.
I read once that the three ingredients to happiness were someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to. It is because of the latter that I became a fan of the perpetual dream. Having a dream that doesn’t come to fruition can be just as beneficial to our psyches as the one that does. It keeps us looking forward. We continue to be engaged and striving instead of jaded and complacent. It reminds me of the movie “That Thing You Do” about the band who made it big only to come undone. It was the dreaming not the reality that sustained them.
I look at my writing like this. I am a writer because I write. If there comes a day when I am published then I will be a published writer but I no longer want to place the value of my worth as a writer on a single adjective. The way I see it, it could be a “be careful what you wish for you just might get it” scenario. Perhaps if I were to publish I would encounter a new set of problems, deadlines, criticisms, poor sales. Who’s to say? In the meantime I will continue to write as the need arises or the inspiration or even the desperation. And I’ll keep dreaming, who knows, maybe one day I’ll even add that adjective.
