Why Do I Need a Life of Letters?

With no self-deception, I can say I’m fairly good at so many life skills. I can cook well. When I clean the house, I do it full-out, moving items off the floor and shifting furniture when I’m vacuuming. I’ve even been known to do my own laundry and have repaired a few home appliances. While these are valuable abilities, none of these have ever given me a feeling of lasting satisfaction. Most of what this life requires is necessary but not edifying, at least not for me. It's not enough.

What does give me a sense of accomplishment and the feeling I am using my life in a worthwhile fashion is writing, more specifically “having written.” There’s something about the process of putting together words to express something that quiets my feeling of inadequacy. Maybe I can say writing helps me to feel as if I’m not wasting the precious time of my life. I am doing something constructive and creative. I am creating something that did not previously exist. When the creative juices are flowing and I perceive that I’m writing something special and surprising, it is the best feeling ever. It’s like what I imagine it would be like to have superpower. Writing well is when I feel most God-like, in the sense I am creating new life and new worlds from words.

As well as I know myself I can say, it’s not so much producing writing that impacts others and the world so much as it is the active practice and discipline of scribbling in my notebook. Once I did dream of producing popular books, of going into a random bookstore and seeing my name on the spine of my latest work. But for my life now, the goal is quieter, simpler, more for my sense of meaning and purpose rather than the consumption of others. I simply feel good when I have written. I feel great when I write regularly. And, when the opposite happens, when I allow writing to be squeezed out by the business of other pursuits, that’s when I feel like a failure. To look back on a month, a season, a year or more without writing is to want to lay down and die. For vitality and a sense of purpose in my life, I need writing.