Pen in Motion

Writing has always been this wonderful, beautiful, exhilarating, and somewhat scary process for me. The excitement and terror of that first blank page – what is meant to go here? What story will unfold? Much like taking a journey down a new road at night with a blindfold, I rarely have much of an idea of where I am going when I begin to write. That is part of the exciting process, but it’s also a little daunting. What if I get lost? Or worse – what if what I write isn’t good?

The latter questions bothers me more than anything. I love to write. I love to create, and I love do it with words. But I want what I make to be good, which is how it’s supposed to be. We were made to want to make, to want to create. And we were made to want to look at our creation and say “this is good.” I can still remember remnants of a Dorothy Sayers article/book chapter called “Why Work?” in which she makes the same declaration. The desire to create is in all of us, and it surfaces in different ways. For some, it’s in music or art. For others, it’s in business. But if you look at the foundation of the artist and the corporate giant, you will likely find a similar root – the yearn to make something and say “it’s good.”

My art, my creation is with words. Whether it’s poetry or fiction (or this post), what I write is of high value to me. It’s precious because I made it. It’s my precious. (yeah, I went there) I should love it more than I fear it. And really, I shouldn’t fear it at all. What am I afraid of anyway? I have read a lot of books on writing in the recent years, and one of the most endearing nuggets of advice is this – write what you love. And I might add, write how you love. I write because I love – the words, the world, myself, my craft, my creation. I love and that makes my creation good because it has truly been “made with love.”