We Need Your Voice

A call to voiceless writers.

Re: “Why bother?” “There’s nothing new under the sun.” “Someone else is better,” etc. Because someone has already said it better than I can, let me open with their arguments:

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
Admiral Grace Hopper

In other words, why not risk it? We regret what we didn’t do more than we regret what we did do.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

Sometimes we use excuses to shun responsibility. Another great quote by Dr. Seuss describes this well: “There will never be anyone who is youer than you.”

While everything that can exist may already exist, there has never been the exact and total combination of all that can exist in a person before as there is in you, and there never will be again. Everything that you’ve ever heard and lived. Everyone that you, specifically and only you can impact. The moment in time and the culture you inhabit, with all the knowledge of the past and what you can predict of the next.

Think of everyone who is meaningful to you, all the wise words that have uniquely touched you. What they said may have already been said, but they said it in a way that uniquely connected with you. Within you is the power to do that for someone else. Don’t deprive them of that potential outcome.

I could chose not to be a writing coach because writing coaches already exist. I could not bother because I know all this information is already out there. But if I did that, then you wouldn’t be reading this right now.

My grandmother is one of the most incredible writers I know. I talked to her on the phone the other day, telling her again that I would really love to read more of her work — that it matters to me. But her own work doesn’t matter to her, and she won’t believe me that regardless, it’s still worthwhile. She says there’s already too many books, so why bother? Why would anyone care what she has to say? Well I care about what she has to say. But now I have less writing of hers to cherish. It can boil down to the circle of influence you have, but I believe that’s just a microcosm of a macrocosm.

“Even in the most cluttered of libraries there are gaps between the volumes where virtual masterpieces breathe. We go after those gaps, selfish that we are. We might never be noticed but it is impossible to run out of words.
The problem is then not that of the exhaustion of combinations but of the impossibility of exhausting them.”
Fernando Sdrigotti

I believe that writing is a personal action, and that it matters most for that. Its impact is totally secondary. Reading, as a child, saved me from profound loneliness, and has absolutely shaped who I am. I owe so much to everyone I have read. Writing became my most fulfilling passion, and a integral part of the most meaningful relationship I ever formed. That friend and I helped each other write, and it was there that I learned nearly everything important that I know. Writing matters, even if it’s poorly executed, even if it’s been said before.

My favorite poet is T.S. Eliot, a famous “plagiarizer.” Even if it is true that all he did was re-organize what had already been said and add a line or two of his own, he was the one who made it accessible to me, and made me fall in love with poetry, and become a poet.

My high school writing teacher and a writer himself, challenged my assertion that I could not write poetry. As a result, poetry became my preferred form of expressing myself. Who can say if they will ever be read, or become meaningful to a circle outside of my small one of immediate influence? But they bring me peace, and a sense of purpose. We make ripples, whose consequences cannot be calculated.

A wonderful writing coach told me a bit of advice she gives out often: quit if you can, but if you can’t, then keep writing. If you still think about writing after “quitting,” you haven’t successfully quit. The people who can truly, honestly quit writing forever, were probably never writers to begin with. If you are a writer, you can only gain from writing, and you do the world no disservice by writing to the best of your ability.

“Do not wait for someone to give you permission to create what you want to create.”
Joshua Fields Millburn

We have to let go of and move through the fact that we will write some things that are unoriginal, that aren’t important, or are just kind of crappy. Even those things still matter, though, because they teach you, and are part of the process to getting to that thing you’re going to write that is going to be original, that will matter, that will be great even in your own eyes.

I don’t expect this to immediately change how you feel. I understand those emotions, and it’s a totally normal way for writers to think. But let’s confront that self-defeating thought, let’s challenge it, let’s push through it together, refusing to accept the limitations it wants to place on us.

The great news? You’re not alone, and you don’t have to do this alone.

We’re waiting for you to speak.