4 Ways Writing Reminds Us We’re Alive

It’s the Fourth of July this week, which is America’s version of a Summer Solstice extravaganza. We set off fireworks, eat too much barbeque, take a long weekend to look around at our loved ones, recognize their faces, and remember why we’re here.

So let’s talk about four ways writing—because we are all writers here—reminds us we’re alive:

1. It grounds us in the experience of living

   Storytelling is just scenes—thrilling, fascinating, important scenes in concrete, realistic detail. Where do we get the detailed material for these scenes? From being alive.

   And every time we read or write such a scene, we get to live in multiple layers. Our lives are richer, more full of material. . .more vividly about living.

2. It makes sense out of the life trajectory we’re traveling

   The meaning of stories is derived from the juxtaposition and order of the scenes. And that juxtaposition and order creates a trajectory—carrying the characters through their experiences toward their Climax, a trajectory that makes sense.

   Every time we read or write such a series of scenes we get to live through a meaningful trajectory. And meaning matters to us. We are creatures who long for it all to make sense.

3. It keeps us awake to the relationships that give our lives meaning

   Of course, scenes have little to offer us without characters living them. And those characters have relationships: with each other, with their environments, with themselves. With us.

   Life alone in a single skull is lonely. We need each other to make the struggle of this mortal coil worthwhile. Even hermits need to know other people are out there. We read for the sake of the human connection between characters, between characters and themselves, between reader and characters, between reader and author.

   Particularly those of us who write.

4. It transcends our familiar life through its sheer familiarity

   And that is the mystical in this earthly existence. Because when you take real detail, trajectory, and human connection and put them all together. . .you get epiphany.

   I mean, here we all are out here on this planet, doing what we have to do to survive—waking up every day, cooking, eating, working for shelter, working for protection from the elements, working to raise our families and care for our elderly and each other.

   At the same time, we’re searching for the clues in that existence that show us why it matters. What are we doing here? How did we get here? Why do we work so hard and suffer so much to stay here? (Years ago, I asked a friend this, and she answered without a second’s hesitation, “To rent videos.”)

   Storytellers give us that. Writers, especially, give us that. Because writing is an extremely detailed and complex and layered form of storytelling. And all those details and complexities and layers come. . .straight out of real life.

   Illuminating what life really is.

You are here as a writer to add, to life in general, your extremely specific experience of living.

So we can all live as fully as humanly possible.