Hope is the thing with wings.
—Emily Dickinson
So I assume you’ve all heard by now.
AMERICA WON.
I can’t tell you how full my heart is: for every single American who got out there and voted, the record turn-out numbers, in spite of Hurricane Sandy, hours-long waits at the polls and misinformation, malfunctioning election voting machines (oddly, all malfunctioning in the Republican direction), even childbirth (seriously—a young woman in labor whose water had already broken stopped on the way to the hospital to vote), even death (seriously—someone died at a polling place and was revived saying, “Did I vote?”)
The American people have spoken. Wow, was that a mighty chorus to be a part of!
We will remember it all our lives.
So today’s post will be straight-forward and to-the-point about writing:
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Joy
We write for the sheer joy of it. Don’t ever let anyone tell you any different.
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We vote because we have the right, and because we have the responsibility. It’s something every eligible American adult carries on our conscience because we know our country is so massively powerful in this global village that our leader makes decisions that affect the lives of others all around the world.
In China, they don’t get to vote. Their leaders make all decisions on their behalf. Those decisions that affect our lives—even here in the Western hemisphere—have nothing whatsoever to do with the choices of the Chinese people (and China holds an entire quarter of the world’s population: all silenced).
But here in the first modern democracy we do.
We have that right.
We have that responsibility.
As President Obama pointed out last night in his acceptance speech, “Sure, we argue with each other. Sure, we each vote our own way. Because we can. And so we must. Because that’s what makes democracy great.”
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On the other hand, the only responsibility a writer has is to make their reader feel blessed to have stumbled upon their book.
Other than that, this joyous work of us all is a right.
A right to express our opinions. A right to express our creativity. A right to express the depths of humanity that live hidden, unspoken, as-yet without sufficient language within us.
The joy of putting into words what has never been put into words before.
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Gratitude
Which brings us to the second motivation to write: we writers have so much for which to be grateful.
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Our work doesn’t require hundreds of millions of people to all act on the same day in unified, concerted effort—or prior weeks and months sacrificing time, energy, patience, and the effort to keep believing in us and our ability to help their lives move forward in the face of apparently insuperable odds. Our audience isn’t forced to engage in our work out of sheer fear of what would happen to their children and elderly, their families and their lives if they didn’t.
That’s an enormous toll to take upon an audience. It had damn well better be worth it to them.
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Writers don’t work on that scale. Our burdens aren’t that heavy, and so our effect upon our world is much more subtle, more tenuous, perhaps much more delayed. And if a reader buys a book and hates it, well, the reader has lost their hard-earned money and the writer has sure lost a loyal follower, but that follower’s family isn’t going to lose their mortgage over it.
The granularity—the lives we writers affect—is on the subatomic scale.
One single reader at a time.
That’s how we writers change the world.
Our work doesn’t even require expensive paints and canvas and models. (I recently read the heartbreakingly beautiful autobiography-in-letters of Vincent Van Gogh, Dear Theo, in which his struggle to pay for his art is a constant, nagging source of anxiety, even as he’s painting such priceless works as “Sunflowers” and “Starry Night.”)
It doesn’t require hiring (and cooperating with!) actors or dancers and a director and a venue, which means it doesn’t require a producer to foot the bill. It doesn’t require expensive materials to shape, like clay or wood or stone, or a specialized hired studio in which to shape them. It doesn’t require expensive or handmade musical instruments or a stage or pay-by-the second recording studio in which to perform.
Just pen. And paper.
Just five senses and imagination.
Such simple things, so easily and cheaply (even freely!) obtained.
Our gratitude for the accessibility of our writing craft must always be unbounded.
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Hope
And that leads us to hope.
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Which hope motivated America to claim our own country back from the very grasp of raw, reckless, amoral greed late last night.
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Because what has been done in literature before us—by Miguel de Servantes, the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, Emile Gaboriau, Mrs. Radcliffe, Rafael Sabitini, Melville Davisson Post, Mark Twain, clear up into the twentieth century—was all done with pen.
And paper.
With five simple senses.
And unlimited imagination.
If they can do it—create immortal literature simply by applying long, intense, intelligent, dedicated study to this craft we all love—then we can do it.
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And that makes hope our angel’s wings.
May it never leave us.
[I KNOW: I finally turned off comments because of the spam. Thank you for all your comments over the years! You’re such a joy to write for. If you like this post, please feel free to click StumbleUpon and/or Facebook and/or Twitter.]