3 Times I Remember Why I Do This Work

Even if [the yeast of intelligence] operates in vain, it remains evolution’s peak. . .: something to enjoy and foster as much as possible; something not to betray by succumbing to despair, however deep the many pits of darkness.
—Diana Athill, Stet: An Editor’s Life

Sometimes I get so involved in the daily difficulties of writing that I forget why I ever wanted to become a writer in the first place.

Then I remember. . .

1. Whenever my cats object

   . . .to my prescribed determination of their fates—and sometimes just random flexing of my ability to boss them around—I think of my own helplessness at the whims of of the gods. I sometimes find myself wishing in real anguish I had some magical ability to create a portrait of that link between their worlds and mine so I’d feel less crippled by everything I simply can’t do anything about.

   And I remember: I do have that ability.

   I have words, and I have the techniques of fiction. I just need to practice them until I know how to handle them deftly enough, and I can create something vivid and tangible, something I can hold in my hands and revisit again and again, something that truly helps make my life less of a private assault upon me, personally, and more of a resonance echoing throughout the experience of all humanity.

   Something that might even help others, like me, caught in this mortal coil.

2. Whenever I’m washed-up

   . . .in an airport terminal or doctor’s waiting room or endless meeting I remember the strict injunction I gave myself when I was still a teen: “A writer has no business ever being bored.”

   And I remember that as long as I have words and five senses and something—anything—to write on, my job is to stop feeling sorry for myself and practice my craft.

3. Whenever I’m suffering

   . . .the reverberating shock of a really bad injury to my heart: walking into my grandmother’s bedroom to see them wheeling out the life support; coming home from sending a get-well card to a beloved uncle and my husband taking my hands to say, “Your mother called. Peet died last night”; holding my grandfather’s hand as his face contorts through the horrible B-movie grimaces of dying—

   I remember that I have something to do with that experience beyond simply being destroyed by it.

   I have words. And I have the techniques of fiction. And I have a deep, immovable longing that has never left me, no matter what I’ve been through in all my fifty years on this planet—a longing to make it all have been worthwhile.