Your Writing Matters
I thought seriously about not doing a post at all this week. Who will want to read about writing in the midst of election chaos? I thought. No one will be paying attention anyway.
And maybe that’s true. There are definitely more important things than this blog going on in the world. And right now feels more than ever like a period of crisis. It’s truly hard to keep our minds focused on creative work (or any work). It is hard to believe it still matters.
It does.
For whoever needs to hear this today, I say this: Keep writing. Keep putting your voice out there. Your art, your passion, your creativity, your sense of humor. The world needs it more than ever. Your fellow human beings need to know there is something available to them besides endless doomscrolling or obsessive news-watching.
And you need it for yourself. We are human beings. We are wired to create. Don’t give in to inertia or hopelessness or fear. Just get something down on the page. It might be a pages-long rant about some injustice you see. It might be random, seemingly disconnected jottings about whatever pops into your mind. It’s fine if it’s not a polished piece. Maybe it’s a poem, a story, an essay, or the word FUCK written 100 times in heavy black capitals. Writing is self-expression. It has a lot of room to say whatever you need to say. It doesn’t need to be pretty. It doesn’t need to be published. Just keep going. Don’t let fear or depression or overwhelm choke you. Don’t let those nasty inner voices tell you it doesn’t matter, or you don’t have anything to say, or people will hate you, or that you just can’t do it because EVERYTHING.
Make writing and creating part of your self-care. I think when many people say they “can’t write” right now, it means they can’t write anything they feel is good. It’s not Real Writing. But I sincerely doubt it’s because they have nothing to say. Take even 10-15 minutes a day, to keep that creative door open just a crack. It’s easy to let ourselves sink down into feelings of depression and overwhelm in times like these (pandemic, election, social unrest, economic uncertainty, polarization, etc.). But we can go back to the writing, because that’s where our heart is. That is the ground from which our vital creativity springs. It may seep down to a trickle, but if we smother that fountain altogether, it smothers a crucial part of us. Throughout history, no matter how difficult the challenges, art has kept the human spirit alive. It can keep our spirit alive, too, if we let it.
