No Choice but to Write

Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash

There is only one thing to do.  Go into yourself.  Examine your reason for writing.  Discover whether it is rooted in the depths of your heart, and find out whether you would rather die than be forbidden to write.  Above all, ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night, have I no choice but to write?  Dig deep within for the truest answer, and if the answer is a strong and simple yes, then build your life upon this necessity.  Your life henceforth, down to its most ordinary and insignificant moment, must prove and reveal this truth.                                   

Paris, February 17, 1903, Letters to a Young Poet

A Year with Rilke, Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Marie Rilke Translated and  Edited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

It’s difficult to explain to nonwriters why some of us are compelled, day after day after day, to string words together and cast them onto a page.  Sometimes, of course, we’re working toward publication, perhaps even earning a living that way, but no writer I have ever known stays with this work purely for the lure of, the hope of, even the necessity of publication. 

Certainly, there is a thrill in seeing what we have labored over in solitude find a life out there in the world.  At least it’s thrilling the first few times we see our words embodied.  I discovered something very quickly, though, when my inaugural novel arrived in the mail.  Once I had examined the cover (which in those days I hadn’t seen until that moment), read the jacket blurb (also for the first time back then), and dipped into the all-too-familiar opening lines of my story; once I had held this long-awaited object in my hands and breathed in its solidity, there was nothing more to do but set the thing aside and go make dinner for my family. 

The next day, of course, I was back at work on another novel, which had already been underway for months.

If publication were the sole satisfaction to be gleaned from the isolated and isolating labor of writing, there would be, I can assure you, very few books in the world.

It’s the act of writing itself that justifies, that nurtures, that thrills.  Those of us who write are born, not with a need to see our words in print, but rather with a need to make something beautiful, something meaningful out of words.  For ourselves.  And then, in however small a way, to share what we have made.  We come into the world filled with language just as some are born filled with music.  Or compelled by numbers. Or enchanted by color and line.

When I used to visit schools, teachers sometimes asked me how they could turn their students into writers.  I’d remind them that there was much they could do to teach their students to communicate with clarity and vigor and that they were probably already doing that.  But if they were asking how they could make their students into writers like me, my answer was different.  Teach those same tools, of course, and then, when they see the urge to write blossoming, encourage and step out of the way. Most writers teach themselves to write by writing, and we go on writing because, as Rilke said, we have no other choice. 

I’m not suggesting writing can’t be taught.  There are aspects that I believe are instinctual ... or at least that I’ve never learned how to teach.  A feel for language is one, an ear for the resonance, rhythm, and power of words.  A feel for drama is another, a gut response to a story’s rising tension, to what makes an opening compelling, an ending impactful. But most of the rest is craft, and craft can certainly be taught ... and learned.  What can’t be instilled, though, is the satisfaction the work brings, the deep internal reward that comes from hearing the words flowing onto the page.

It’s what is meant by being “in the zone,” something familiar to athletes, familiar to anyone who hones a skill that requires endless practice, patience, close attention. To be in the zone is to be resoundingly alive. 

And that sense of aliveness is exactly what keeps us writing!

That sense aliveness is also what brings me back, week after week, to talk to you … whoever you are out there. 

So I keep stringing words together, taking words out, choosing one over another, starting over again from the beginning, walking away and returning to find out what I said.  I do that day after day after day because it’s what gives my life focus, purpose, joy! 

And all that’s needed on the other side of this good and rewarding work is you out there … reading.