When Does Writing Matter?

For me, the steep challenge of writing is to allow myself to spend effort and time on work that will never be seen by anyone.

Between the end of high school and the approach of my thirties, I wrote invisibly. I was ashamed of my weak skills and determined to get better, even if I had no idea of what better might mean in my circumstances. All I could see was the pallour of my style when compared to the stories and poems of actual writers, and so I kept it all hidden.

Still, I wrote almost every day, if only because I needed maps to roads that I could never see and could hardly define. This drive to improve kept me going.

Since then, I have written stories and even verses that seem good to me. I have learned to enjoy the process of writing and the meticulous fun of revision, yet now something holds me back, something makes me deny myself this pleasure. Is it a lack of confidence in my skill? No. A feeling that I have nothing left to say? Never. Then what is it?

For all of the years that I spent in secret study and practice, I could justify this effort by promising myself the eventual prize of readers. Now that I no longer need to prove my skills to myself, I still have no readers, and I have no hope of gaining them. No matter what I do, no matter how capably I do it, I remain unread.

This condition of crippling invisibility would seem typical for most writers of our illiterate day, and we must all find our own reasons to go on. Yes, I love to write, yes, I still have much to say, but are these, in the hard light of morning, reasons enough?

I can think of only one reply.

Write to explore within your own skull or to step outside of yourself, write for the challenge of new techniques, write for the secret pleasure of words and clauses at play. Discover what you need to keep on working, but remember this:

Writing matters when we make it matter.