WHY I WRITE….

This Covid isolation has finally gotten me down. I’ve begun to wonder why I do anything. Why bother cooking when there’s no one to eat what I cook. No one to eat the bread I bake. And if it weren’t so frigid and icy outside, I’d drive and drop a fresh loaf by a friend’s house. I still take basic care of my plants, but I’ve lost motivation for things in general.

One thing I lost motivation for is writing. I published a Thanksgiving book in 2012, then a deeper fuller memoir in early March 2020. I didn’t know the world would shut down the week after it became available on Amazon. All my usual library activities where I might have talked it up disappeared with Covid restrictions. Zoom workshops just don’t work for casual promotional connections.

I went forward and built a website with a plan to post essays in its blog every two weeks. Even sent a monthly newsletter to thirty friends. Now it’s been a month since I posted. I haven’t even checked for comments because I’m discouraged by the same forty-plus Russian language spam in the comments.

How can I get back on track? Why should I? I need to go back to square one and remind myself what my reasons for writing are.

Why do I write? Is it the same reason as when I began?

How is it different these days? How can I deepen its purpose when motivation fails me?

What is defeating me?

• Nobody cares, why bother.
• It’s too late; I might be gone tomorrow.
• None of it is good enough, just not right.
• People will be critical, of course.

What is my purpose?  I had a purpose before.  I sat quiet, listened to my soul, then wrote this list:

1. I write because I said I would – to my younger self. It’s one of those declarations young mothers and wives promise themselves to maintain a sense of future value. My journals from earlier years are scribbled in pencil on wide lined paper on top of a toilet seat late night. Details and emotions documented fresh.
2. I write because I’m obsessed with books and nonfiction articles. Words and phrases that turn information into music.
3. I write because, always, in my early years, school years, married and religious years, my words were virtually spit on, trampled on, cut off. I write now what she could not speak.
4. Sticks and stones only break bones; but words destroy us (me). I write to reset truth – for the moment.
5. I write to integrate remote teachers and mentors into my author “apprenticeship.” I consume the tomes of adept authors and write in parallel, in spirit, in brother-sisterhood.
6. I write to solidify an idea. To explain connections between seemingly disparate concepts or events.
7. With no particular expertise, no deep wisdom to impart, my hope is that we may discover something as I write about it for us. Let us assay an experience.
8. I write because I see things. My mind pulls up video unplanned. Recall of prior events or encounters in vivid detail and emotion. (This is also why I don’t write.)
9. I write to bear witness. I’ve experienced miracles and wonders, mystical encounters. I have to capture them so someone – some future generation – might read hope in these happenings. Hope of the beauty of God in reality.
10. I write because words are especially beautiful when their semantic offerings tweak the tone of a phrase.
11. I write to finally own an ethereal thing.

Yes. Now I remember!