The only way to fail is not to write

I read a literary magazine called The Sun filled with the most amazing, honest, gut wrenching, stories from real people. The editor, Sy Safransky, had an article in December’s mag that filled me with the holy fire to write more. He gave a quote from author Annie Dillard that struck me profoundly.

"Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume your audience consists of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case."

The article also mentions a dissident poet who was imprisoned in the Soviet Union in the 1980’s. She was prohibited from having writing materials, so she would write poems by carving them into a bar of soap with a burned matchstick. After she wrote she would memorize the poem, then wash her hands with the soap. In the three years she was incarcerated she wrote 250 poems this way, remembering them all. The drive to write is strong in me, but I'm not sure it burns that hot. After I read the article I felt like the young man in the Bible who came to Jesus asking what he could do to be saved. Jesus told him to sell all he had and give it to the poor. It was said that the man went away exceedingly sorrowful, because he was very rich. I have no idea how old I was when I first heard that parable, but I was certainly too young to have any grasp of what it meant. Some of life’s lessons are late in coming, but I think I finally understand what is required. Like the rich man, I am not sure I am willing to give up everything for salvation, or for the sake of the story, but I started thinking about what I might be willing to let go. It can’t be like giving up beets for lent because you hate beets anyway, so I won’t consider letting go of cleaning house, shopping, or scooping out the cat liter box. It has to be serious, like letting go of the 50 hour a week job I have become comfortable doing well. It’s not really the money I would miss, but the praise and support I get from what has become an extended family.

My dearest blog friend, Witness, recently let go of his long running blog to write seriously, but also to take on the considerable challenge of fatherhood. It is a role he considers so solemnly he is willing to forgo the pleasure of an audience to stroke his ego. I’m on that path myself, but not nearly ready to let go and take that leap. I cannot possibly explain to anyone what his support meant to me over the months we corresponded, and what it continues to mean as we have moved into another phase of our relationship. My son tells me that people I know on the blog are not like real friends. I thought that over for a while, not contradicting him. I know we are all a bunch of strangers, but we are real, and very often we do become friends. We have monologues at each other, but we also have conversations. Just because we do not touch each other, except in the spiritual sense on occasion, does not mean we are not connected.

The link for Unchained has not worked for some time, but I just didn’t want to let it go. Nothing lasts forever, but the words he gave me will last for my lifetime. The words he and I have created separately may outlast our lifetimes, but that is unimportant. The article from the Sun gives a poem by W.S. Merwin that I think tells how I feel, and I think how Witness feels too:

I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t

you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write


I will miss your voice my dear, but only for a while. Your words beg to be heard, and no one will be able to silence them once they are unchained.