I have to be honest. The mere idea that I have decided to try my hand at becoming a writer has given me more to shake my head at in the last year than just about anything else. As a great lover of books and a voracious reader I hold the vocation of writing in the absolute highest regard. At the same time, I cannot help but roll my eyes a bit at the idea that a normal person (such as myself) would entertain such a privileged notion that I, too, might enter the lofty ranks belonging to the noble writer.
I believe it is safe to say that anyone embarking on such a journey will inevitably ask themselves one simple question:
What on God’s green earth could I possibly have to say that would merit anybody else taking notice?
I suppose the bolder question might be this:
Who cares?
Ta-Nehisi Coates, an author I greatly admire, said that the craft of writing is often the art of thinking. I have undoubtedly found that to ring true. He also once said that his desire to write was born of an earnest need to understand, followed by a need to express that understanding. For myself, as someone about to embark on a wild adventure that will (hopefully, someday) result in a nonfiction book — about politics and religion, no less — that sentiment resonates with me profoundly.
I don’t know what kind of person it is that deserves to be called “a writer,” or when it is that that moniker can be considered an official title. When you are published for the first time? When you receive your first paycheck for something you wrote? Perhaps. But I suspect a writer truly becomes “a writer” when they can’t help but jot down scattered thoughts throughout the day to flesh out later, and when not writing about something is too great a burden to bear. That has been my experience these last months, maybe years. I think if I don’t write, if I let it stew without the attempt to get it all out, my head will explode.
So here I am for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer (assuredly for poorer), doing the audacious thing I potentially have no business doing, but doing it nevertheless.
I know that I will be better for having done it. And if I can be of encouragement to others on a similar journey of discovery and exploration, even of deconstruction, then all the better.
WESTPHALL 