I was walking my sons to school the other day when the woman crossing them said, “I looked up your book yesterday.”
I never know what to say in situations like these, so I just said, “Oh, yeah?”
She said, “Yeah.” She didn’t say anything else about my book (I can’t say I wasn’t glad). She moved on to tell me that she’s been urging her husband to write a book for a while. She said, “I think he would write it well, but he just doesn’t have the time.”
I can empathize with this completely. My first traditionally published book was written in short bursts—half an hour here, fifteen minutes there. Time—or the lack thereof—is one of the largest reasons more people don’t write.
But having found the time, I know, too, that there is another, larger reason that more people don’t ever finish their book, and it’s this: writing demands much of authors.
That “much” includes, of course, time, but even more than that it includes everything a writer gives. What I mean by that is both simple and complicated: a writer gives herself.
There is not a book I have written yet that does not contain large pieces of me. I split open my heart and my soul and my brain and meet the page in the most vulnerable place, disrobing family secrets (even if they are hidden behind fiction or metaphor), examining the darkest places of my mind, telling stories I might rather forget. There are projects that have nearly broken me—a current one is a memoir I’m working on about the first summer I went to see my dad and his new family after my parents divorced. It took me three years to write down a fictional story about a suicidal teenager because within the story are pieces of myself, my teenage years with my brother, and a current ongoing struggle with my pre-teen son. I cried through the final draft of a picture book that just went out on submission—because it contains so much raw, unbridled pain and extravagant hope.
Writing a book is not as simple as choosing an idea, doing research, carving out the time to put words on a page. Writers give themselves, too.
This is partially why, when an author’s book is finally released to the world, there is so much elation mixed up with fear and unease. We are known more fully by our work. And we know that not everyone will be kind to those pieces of us out in the world, threading into our stories or essays or poems. We hope they will be, but we don’t live in an ideal world, and the words of others sometimes sting in our most vulnerable places.
Before I get started on a new project, I always take a deep breath, close my eyes, and repeat to myself these words from Maya Angelou:
“My wish is that you continue. Continue to be who you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.”
Though I know it will be difficult to peel off those scabs that have grown over verbal abuse and use the old wounds to tell a story about the pain and confusion of a boy, I know I must—because other children live in a situation exactly like that, and they need to know they are worthy of acceptance and a future and the greatest of love. I enter into the ache, I let it blast through my chest, and I give all of myself to the storytelling, to the examination of difficult things, to the redemption of what has been broken. Tikkun olam.
I give because I love my readers. I give because I desire to see a world in which every person realizes their worth and significance. I give because it is my purpose, because it is the way in which I meet people and leave a part of myself with them. Because I take seriously the words of Fred Rogers: “If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”
I hope I never hold back.
Next time you pick up a book, remember: authors don’t merely give time and money and hope and creativity to the project in your hands. They give, too, themselves.
(Photo by Ewan Robertson on Unsplash)
