Life is a Writing Process

A couple of months ago, I was invited to speak to a group of students on “Career Day” about my work as an associate editor at Good Faith Media. A ten-minute talk, I didn’t expect it to mean so much to me until I started writing. I knew when the title came to me, “Life is a Writing Process,” that the moment was important.

To be sure, I take all my commitments seriously, regardless of the age of the audience or number of persons in attendance. Because writing is a spiritual practice for me. 

I believe that words have creative power, that they can mold and shape realities, that they can break the human spirit or free it. For this reason, I take words very seriously and even despise small talk. 

My elders would say, “Keep your mouth off of people.” Like the writer of Proverbs, they understood that words have life-giving and death-dealing power. They are not just letters, mere squiggly and sharp lines, but can capture the essence and energy of a person.

I once heard Maya Angelou talk about words. “Words are things, I’m convinced,” she said. “You must be careful about the words you use or the words you allow to be used in your house.”

I took that bit of wisdom seriously and it is a rule in my home that a neighbor who told a racist joke swiftly learned the punishment for. I corrected him and promptly put him out. 

That kind of language has no place in my house, which he hasn’t seen the inside of since. That was more than five years ago.

Because Angelou said, “Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their name, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Someday, we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. I think they get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, in your clothes and finally into you.”

What, then, would I say to these students? What impression did I hope to make with my words? What words did I want to leave in the room?

It was also an opportunity to speak a word of gratitude to the 12-year-old me. We have come a long way and our life changed the moment we learned what our tools would be: pen and paper.

Writing helped me process tumultuous experiences and scary feelings. My journal pages held space for my questions and gleanings. 

They have kept all my secrets and to this day, have never lost one. For this reason, paper is so much closer to me than people. 

I close my eyes and run my hands across a sheet of paper when I am searching for the right words to say and pat it with gratitude when they come to me. I just did it right before writing that last sentence.

I wanted better words for myself. There had to be more that I wasn’t hearing. 

I developed a taste for good words early on. There were always mean and nasty ones available, hurled at us as children. Then, there were the slurred ones that I made sure to stay away from. 

My childhood home life was too loud, so it wasn’t long before I moved into my head. Today, solitude and stillness are two of the pillars on which my creativity heavily leans. It also wouldn’t be long before I realized I could write my way out of limited ways of being.

I stood before those students, fully aware that good words had gotten me to this position. After handing out journals, magazines, books and curriculums that I had contributed to, telling them about my work as an associate editor and listening with appreciation for who they wanted to be, I told them:

You have to know yourself, what you’re made of and why you’re here. All this takes time and intentionally thinking about yourself. 

Howard Thurman, a mystic and theologian, invites us to listen for “the sound of the genuine” in us and to ask, “Who am I, really?” My answer is always, “I am somebody.”

Life is a writing process and you are the author of your own. A literary architect, choose your words carefully as they say a lot about you. 

Choose long and beautiful words, short and sweet words too. Just put something on the page.

There will be good chapters and bad chapters. Keep writing; you can revise it later. 

There will be good characters and bad characters. Keep writing; they will sort themselves out. 

The seasons and the settings will change, but ensure that you remain the main character in your story. Don’t ever play yourself small.

Finding yourself, who you are really and knowing that whoever are, you are somebody, this is the truest happy ending.