I’m a writer. Those three words have taken me three decades to be confident enough to write. Growing up, I would have thought my present life the stuff of dreams. And, in so many ways, it is. But writing is also a calling, and all callings require blood, sweat, and tears. Writing exposes all the frayed parts of a writer’s person and past. Writing looks like staring at empty pages with fear and then staring at filled pages with similar fear. When I’m in the middle of an intensive project, I long for the space and freedom that accompany a finished manuscript. When I’m in between projects, I long for the safety of being confined to a specific task.

I love reading writers talk about writing, because writing can feel terribly lonely, even for an introvert. During the past few weeks, I’ve been stirred to courage by three writers from different three continents and times: Flannery O’Connor, T.S. Eliot, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. These three, in their own peculiar ways, have pressed courage into me as a writer.

Flannery & Faithful Failure

Flannery O’Connor loved peacocks and prose, but she also loved God. Her Catholic faith informed her writing. I love reading her stories even though they are anything but light and airy; however, I most enjoyed reading a collection of her letters and her prayer journal, as they give rare windows into her approach to the craft of writing. In one entry into her prayer journal, O’Connor’s honesty made me laugh while gently pointing me back to the Lord.

“If I do get to be a fine writer, it will not be because i am a fine writer but because God has given me credit for a few of the things He kindly wrote for me. Right at present this does not seem to be His policy. I can’t write a thing. But I’ll continue to try– that is the point. And at every dry point, I will be reminded Who is doing the work when it is done & Who is not doing it at the present moment (Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal, 23)”

I’ve always said that my aim as a writer is to write with the Lord, not merely for Him. Time with Him is never wasted, even if the words that come from that time never leave my crowded desk. I am reminded of Paul’s words to the saints at Colossae: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive your inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23–24). Even in projects or pieces I perceive as “failure,” I’m writing with and for my Father.

Eliot & Trembling while Trying

The Lord used a paper I wrote on the conversion of T.S. Eliot to begin writing His truth on my heart. I’ve always been drawn to his poetry and find myself back in his poems for short stints every year. I love his honesty about the art of writing in “Four Quartets.” I feel less crazy knowing that an incredible writer like Eliot felt like he was operating with shabby equipment and attempting to corral “undisciplined squads of emotion.”

“So here I am, in the middle way…/Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt/ is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure/….And so each venture / Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate/ With shabby equipment always deteriorating/ In the genera, mess of imprecision of feeling, / Undisciplined squads of emotion…/ ….For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business” (T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” The Complete Poems & Plays).

“For us, there is only the trying.” So, try I must and will, because I’ve no other way to make sense of the world without and within. There is space for both trembling and trying.

Solzhenitsyn & Staying in the Fight

Not all high schoolers choose to read The Gulag Archipelago, but, for some strange reason, I did. Solzhenitsyn’s courage to write when writing made him the target of a regime with terrifying power shaped me. I want to write courageously and honestly even in a world where writers are quickly taking a backseat to AI and ChatGPT. In his Nobel lecture, he gives a clarion call for writers to stay in the fight. Though given in the 1970s, his call speaks to contemporary culture in prophetic ways.

“In this cruel, dynamic, explosive world on the edge of its ten destructions, what is the place and role of the writer? We send off no rockets, do not even push the lowliest handcart, are scorned by those who respect only material power. Would it be natural for us, too, to retreat, to lose our faith in the steadfastness of good, in the indivisibility of truth, and merely to let the world have our bitter observations, as of a bystander, about how hopelessly corrupted mankind is, how petty men have become, and how difficult it is for lonely, sensitive, beautiful souls today? We do have even this way out. Once pledged to the word, there is no getting away from it: a writer is no sideline judge of his fellow countrymen and contemporaries; he is equally guilty of all the evil done in his country or by his people” (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Lecture, 27).

In our present version of an “explosive world on the edge of its ten destructions,” poetry or prose can be an act of protest. Words help create worlds while also helping us make sense of the world. God created the world with His word; he continues to sustain it and us with the word of his power (Gen. 1:1; Heb.1:3). Writers get to image their Creator by making wise use of their words.

Writing remains an exercise in faithful failure. And I’m here for it.