“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” – Ray Bradbury

In the early 1980’s when I was in fourth or fifth grade the teacher showed a film titled, Legend of the Boy & the Eagle (Disney, 1967)*. It’s the story of a young Hopi boy who’s banished from his village and befriends an eagle that teaches him how to hunt. One day he returns to his village but is rejected and mocked by other boys who tie eagle’s feathers to his arms. The Hopi boy flees to a high cliff. When he jumps, he changes into a golden eagle and flies away. It’s a beautiful story and one that has stuck with me all my life. I remember rooting for him in the movie. I dreamt about that film for years. When I was a child, my big take away was that a boy could transform himself into something else and rise above the world he knew.

Some days writing is like setting out with a wide smile on a world of adventure. Other days it’s like getting in a boxing ring with one arm and facing a guy twice my size. All I can do is hope for the best.

What am I going to write? Why am I going to write? Am I going to tap the keys for another fantasy, poetry, or story about a lost childhood? What difference will it make with all that is going on in our world today? What am I going to say that will matter against all the wars and divisions among us? How can I have an effect on the political, racial, or ideological walls that separate people? They say love is the universal language, well so is hate. There’s a lot of both in the world, and each one tugs at the ears of writers to listen. How does my voice find its way in the world?

Being a writer is like being a cartographer for the human soul and mind. Whether we write fantasy, romance, horror, or non-fiction, we are all marking the way to some collective truth for others to find.

Sometimes I think of all those writers who came before. For them it seems, in any period, the world was as it is today: full of doubt, full of confusion and war, but also full of grace and insurmountable love. What would they write about today? My guess is that it would be not that different from what they wrote before. Writing is the constant sharpening of the mind and the self against the dulling forces of time.

I am just a grain of sand on the vast shore of humankind and I know it. All writers are. Despite the futility, the writer, that grain of sand, stands up and tells a story. He or she knows that everyone else has his and her own story to tell. Yet they tell it anyway, knowing all the while that deep down that maybe no one will listen. It might be that only a few will even hear it. Maybe they will love it or they might hate the story, but all the writer knows, and what is important, is that there’s story to be told. It has to come out.

According to data reported in 2017, 7.53 billion people currently live on earth. That means that there are (more or less) seven and a half billion minds out there thinking thoughts, making observations and dreaming when they go to sleep. For any zombies reading this, that’s a lot of brains. For the sake of the metaphor in the above paragraph, it’s also a lot of grains.

There are more people alive today than ever before. Isn’t this how it has always been? The world is full of people, and the number is always more than it’s ever been before. There are always people making war, making love and writers around to document it all and everything in between. There are good writers, and bad ones and some who never get read. What happens to the written word once it’s been read? Does it dissipate like a trail of smoke or does it plant itself like a seed somewhere in the garden of the reader’s mind?  

All these people and all the various cultures have points of view and traditions that differ from one another, but there are two things that ring true no matter where you go; love and hate. We see this in the headlines every day. People doing great things for others out of love, and people doing terrible things to others out of hate.

Where is the love in your story? If you’re writing, it’s in the words. It’s in every easy flowing paragraph or thought and in all the mind-crushingly painful lines that you labor to get down.

As I’ve said before, I believe you write what story sits down with you to write. I believe in this wholeheartedly. However, that does not change the fact that I sometimes question the stories that sit down with me.

“Really?” I say to the pregnant woman in a suit of armor who wants me to write about her again. “The world has gone crazy. You want me to write about you?”

“I’m a pregnant woman in a suit of armor,” she says coolly. “What else are you going to do with me?”

Sigh. “Point taken.”

So, I write fantasy, and generally whatever else comes to mind. What else is there to do? I just have to keep going, keep tapping away at the keys because that’s what I love. Even when it’s hard to get out of bed to write or to work or to do anything, and regardless of whether or not my work is rejected or rejoiced–I have to keep going. This is no different from any other writer who ever kept trying.

It’s love that makes me write. Love of words, love of stories, and humanity itself (and probably a love of my own voice too). Sometimes love inspires me to write about certain things or certain people. Even when I write something full of anger or sadness love is at the source of it. Love may very well be what makes this blue marble spin on the black tile of space.

Or maybe writing is just a way of showing love for oneself. It’s not the kind of love that comes with putting oneself above others, but loving something forgotten, or rather someone. Maybe I write for the little boy I once was, that kid buried under so many layers and years of self-doubt and loathing. In some deep cave, I found him hiding in his mother’s closet, afraid of the basement and giants. With a pen, I can give the boy something to hold onto and crawl out of the dark. With writing, he can become an eagle and fly above his fears.

*If you want to see the video, click on this link to see the ending of the film, Legend of the Boy and the Eagle (Disney, 1967)