‘You of Little Faith’
Writing is my passion; self-doubt is my curse.
I have a binder full of short stories that remain unread, at least outside of a creative writing class. I rarely write long posts on social media, and when I do they generally get erased and replaced with a one sentence caption. I think of long diatribes in my head while I'm running, while I'm cleaning, while I shower, but they never get put down on paper. Moments lost; moments I've given away to fear.
A couple of weeks ago at church, we read from Matthew 8. I'll admit I wasn't fully paying attention. My mind had wandered, probably to a grocery or to-do list. Then, Rev. Anne Matthews reached Matthew 8:26: "And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm." It pulled me out of my reverie, and my mind immediately redirected to my writing; to my half-constructed Wordpress website.
Why am I afraid? What's the worst that could happen? ‘What if no one reads it?’ No one's reading my work now. ‘What if they hate it?’ They didn't hate my columns at the paper.
I have no short supply of excuses, but ultimately being a writer means putting yourself out there. Without readers, without an audience, what's the point?
As long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a writer. I loved reading. I loved that euphoric high of connecting with the main character, of sharing the highs and lows of the plot.
The first book I remember making me cry was Anne of Green Gables. That book is also the first book that made it seem OK to question ritualistic truths. In the book, while Anne is praying, she questions why it is done silently and with a bowed head. Instead, she thinks she should shout her prayers with eyes looking upward to Heaven. On some level, Anne's 11-year-old thoughts make sense. As an adult, I can answer her concerns. Bowing our head is a sign of humility and reverence. We don't have to shout because God isn't just some man in the sky. The Holy Spirit is everywhere. It can hear our loudest praises and our hearts’ gentlest whispers. As a child, though, it really made me consider things we do everyday without thinking. What Anne demonstrated and what L.M. Montgomery achieved as the author is that questions are OK; that questions lead to growth.
As a journalist, questions are my bread and butter, but there's a certain limitation there. Journalism tends to search for a set of facts with a hard truth. The five W's often have a correct answer, but what about those things that are more ambiguous than that? That's where creativity, and truthfully any field of art, comes into play. What if instead of accepting that this is way things are, we started questioning them? I firmly believe that no matter the medium, art can do that — through visuals, through words, through the imagination, we can seek a greater truth in our lives.
At the Mississippi Book Festival last weekend, I heard a thought that I've always felt but couldn't quite encapsulate. Michael Knight, a writer and director of the creative writing program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said as a white man from Mobile, he will never know what it's like to be a black female raised in rural Mississippi, but he can read Jesmyn Ward and develop an understanding of that background through her characters.
Maybe the goal of broadening people's minds and changing the world is a lofty one, but it's a passion that I've felt deeply for a long time. I have a long way to go, but for the first time in a long time I'm actually working toward it.
My hope is that through this blog, I'll be able to maintain motivation, to create accountability, and perhaps learn a thing or two.
Writing is my burden. Writing is my release. Writing is who I am.
