When I write an email, I have to send it. When I write a letter (or, I should say, back in the day when people actually wrote letters), I had to mail it. When I write a blog, I have to publish it. People would ask me why I have to send or publish it. Can’t you just ever save it as a draft? No. And I often questioned myself on this. I would tell myself, write all the messages you want, just save them as drafts. I tried it a few times. If I knew before I started writing that I was only going to save the message or blog as a draft, the energy and purpose for writing it would just dissipate and I wouldn’t write it. Why? I would ask myself. Why can’t I just not send or publish something? Sometimes so many problems would be avoided if I just didn’t send the message and saved it as a draft. This puzzled me for a few years now. It was as if the message wasn’t worth writing if it wasn’t going to be seen by the intended recipient. For some reason, I couldn’t write it just to make myself feel better.
Then, tonight, we had a wonderful speaker and he gave me my answer. Andre Dubus II, author of Townie, was the most real and in touch writer I have ever heard speak. Most writers tell you you can’t give up, you need to get your social media in gear, it’s all about getting published, etc. Andre gave the real reason a writer writes. Andre solved the mystery of why I can’t write something I’m only going to save as a draft. He said:
“Writing is communicating something from one heart to another.”
That’s it. For me, if the other heart is not going to get the message, the reason for writing it is gone. That’s why I can’t write a draft. What I write, even in an email, is real and true and comes from my heart or I couldn’t write it. Tonight I realized I just can’t “make up” things to write, just to write something. I can’t write things I don’t feel. For me, that’s exactly what writing is: one heart communicating to another.
And so, as the third day of “summer camp” goes by, I find this year I’m learning much more about myself as a writer, rather than learning more about the craft, and…I have written.
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