To Write, or to Continue to Write

My pen paces elegantly across the pages, as I carve stories into the shedded skin of a dead tree. The letters holding hands as they work together, to say the words I instruct them carefully to do.

The piles of words scattered across pages that I am anxious to keep growing. The people I have built inside, and the struggles they seek to overcome.

The pictures painted with no pictures at all, the paintings that consume my mind and those of my readers. (I hope.)

The world I have built with fingerprints of ink, there for all to see.

Sometimes my pen races furiously and chaotically as I race to get to the finish line of my thoughts. Other times, it is a slow, methodical and excruciating effort.

I spend hours reading over what has been written, making sure all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. I move things around, I exchange words, and sometimes I begin all over again as new.

It doesn't matter what you write. Yes, write in truth and in love. Write for purpose and to show someone a whole world that you've created. But the question isn't to write, or to not write. It is to keep writing. That is where the good stories come from. That is where you find your gift at its greatest. That is where your skill, your talent, and your creativity will flourish.

It is the consistent ups and downs, the struggles, the effort, and the desire to keep going until you have the story you are writing for. The words are the building blocks, but you have to piece them together to build something beautiful.

It is not built in one day. It is built word by word, and page by page.

It is the hope that someone will share in the joy of what you've created. The belief that someone will laugh, cry, or have an abundance of joy in the gift you've given them.

And that is what it is all about.

An expression of you, that blesses someone else in a way you never thought possible.

It is not a matter of whether you write or not, or even if it is good or not. The point is to keep writing, to continue on even when you don't want to. To keep pursuing that painting.

Because it is in those moments, of courage and willpower that you as a writer are born.

And you become not just a writer, but a great writer.

And your story is just beginning.

Because you will continue to write it.

''Writing is the painting of the voice.''

-Voltaire

''You can make anything by writing.''

-C.S. Lewis

''Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.''

-Charles de Lint

''Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.''

-Henry David Thoreau

''When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do.''

-Anne Sexton

''...you are a writer the moment you start writing, not when you've sold your first book.''

-Rob Bignell

''The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.''

-Ernest Hemingway

''Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.''

-William Woodsworth

''Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.''

-Tom Stoppard