How to be a Better Writer: Be Courageous

Courage is a good word, one we need to get out and dust off now and again to remind us that every word you write down is your assertion and insertion into a world of both thought and image that hasn’t existed until you wrote down that word. Yet simply writing down words isn’t in and of itself a courageous act; it only becomes so when the words and the order in which you’ve placed them aren’t borrowed from the vast steaming piles of clichés we always have ready at hand. – Brett Lott, Letters and Life

Every time I went to see my endocrinologist as a kid, I would internally chant Joshua 1:9: Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Wonderful words. True words, but they did nothing to ease my anxious, panicked little heart.

I was not strong. I was not courageous. I trembled. I was dismayed: clammy hands clasped tightly together, downturned head, a refusal to look the doctor in the eye. I would go home after seeing him, defeated and discouraged. Why couldn’t I be strong and courageous? Why?

Perhaps I simply had a wrong understanding of courage. There’s a quote that says courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s acting in spite of it. Maybe, then, I was a bit more courageous than I thought. I kept going to the doctor, the end result being that I am now very, very picky about my caregivers. I look for the ones who will have a conversation with me, who will see me not as a diabetic but as a person who has diabetes, a person who is so much more than her diabetes. I have become courageous about my care. I won’t stand by and let myself be turned into a shambling wreck.

Writing isn’t any different. I could go the easy course, write the way people say I should in order to make a buck or two. Ply the world with beautiful sentiments that say and mean nothing. Sell my soul.

I can’t do that. Sentimental drivel isn’t only bad for readers; it’s also bad for writers. My heart shrivels, withers into a prune that’s as hard as a stone. It and my mind and spirit stare wretchedly at the clichés on the page. I have said nothing that matters, nothing that’s true.

I don’t erase the trite words; no, I let them stand. The wrong words are warning signs. They tell me I’m in the wrong place. I’m on the shore of apathy and certainty, and I don’t want to be here. I want to be far out, so far out that the only things I’m left with are the words that hurtle into being. These words are true. These words are courageous and beautiful. Every time I put them down I hear, Be strong. Be courageous. I’m with you wherever you go, and this time, this time, the words calm me even as the words I’m writing storm and storm across the page.

Don’t be afraid. Be a better writer. Be strong and courageous and go after the hard words, the ones that require faith and relentless pursuit.

Image: jridgewayphotography (Creative Commons)