Why We All Need You to Keep Writing

In humbling times, the writer’s gift is to remember what we sometimes forget

Writing has always been hard for more reasons than the effort and hours it takes to be any good at it. It’s particularly hard right now because everything around us is harder too. A lot of us are losing things we took for granted. Maybe our job. Maybe our health. Maybe even someone we love.

In humbling times, the writer faces doubt.

Why write in the first place? What do I have to say that anybody needs to hear? Who is even listening? When is the money coming?

These are humbling times.

“Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” — Neil Gaiman

If it’s true that in good times it's important to be humble, then in humbling times, it might be important to remember what actually does make us great in the first place. Because what makes us all great is really a mysterious thing that, oddly enough, shines brightest when we are humble.

This mysterious thing is also something that we can forget all about if we’re not careful. And we often do. Hard times make us anxious or good times make us arrogant, and we just forget it’s there. We lose track of it.

If you are a writer, your gift is the ability to remember where we put it. And you might dig it up again from time to time and put it on display so everybody can see and remember.

“That is why I write — to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.” — Paulo Coelho

In the myths and legends about the quest for the Holy Grail, the Grail itself is a mysterious thing. Is it a cup? Is it a concept? Is its power real? Symbolic?

The answer to all of those questions is “yes,” but in a different way for each person who asks. The Grail is that mysterious thing we forget from time to time.

“The Grail knights never entered the forest at the same point, but always found their own way in. Because the moment you take the path already cut, you are on someone else’s path, and you should already know that the Grail is not there.” — Joseph Campbell

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” — Toni Morrison

Campbell and Morrison are both referring to your Grail, and the strange paradox of a mysterious truth that is somehow universal, but that only you can discover.

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. “ — Kurt Vonnegut

Probably more than anything else, our lives seem to be about relationships. How we influence and are influenced by the people around us, our partners, our Mom or Dad, brothers and sisters, our children, our friends, and then in an expanding circle out into the world… sorting all that out is our life's work. And it’s more work than can ever be completed in a lifetime.

“…this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.” ― Thornton Wilder, Our Town

My father never got to meet some of his grandchildren. We come on stage in the middle of the play and leave just as a new set of characters arrive. But while we’re here, there is always action and work to be done. It’s that work, what we learn and teach, give and receive, which conceals something sacred.

That’s for all of us. Not just writers and artists.

But the world is a busy place and we can easily lose track of a concealed thing, sacred or not. It can be forgotten. It can be lost. And it often is.

“The theme of the Grail romance is that the land, the country, the whole territory of concern has been laid waste. It is called a wasteland. ” — Campbell

As a writer or an artist, your work is to go into the woods and come back with what you find. Or dive beneath the water for as long as you can hold your breath and bring back what you find. Pick your own metaphor. But if you are a writer, you seek the Grail in one form or another so you can bring it back to the rest of us, to bring life back to the wasteland.

You’ve got to remind us when we forget.

The writer’s gift shows us that we do not suffer alone or triumph alone. that each shift at the restaurant or commute to the office, each sleepless night with a sick child, each gesture to a friend, every laugh we create, every intangible gift we give large or small… all these things honor our life’s work. The writer remembers these things and works hard to help the rest of us never forget them.

Realizing how much we need each other brings humility. Telling that in story brings life back to the wasteland.

What each writer has to offer the world will always be totally unique, a treasure found by entering the forest alone that can be shared by everyone.

So offer it. Because we need it.

We need you and the treasures you bring back from the forest.

Let me tell you a quick story to illustrate…

When a certain king was a young man, he traveled deep into the forest with his knights. There, he had a vision of the Grail. It appeared as a golden cup within a swirling mist and it spoke to him, telling him that one day he would be a truly great king, but not today.

Awed by what he was seeing the king tried to take the cup. He reached into the mist. He took the Grail in his armored hand and held the cup to his lips to drink from it. It burned like red-hot iron. He dropped the cup and collapsed to the ground in terrible pain.

As the cloud vanished, the king’s knights saw that his mouth, his arm, and the hand which had touched the cup were all burned very badly. They picked up their young king and brought him home.

The king never recovered from his wound, and he never forgot his vision of the Grail. He was desperate to see it again and to hear how its prophecy - that he would one day be great - would be fulfilled. So he sent all of his knights back into that forest and out into the world in every direction to find the Grail and return it to him. For 20 years they searched while the king lay in his bed in his castle, crippled and still suffering with the burns from his attempt to hold and drink from the Grail so long ago.

Then, one day, the Fool came into the king’s chamber to try to cheer him up. When he approached, he found the king in a very bad state.

The Fool tried his jests, he tried his juggling, he tried his silly dance. He tried everything he knew how to do, but the king still suffered. Until finally the old king, with a weakened and dry voice barely above a whisper, commanded the Fool to just leave him alone.

“Is there nothing I can do for you, Sire?’ The Fool asked with all sincerity.

But even that act of speaking had caused the king’s burned lips to crack and his scorched throat to sting even more. When he closed his eyes, the Fool took it for his answer, turned, and quietly headed for the door.

“I am thirsty.” The king’s whisper came again.

The Fool paused and looked to the table beside the king’s bed for water.

He handed the cup to the king and helped him raise it to his lips.

The king drank from the cup and all of his pain went away. His burned mouth healed. The strength returned to his withered arm and the light of life returned to his eyes.

Amazed, he looked down to find the Grail… after all these terrible years of pain and searching and longing… right there in his hand, held to his mouth by the Fool.

“How is this possible?” The king asked.

“How is what possible, Sire?” The Fool asked in return.

“This is the Grail!” The King sat up in bed, his voice suddenly deep and powerful again. “I’ve had all of my knights searching the forest and the entire world for 20 years! How did you find it?”

The Fool looked at the cup, and he looked at the king, and he really didn’t know how, so he answered truthfully.

“I don’t know, Sire. You just said you were thirsty.”

What is the lesson?

Maybe that you, too, will be a great king or queen someday. But not today. Today, greatness is reserved for the humble Fool, who does not strive to be great, but only knows what to do when someone is thirsty.

“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.”― Roald Dahl

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