Writing is scary. If you’re a writer, you know this. Part of the reason it’s scary is because we always feel like we have to justify why we care about our work so much. We have to be nuts to call ourselves writers and say writing is what we choose to do. Writing is hours of work that, to everyone else, goes nowhere. But not to us. And if we keep at it, not to everyone else, either.
Here’s another reason writing is scary: it transforms us. In order to tell a good story, we have to create characters who transform by the end and we, the writers, are transformed in the process of creating our characters’ transformations. Our readers must transform in order to fully grasp the story we’ve told. To transform is to change and we resist change. We want to be comfortable. We want security. We must resist these desires if we want to write down the masterpieces we’ve got spinning through our thoughts. Writing makes us uncomfortable, if we’re doing it right, because we grow and change during our writing practice.
When we sit down to write, we have to be open to transformation. We’ll never be the same as we were in those moments before we sat down to write. But writing is good. Change is good. This transformation, ultimately, is the best thing our writing can offer us.
Nora Bonner 