This week I had a conversation with my cousin, an eighteen-year-old chemical engineering major at Mississippi State. I asked her, “Why do you want to be a chemical engineer?” I figured she would respond with the age-old reply “I want to solve real-world problems.”
And yes, science can describe how the world works, and sometimes science even offers theories about why the world works the way it does. But science cannot explain why it all matters. That’s the job of the artist, the philosopher, the theologian, and the writer.
A writer’s calling is sacred and timeless. I believe there is a hunger for truth and beauty placed by God into every human soul, so that our very being will never tire of beauty and never stop searching for truth. Something lies in each of us that yearns to see pleasing artwork and read good poetry. It’s why I read. And it’s why I write. In the words of Mary Oliver, “Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.”
Now, back to my cousin, the chemical-engineer-in-training. “Why do you do it?” I had asked her, and she answered, to paraphrase, “I enjoy it, I’ll have plenty of opportunities for employment, and I’ll be rich.”
A writer who answers this way ought to be tarred and feathered, or at least waterboarded. “Fun” and “riches” suffice, as far as an answer for a scientist. But the question of “why” for a writer is far more complicated. Writing often feels like self-sabotage; a cat-and-mouse game that ends in no prestige, no prolificacy, and no pleasure. Every half-serious writer has been tempted many times to stop writing forever. (I will say nothing of riches, for writers typically have none.)
Yet we write anyway. Why? As for me, I once thought of writing as a calling, which I still believe it is. But my mistake in my early years of writing was that I equated my calling with my identity. Writing was not only a gift I had been given, but who I was; strip away every outer layer of my person, straight to my core, and you would find only “writer.” Thankfully, I grew out of this notion. Yes, writing is an integral part of who I am, but as a follower of Christ, my identity is wrapped up in something infinitely more secure than my own words. And it is this identity in Christ that allows me to answer the question of why I write.
I write because writing is redemptive.
Specifically, I believe writing is redemptive in three primary aspects, which I will explore below.
Writing as a redemptive process for the author
As Mary Oliver says, “Everyone knows that poets are born and not made in school.” Though writing is not my identity, I do believe it’s a God-given outgrowth of my identity. One of my writer friends put it this way: “I am, therefore I write.” And it’s true. I write because my Creator wired me to do so. The gifts God has given us are one avenue He uses to sanctify us.
In my own redemptive process, grief has been an instrumental common thread. After the deaths of my grandparents, I wrote poem after poem, because I didn’t know another way to process the grief. Poetry is how I communicate what I struggle to explain verbally—how I iron out the tangle of emotions, many of which I can’t put a name to right away. Through writing about grief I discovered the other kingdoms of sorrow—gratitude, grace, waiting, trust—paths forward. Shreds of grief are always with you, but you don’t have to dwell in the land of the grieving. Writing propelled my exodus into hope.
Writing as a redemptive process between author and reader
When I was nineteen a girl from my private Christian high school took her own life. I wrote the following poem the next day.
The Day After [Redacted]'s Death
Renee Kalagayan
We are doing what we always do
When the great elephant of grief crushes our hearts,
And makes our minds dance,
And our bodies numb.
We are speaking Scripture in the streets
For anyone who will listen—for everyone, really,
But especially ourselves.
We are bandaging each other’s wounds
With song, with hands folded into others’ hands.
We are giving hug after hug.
Perhaps this is the point.
That we are vapor. That sorrow exists, and shared humanity.
That our existence on this painful earth
Is real, that it goes on,
And we may offer up a little of ourselves to ease
The hurt.
It’s the last two lines that encapsulate the idea here. Good writing enriches the human experience, whether those experiences are pleasurable or, in this case, painful. Giving up a bit of myself through my writing may ease another’s grief. Serious writers, in some degree, are always writing for others. Without others, writers have no readers, no exposure, and no hope for bearing others’ burdens.
“Writing for others” can look like loving yourself or loving your reader. If you love yourself, you will write to impress others. If you love your reader, you will write to empathize with, educate, enrich, or edify others. A desire to be “great” in others’ eyes can undermine the biblical charge to love our neighbors. Pride of life can easily become the purpose of life. Of course there’s no sin in wanting to succeed in the writing world. But we cannot let the busyness of achievement replace the business of redemption. My prayer for my own writing is that God will use the gift not only to sanctify me, but also to sanctify others.
Writing as a redemptive process between the author and God
The apostle John identifies God as a Word—the Word. This Word created the world out of nothing, using words only. Therefore to write at all is to emulate the first Writer, the first Word. When God finished His magnum opus—“all that He had made”—He said it was “very good.” For a writer to read her work and conclude, “This is good,” is an emulation of the Creator.
God’s chosen method of revelation to humanity is through writing. The Bible is the narrative of God’s redemption of His fallen creation. Since God is actively working to redeem all He has made, He is actively working to redeem our words, our language, our writing. What is worth redeeming is worth undertaking. It is worth stewarding. God doesn’t ask that I write perfectly—only that I don’t bury the gift. Someday we will see that every bit of writing was worth the difficulty.
The heart of the matter is this—if writing is a gift you have been given, you have been given a very sacred thing. And in our broken world, there is much to be redeemed. So write and write. Mary Oliver says that writing is one way to save others’ lives, including your own. I agree.