The Scriptorium Newsletter: Email #2
I’ll share a secret that we don’t hear enough in writing circles:
Good writing begins way before writing.
We all know that writing is not the mechanical action of typing words on a page.
It’s not even the stringing together of well-crafted ideas or images.
We know writing begins from someplace deeper: a thought, a feeling, a state of mind.
But what is that state of mind? What is that feeling that draws us to express ourselves in writing?
The urge to write is a very particular kind of urge.
It is the urge to become conscious of invisible, hidden, unknown parts of yourself.
It is the urge to bring those strange, stirring feelings inside you to the light, to give them shape and sound and texture and, most of all, meaning.
And this urge, this hunger for more of yourself, does not flash into existence out of nothing.
It does not simply emerge all on its own, without any baggage, without any broader claim on you, or without its own beginnings.
It begins with a way of life.
So that you can better appreciate this way of life, I present you with two contrasting ways.
There is the way of the unconscious person, and there is the way of the conscious person.
The unconscious person eats, sleeps, and sleep-walks through life.
They satisfy desires whenever they arise. They run away from fears whenever those arise.
They never ask any real questions. They follow paths that have been set for them long ago.
It isn’t clear if they even exist, as an identity, or if they are merely an indistinct element in some broader process.
(Before you dismiss this person, realize all the ways that you fit this description. Chances are, you match it far more than you realize.)
The other person wants to become conscious: to answer the Delphic call to “know thyself.”
This person pulls back from the automatic spinning of psychobiological cycles, the constant drawing outwards that spreads them thin across the external world of events and perceptions.
Instead, they redirect some of that energy towards the inward.
They delve into the very nature of their desires, their habits, their ways of life.
They consolidate, over time, a distinct sense of self, separate from their surroundings.
Why is it that the conscious person seems more like a person than the other?
Why is it that the unconscious person strikes us as passive, not fully formed — an unthinking animal or machine instead of a man?
That is because the destiny of consciousness is our human destiny.
To be a man (as opposed to a mammal or machine) is to make conscious choices — to insert oneself in the deterministic chain, to be a participator and co-creator in this reality.
It is not even the outcome of those choices that matters so much as the fact of conscious participation and co-creation, the fact of being aware of our lives as we live it.
We need to feel ourselves part of the entire cosmic order: to identify with the whole procession of being.
When you become conscious of your life, the entire procession of existence consolidates itself, bringing together more and more of itself within a single mind, and becoming a new singularity, a microcosm of the whole cosmos — a universe in a grain of sand.
In doing so, consciousness allows the cosmos to achieve greater and greater degrees of differentiation, self-expression, articulated structure, and complexity.
Consciousness is a way for the cosmic pattern to realize itself more deeply within your specific time and place. Your self-awareness is crucial for this cosmic process to play out.
And this process is moving the world to a state that is better, more ordered, more harmonious, more beautiful: an ideal cosmic order, one we crave with our entire being more than we can conceive in any cognitive way.
That is the role of human consciousness.
Human consciousness is, fundamentally, a heroic call.
All heroism stems from this lonely venturing forth of our conscious awareness into the unknown.
All courage begins with this radically individual pursuit of the soul, to express the ideal cosmic order in reality, to realize heaven in every gesture and every action, even unto bodily death.
And so, the person who seeks to become conscious is seeking (often at great personal risk and expense) to exist at the very forefront of creation.
The conscious person is the vanguard, the tip of the spear, of this grand miracle of existence.
When you write, this is what you are doing.
You are embroiled in a cosmic adventure between the metaphysical and the personal whose end you do not fully comprehend.
If you could comprehend it, you wouldn’t do it. If you knew how it ended, it wouldn’t take courage.
Writing is fundamentally exploratory, and therefore fundamentally heroic.
But now the question becomes … can you actually live up to that call?
It is one thing to talk about it. It is one thing to write about it.
Are you actually living in such a way that is deserving of your writing?
Could it be that when you sit down to write, you are in in reality paying lip service to your fears, not practicing this heroic courage?
What if your motives and intentions for writing have more to do with self-preservation than self-exposure, self-sacrifice, and surrender to the grand cosmic adventure?
Could it be that you trick yourself? Could your writing deceive others into the same complacency?
And how would you know?
I suppose you would know if your writing made you feel comfortable, if it made you feel secure and self-satisfied, if it made you feel at ease with your existence — rather than thrusting you into the unknown like a lone man thrust out onto a battlefield for one last mad dash against the enemy.
I suppose that the feeling — of security and safety, or of heroism and adventure — would be our only way of telling whether our writing, at any given moment, is at the vanguard, whether it is meeting its greatest calling, or whether it is sitting safely in the sidelines, spectating.
And I suppose the only way to recognize this feeling of heroism and adventure in our writing is to undergo such heroic and adventurous moments in our own lives.
If our lives are safe, secure, and stagnant, how much more is our writing about it?
And what else could we write about but ourselves, our wants and needs, our struggles and our fears?
Only the hero cares about something beyond himself, and he proves it every time he risks personal expense.
Heroism is in the act; it is no guaranteed trait. Otherwise, it wouldn’t take the courage that comes with the uncertainty.
What are you risking through your writing? Be honest.
And if it doesn’t amount to much, then it may be easier, in the end, to live a heroic life first, and write about it later.
At least we might learn through your experience second-hand, if not through the bravery of your writing practice.
I hope this inspires you to take a cold, hard look at the ways you are stagnating, as a writer, as a person.
I hope you will do so before you blame all the other vagaries of the world on why your writing falls flat.
I hope you realize that your heroic journey is heroic precisely because it is radically your own, radically solitary, and radically uncertain.
But what is certain is that living towards the heroic call means never running out of inspiration.
That, in fact, is the sign that you’re on the right path.
Good hunting, writers and friends.
