Faith

I didn't always think so, but I understand now that writing is about faith.

Faith can be a fairly loaded word if you are not an overly religious person. To me, faith is simply the willingness to proceed without evidence. In truth, there is barely any other way to proceed. The future is opaque, and was meant to be so. When you begin your day's writing, just as when you set off on any journey, you do not know what snares and pits and fortunes await you. You go because you believe it is worth going, and, hopefully, you have faith that you can get where you need to go.

The only question you must ask of any work is, "Is that what I want to say?" Don't wonder if it is what you SHOULD have said, if such-and-such Great Writer would have said it better, or if what you have to say is for some arcane reason Unpublishable. Only ask if it is what you wanted to say. Have faith that if you wanted to say it, then it is worth saying, and that only you know how best to say it.

No one else in the world knows what it is you must say, or how you must say it. I certainly don't. Agents and editors and teachers and friends and fathers and mothers might tell you otherwise, might fill your head with advice and directions and dos and don'ts, and some of the advice will be sound, will be based on years of experience and much wisdom and hard life lessons learned, but the truth remains none of them knows what it is you must say and how you must say it. Only you. You are alone. And so your only companion on this journey, in the end, is yourself and faith.

And me. I will be there with you too.

So go on, now. I'm sure you can make it.

Bill