Beginning, Again
"In my previous blog, O Theophilus..."
"Should I start writing again?" I ask my wife.
"You should always be writing," she immediately responds. "What did you have in mind?"
How does one begin writing again?
Perhaps it depends a bit on why one stopped writing to begin with. One reason, for me: A side effect of academic work can be that one becomes accustomed to reading and writing as dictated by the pressing requirements of assignments. When the tyranny of the urgent no longer requires such work, it can be easy for such mental tasks to fall by the wayside, neglected in favor of other urgencies and demands. So it was for me, as college and seminary gave way to "real life."
A second reason: As I became more aware of the dizzying range of competing voices and opinions in the world, it seemed better not to jump into the fray. It seemed to take a special sort of arrogance to survey the cacophonous maelstrom that is online discourse and to respond by saying, "You know what all this needs? My voice, added to it." Add to this the recognition that online discussion typically seems to have little effect in changing hearts and minds, and why would one bother with writing, which consists of "only words, words; to be led out to do battle against other words?"
A third reason: By its very nature, writing, and indeed all creative activity, freezes thought at a moment in time. It stands as a historical monument, often outdated as soon as it is published, due to the variability of human nature. We learn, we grow. Something written by me tonight will end up different than it would have if I had written it three weeks ago. And who is to say whether it will hold up to the test of time if published? Who is to say whether I will look back from the future with agreement or disagreement, with approval or disapproval? (As a wise man once said, "My blog was cringeworthy. It shall remain buried.")
So why begin writing again? One reason: I've started reading again, and input seeks output. This year I've been tasked with teaching, for the first time, ancient history and literature. I've had to read voluminously from unfamiliar material to keep pace with my students, and indeed to outpace them, so as to have a copious knowledgebase from which to teach them. I haven't had to do this much new reading since seminary, and it's activating gears long disused, sending creaky machinery whirring into life. It's not just the quantity of the material, but the quality of the material having this effect, as my mind has been transported back across the familiar seas of the Odyssey, into the bleak world of Aeschylus and the exotic world of Herodotus. I'm sitting for the first time this year with Socrates at his deathbed, and with Aristotle in his ethics lectures. All this sparks thought, and thought begs to be expressed.
A second reason: I've been dwelling in Tolkien's writing once more, including works I had not previously explored. Chief among these for me has been his poem "Mythopoeia," which demonstrates the strong conviction underlying Tolkien's worldview: we are created to create. "We make still by the law in which we're made," Tolkien writes, describing man as a sub-creator who expresses "his world-dominion by creative act." For Tolkien, humans as image-bearers of God express their God-given dominion (Gen. 1:26-28) at least in part by creative activity. Put another way, we can say that writing is valuable intrinsically as an expression of the image of God, not merely extrinsically for its impact upon others. If this is the case, it doesn't matter if others have already written upon a topic, or if no one is convinced by an argument; rather the question in writing is if one is faithful as an image-bearer and steward of gifts, experiences, and opportunities given. If one invests the king's money, he may indeed lose it; yet far worse it is to be caught hiding entrusted resources in a hole, or one's light under a basket.
A third reason: I said above that writing memorializes thought. This is true. Yet writing also serves to crystalize thought, to make clear what was unclear, to put a sharp edge upon what was, in the mind, dull. And I have found recently that my thoughts are in need of clarification. This past December, I was texting my old college roommate, and he asked me to catch him up on how I was doing. I sat down to write him a response--and couldn't stop writing. I wrote for about six hours straight. Life has a way of tangling things. Pull one thread in the present and you find it connected to a web of filaments going back years, (or, for me, odd as it is to say now, decades). How does one untangle the threads? Write.
So back to the original question. How does one begin writing again? Well, to quote Horace,"Dimidium facti, qui coepit, habet." "He who has begun, has half done." In other words, to begin writing again, just begin writing. And the rest will follow.
A good read, I'm interested to see where this goes!