In her book The Writing Life, American author Annie Dillard asks, “Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin.”
It’s not only true of writers and their writing. Whether you ever, or never, pick up a pen or sit down at a keyboard, you are an author, a creative. If nothing else, you are writing your own story, which is something. Every choice, every action, every word, is a line. Sometimes it’s the best poetry you can write; other times it’s “blah, blah, blah.” It is always your story. Whatever external forces circumscribe your action, within that, the choice is yours.
Now that we are all creators, what shall we make? The next line of the above Dillard quote: “You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.”
If you’re not astonished yet, what will get you to that point? That’s the story we’re waiting for.
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