Weekend Talk :Dreaming about writing

Many people dream about having their names on a book as authors.  

They want to communicate long-held ideas for contemporary readers and posterity.

But not many of such potential writers are willing to pay the price of working hard to fulfil their writing dreams.

Author Dorothy Parker states in mockery of such people, “I hate writing; I love having written!”

A vision to write

Those who “hate writing but love having written” are those who long to be writers but don’t want to pick up their pens or reach for their keyboards.

Instead, they only dream about the books they wish they had written.

But a desire to write, if it is not backed by the intentional hard work associated with writing, becomes a dream from which the would-be writer wakes up to an empty shelf.

In my poem, “Scribbler”, I pose this statement-question to the reluctant writer: “Scribbler, the dream in your mind fills the shelf / When upon the shelf you gaze, vacuum stares at you .

. . When will this dream in your mind fill the shelf, Scribbler?

Where is time?

For many aspiring writers, how to make time for writing is their major struggle.

When I began training and counselling writers, I used to try to answer this question: “How do you make time for writing?”  

These days, I don’t answer that question anymore because I have realised that it is the wrong question.

It is like asking anybody to tell you how they find time to eat or watch TV or go for meetings, or travel.

Those who ask about how to make time to write already know the answer to their question.

You can find time to do anything you want to do if you really want to do it.  
To say, “I want to pray, but I don’t seem to have the time” is a false statement.

How come we don’t find the time to pray, but can find the time to do other less important things?

An Akan proverb says, “If you stop what you are doing, you will have time.”

Here, let us pause to celebrate all Ghanaian men and women, past and present, who have blessed our nation with their writings because they made time to write.

Kudos a million times!

Same time for all

Those who say they don’t have time to write and yet want to write should remember that there are 24 hours in a day available to everybody.

How we use the time will determine what we achieve.

High-level achievers of the world attain greatness not because they have more hours in a day than others.

Rather, they made the most of the time available to them. 

Among them are prolific authors.

The same number of hours allocated to them by God are available to us.

I have heard some people say, “When I come on retirement, I will have time to write!” That is a sad mistake. If you’ve not been writing now, don’t suppose you will write during retirement.

Retirement slows us down and may even minimise the desire to write.

Therefore, remember your writing now when you have the energy to do so, before the slow days approach.

Reasons to write

Author Max Lucado says, “Your writing can go where you cannot go, do what you cannot do, and say what you cannot say.”

This reason alone should make us pursue our writing dream more steadily.

How about this biblical injunction? 

“Thus says the Lord, ‘Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you’” (Jeremiah 30:2). 

So write that book because God says so!

If Paul had failed to write, our current Bible would have been short of his 13 books.

Jeremiah felt fire in his bones whenever he decided to keep quiet. If the writing in us burns in our bones, we would make the time to release it for the benefit of readers!

The reasons we should write if we feel called to do so are so important that no excuse can be justified for failing to write, especially when we remember that people are waiting to read our words of hope and encouragement.

The choice is yours

So, how do we find the time to write?  Wrong question!  Rather, ask, “Why should we make time to write?”

Try answering this question, and you will find enough motivation to pick up your pen or reach for your keyboard. 

While the book as a finished product is rewarding, the joy and pride of authorship are inherent in the writing process as you carefully craft the content.

There are always other things to do with our time, competing for the same hours available to us in a day.

Decide to write or do those other things.

The choice is ours.

The writer is a publisher, author, writer-trainer and CEO of Step Publishers.

E-mail: lawrence.darmani@gmail.com