Every day, we have a laser focus on our surroundings. There’s a story behind every bush, building, and mountain. We look at bars, churches, and the kitchen different from anyone else. We look for meaning behind the lost glove on the street.
Even when we try to NOT pay attention, we can’t help ourselves. We continually look at our experiences to help us develop story ideas and plots. We see beauty in the smallest things. We conjure entire worlds while examining a snowflake. For this, I give thanks.
Imagine—we’re able to enter the darkest places, encounter the most evil people and return to embrace life and our beautiful surroundings. We invent the perfect romance and proceed to shatter the relationships with disease, violence, or just plain apathy. Once we’re done, we get to return to our own loving family or friends as if nothing ever happened.
Some would say this is a curse. Ha! Not a chance. Few people in this world recognize the gift that we’ve received. Sure there are millions of “indie” writers out there that publish a pile of garbage. So what? When writing calls, writers answer.
Take time and give thanks that we are ones that have the privilege of making sense of our surroundings. We’re the ones that find the hidden stories and make up a few on the way. Even when we don’t hit our word counts or even look at a blank page for a month, we still return to writing … because we can. Wait … not because we can … because we must.
I give thanks because I have found this gift. Who else gets to do what they love and share it with the world? Very few people. I don’t care how much money I make or how many reviews I get—to me writing is about giving back to the universe. It’s about sharing with the 7.1 billion people in the world. No one really knows how many writers there are in the world. If there are roughly 100 million writers worldwide, then we are less than 1.5% of the population.
As you enter this holiday season, don’t worry about all the garbage writers in the world or the one-star review. Embrace everything that is special about being a writer. You are special. The world needs you. The world needs your thoughts and stories. The world needs writers. The world needs books to make you cry, laugh, shiver or just say, “Huh?”
Few things in this world can provide the feeling of being alive. Give thanks that you’re a writer.
Jim Devitt is the author of the #1 Kindle Bestselling Young Adult novel, The Card and the holiday hit, So This is Christmas
. A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited.
