The Question
As you read this, I will be ensconced somewhere at the SeaTac Hilton, conferencing. I have written this in the past, but I will do so again now: if you are working to become a professional writer, at some point it would be a good idea to get yourself to a writer’s conference. If you live anywhere remotely near Seattle, The Pacific Northwest Writers Conference is certainly one of the better around, but writer’s conferences are held in all corners of the country. I am not going to lie to you. Writers come to conferences to, among other things, hone the tools of their craft, but they have come for something else—The Question. There is always a low current of fear running through a writer’s conference. It is the fear that quietly haunts not just writers but anyone attempting anything: Am I enough? Can I live the life I want to live, or must I accept a lesser version, bowing to the hardboiled wisdom that life is about a certain amount of disappointment and being a grownup means accepting that truth with minimum complaint?
You see it’s never about being a writer, I don’t think. In fact nothing is ever about anything, by which I mean, the central question is never, Am I strong enough, pretty enough, smart enough? The question is always, Does it matter? Does it actually matter how strong, pretty, or smart I am at this moment? I would ask you to consider that it does not matter how strong or smart or pretty your are. I would ask you to consider that that question of enough, enough of anything, is a subtle but ever-shrinking prison. It assumes your a fixed commodity, bound by the roulette wheel of birth, looking to discover not what it is you want to do, but what tools fate handed you and with which you will now stoically make the best.
You are not bound by anything. You are hurled forward by desire. These tools, these talents, are nothing more than desire made flesh, not the other way around. Seek what you love absolutely and I guarantee the tools will be there.