Over my winter break I am reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (1980), and within its sage pages have found my New Year’s Resolution for 2009.
In the book, L’Engle (1918-2007) explores what it is that compels the writer to write—what she calls the “vocation of words”—and the despair that can settle in as well. Throughout her life L’Engle copied quotations into her journal for midnight inspiration.
In college she included an excerpt from Tchekov’s letters:
“You must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It’s your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures.”
And, years later, an inspiration from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet:
“You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: Must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and testimony to it.”
So, in 2009 I am going to Go into myself and Give up being worried about successes and failures. For—though I make myriad mistakes and meet failure with publishers and critics, though I am not showered with praise, laurels or money—Write I must.
