On The Utter Precariousness Of All Writing, Everywhere, Ever

What's the point?

There is a black mood that can come upon me these days when I think about writing.

I have been a writer for a long time; that is to say, I have spent many years writing in my spare time, trying to craft enjoyable stories and to say things worth saying.

Often (though not always) while working a day job full-time, and for the last half a decade with young children to look after too, I have nonetheless managed to amass well over half a million words, including seven novels and many short stories.

But what does this black mood ask me?

It asks me: What was the point?

I have not had any of those novels traditionally published (though I have had some of the short stories published), and even though I have indie-published some of them and they have been well-reviewed, I haven’t made that much money from them.

But even more than this, this black mood asks me:

What is the point of writing when words are so utterly precarious?

Words are completely dependent on the system of language remaining intact and in use.

What if language evolves and moves on, and this fragile tissue of symbols and signs ceases to mean what it does to me today?

What if I die before I have had a chance to communicate what I really want to say, and said it well, and the words that I have written are are lost?

What if one day the sun goes supernova and the whole world is wiped out in an apocalyptic cataclysm—who will be around to read my words then?

Writing is such a precarious thing and its finished product is so dependent on so many other non-guaranteed variables—the system of language, other human beings being around to read it, the Universe continuing to exist—for its value that sometimes one really wonders whether there is any value in undertaking it at all.

These dashes and dots and squiggles could just be meaningless marks; a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. Writing is such precarious, delicate, dependent stuff, like a gossamer gauze stretched almost but not quite to breaking point between the skulls of the human race. Words are just marks on a page or pixels on a screen that depend on other humans being able to decipher them, and the meaning never gets across perfectly anyway.

And yet.

And yet, some of my favourite memories involve sitting down looking at marks on a page and enjoying the stories that played out in my imagination as a result.

(Not all of my favourite memories, mind—sure, reading is fun, but who wants to spend their whole life reading? Reading takes us into a secondary reality which can only mirror or copy this one, and mix the elements up. Reality is where all the best action is. Life is for living, not just reading. Nonetheless, I remember…)

I remember being given Northern Lights by Philip Pullman one Christmas by my mother, being intrigued by the strange machine with its arcane symbols on the cover and then being completely drawn by it into a word of externalised animal souls, armoured bears and life-and-death battles with ambiguous parent figures in the snow.

I remember sitting in the chair by the window of the kitchen in my grandparents’ house on very many school holidays and working my way through almost the entirety of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, running with Rincewind, puzzling with Vimes, laughing with Death.

I remember sitting in the back of the family car on the school run reading The Lord of the Rings and simultaneously riding on Shadowfax with Gandalf and Pippin to Minas Tirith, and fighting orcs and goblins and Uruk-Hai alongside the fellowship in Moria and Helm’s Deep and the Pelennor Fields.

I remember reading the same book to my girlfriend, and then my fiancée, and then reading her the whole of The Hobbit, exploring the landscape of Middle Earth with her and fighting the battles all over again.

I remember reading The Idiot on honeymoon, wondering if Prince Myshkin would ever win the heart of Nastasya Fillipovna, then finishing it when we got back and being utterly chilled by [redacted for spoilers].

I remember sitting in bed eating Wine Gums when I was newly married reading Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, growing with Taran of Caer Dallben from an Assistant Pig Keeper into a King.

I remember getting lost on the Open Sea with Ged the mage in Ursula le Guin’s Earthsea Quartet and sheltering with two languageless recluses on a tiny island, and later the terrifying search for Tehanu in the dark, narrow passages of the Temple of Atuan, with their narrow bridges over abyssal nothingness.

I remember sitting in the spare room where I had been exiled so I could sleep after my first child was born, exploring a house of mysteries with Danaerys Targaryean in A Game of Thrones, and in the same room reading someone’s fan novelisation of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and reading through an anthology of sci-fi short stories that touch on Christian themes called Mysterion because I wanted to submit to it (they didn’t take on my story, a dramatization of Revelation chapter 20, because they said they weren’t looking for dramatization of Biblical material, though they liked it and gave me some very encouraging feedback about it).

I remember, even recently, punching the air when that plot twist turned out the way it did in Chris Wooding’s The Ember Blade, or laughing with triumph when Captain Grimm pulls off that trick in a duel in The Olympian Affair.

It turns out words really do have power.

With words we communicate with one another. With words vows are made and broken, treaties sealed, love affairs kindled, children called, deaths sentenced. With words, and with the Word, who was in the beginning and was with God in the beginning, the Father spoke the Universe into being. With words the good news of Jesus Christ was recorded and so can be read afresh, and thus people are saved. With words some people still today interpret that good news to the contemporary generation so that they can understand it, and more are rescued. With words some people still today write stories that move and inspire, enthral and entertain.

Words really do have power.

It may be that all writing is utterly precarious and depends on all sorts of contingent factors to have power, but it may have power nonetheless. It may be that all writing will one day be burned up and consumed when the sun goes supernova or remain forever unreadable in the eventual heat death of the Universe, but it may be worth something in the meantime nonetheless, and maybe the Master Author will even take some of it up into his Grand Theme and make it worth something beyond the walls of this world.

It may be that I have simply not gotten good enough at writing yet to have produced something that many other people will want to read, but it may be that eventually I will get there.

(After all, they say it takes writing about one million words of crap in order to get really good, so I’ve got about another half a million to go.)

So, I will keep writing.

Maybe I will create something worth reading by many other people one day.

And even if I don’t, at least I will die trying.