According to a random Instagram post I just saw on the account @quoting_literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote that “very little is required to destroy a person: One has only to convince him that the business he is engaged in is not necessary to anyone.”

Around the years of my ending middle school and starting high school, I read everything in print by Cinda Williams Chima, who is still one of my favorite YA fantasy authors now, if not my very favorite. I’ve read everything she’s written, I’ve been fortunate to make two of her book signings, and she so graciously responded to an email I once sent her. 

She keeps a “Help For Writers” page on her website, and the first line is, “Don’t be a writer unless you have to.” As a young teenager, that sent me spiraling. What do you mean, “unless you have to”? How cynical and disappointing! I sent Ms. Chima an email asking about the line because I did not understand it. I just didn’t. Her prompt response helped me understand why she included it on her website, but it didn’t quite help me understand it altogether; that wouldn’t come for a number of years and a bit of experience. 

Musing that she has been emailed many times regarding that very sentence on her website, Ms. Chima explained that the line simply encourages people to do what they love, but understand that what you love—especially if it’s writing—might be arduous, draining, and super-duper thankless. What you love will take its toll on you, so find something that tolls less if you can.

Boy oh boy, do I get it now.

This would all be a lot easier if I didn’t have to write.

And, I suppose, I do not have to write; I could drop the pen and ditch the keyboard and distribute what time, energy, and focus I currently apply to writing towards other facets of my life that are just as, if not more so, demanding. Something like my job, teaching 10th grade English and religion, could always benefit from even a hair more of my time, energy, and focus; teaching seems to me an insatiable arena that frequently pits its gladiators against burn-out, an opponent I have been warned about since Day One.

This would all be a lot easier if I didn’t have to write, but God help me, I have to write.

Writing is a non-essential. It does not pay my bills: Teaching does. It does not take me out for drinks or watch movies with me or invite me to parties or recommend new music: My friends and family do. It does not house me, clothe me, feed me, bring delight to my eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or hands. I was in fact not too long ago diagnosed with Sjögren’s Syndrome that manifests in swollen, aching hands and feet, leaving me possibly the most embittered arthritic 25-year-old you’ve maybe ever met. 

I have to write.

Part of this involves apply to literary magazines and journals on the regular.

I try to keep my rejection letters organized in my email folders, but I forget to label them and I use three different emails and I may use any which one to submit pieces for publication based on nothing at all: I am quite the WIP.

In 2022 the ones I did remember to label made up a total of six rejection letters. I know there are more of them slinking somewhere around my inboxes, but I can’t really be bothered to go seeking them out. As early as this first week of the year, I am receiving more.

Maybe this comes across as very whiny, tacky, and lazy, but by God, if I can’t air my grievances through the medium I love, then what really is the point? Because writing doesn’t house me or feed more or love me or hold me, but it sustains me. All a writer wants is to be read. Someone in my position can only wait for that day, hoping this isn’t all some Sisyphian tea party: where I get to dress up in my afternoon best and tip-tap some dark squiggles and angles on white pages and screens when the reality is the teapot is empty, the teacups are empty, and the party guests are all stuffed with fluff from crown to foot.

So, for the next 51 weeks, I’m writing this blog. My goal is to have something written and published every Sunday. Obviously, I’ve missed my first deadline (after three days of going to war with WordPress), and that’s honestly par for the course; what matters is I have begun anyway. Whether I am read or not, I am writing, and that’s something. I’ll be writing about whatever, probably, but I’ll be writing about writing too, hopefully. The triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of being unpublished, unread, and writing: It’s all fair game.

Thanks for reading,

J. August