Writer in Question by Jonathan Morrison

I take a smoke break, the slow burn on a steady inhale and ash emerges gradually, I can hear the light sizzle of paper and tobacco. I am alone for a moment before the deck overlooking Salt Lake City fills up with others taking a moment to drag. I sip my coffee; inhale once more through my nose the smoke fills my nostrils, I flick the cigarette, take another sip of coffee and step inside to return to my computer.
Writing isn’t an easy job, sometimes words flow with ease each one more perfect than the other building the story right. In these moments its is a beautiful job. When I press save, close my computer, and gather up my belongings I feel accomplished and fulfilled. However these days are rare, most the time I force myself to my computer, I explore the internet distracting myself from my endless rat tat tat on the keyboard where I produce a few empty words that seem to only take the story into a world entirely opposite where I hope it to go. I press save shut my computer gather up my belongings step outside and smoke and wonder why I bother to spend so much time in this futility. Half of writing seems to be simply showing up at my computer, sometimes words flow sometimes I drag them out. I never know, that’s why I show up.
There isn’t really a better place to write however than Salt Lake City in the winter, everything is caped in white and the mountains and snow capture pollution and lay it to rest in the valley. Inversions cast a grey screen over the city and everything becomes introspective. Sometimes the sun sneaks out of the grip of the clouds and lets out its rays and all the inversion reflects it back, but when you get a chance to look out at the valley from above everything is on introspective fire. The trees and buildings are all encased in a thick grey red. It makes you feel bad for smoking, but it makes being honest easier.
I was told once to be a writer it’s necessary to go beyond you and be more than honest. To be a writer you have to be honest, each character or essay is intertwining with a piece of who you are, it is impossible to separate the two. Writers however have a threshold of what they are willing to explore with a reader, it seems like so much honesty but its not. When really digging you reach a wall that is hard for writers to cross, behind that lies the major insecurities all the things that writers are not in contact with. To grow as a writer it’s necessary to give that up though. It’s a pilgrimage, and its hard and long to traverse this road. For it to be a worthwhile voyage it must be this way, an exploration into the deep and dark. Readers, characters, and writers must go places they do not want to go, they must travel through the dim to come out a new and changed hero. It’s the writer’s job to make this happen, to except the heavy burden, to go where they of all the rest are most afraid to go. Only than will the characters grow, and only than will the readers be able to except their responsibility to follow where the writer has gone.
Who knows though, I am not even sure if I am a writer. When do you become a writer? Do you need to have written a book before you can be called a “writer” or can someone like me who sits at my computer day after day slaying the dragon be called a writer? I sure hope so, I told my girlfriend I was a writer, that’s why I think she went out with me the first time.

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I take another smoke break, inhale slowly and listen for the crackle of burning paper and tobacco. It puts my mind at ease, trying to decide if I am a writer or not has put strange questions in my mind, most that have nothing to do with being a writer. Like if that joke about me being flabby wasn’t just a way for my girlfriend to trick me into going to the gym more often. I may never know, I did go to the gym today though.
I’m not just thinking about my girlfriend insinuating that I should go to the gym more, I’m also thinking about Fredrick Buechner, well not really Fredrick Buechner but something that he wrote once. I can’t remember the quote exactly, but it says something about not knowing what a self-authenticating religious experience is because without God somehow how destroying him how would doubt also be destroyed.
I think I understand what Fredrick is saying, but it makes me think of writers going places they don’t want to go in order to grow. I don’t want to be destroyed I want to grow but I am not sure I can pay the price of self-destruction.

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That’s the thing though isn’t it, going where you don’t want to go, enduring what you don’t think you can handle. Taking the step from honesty to insecurity and simply praying that your vulnerability was not in vain.

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I think that is what God wants, our vulnerability not our threshold honesty. How else could God reveal Himself to us in a way that would be real and without doubt? It seems He wants us to take that step; He will be our guide on this pilgrimage, and He will lead us where we don’t want to go, but in the end we will have grown. We will be the changed characters, the heroes we were meant to be.