Guest Post: On Writing by Drew Haack

Inhaling in, I stretched out my hands and then let the air release from my lungs. My back ached as I hadn’t left my back porch, but I was living out of the greatest adventures. Writing my unique book “Down to the Heart of it” filled with moments and inspiration from years of my life gave me adrenaline and excitement. I wrote my book based on my faith using life moments as analogies. This includes life and death moments and dealing with situations beyond our control despite our feeble attempts to reign things back in. There’s also the fun moments of sarcasm and a few triumphs with a literal kick to the face mixed in. We definitely get those in life both literal and metaphorical.

Writing isn’t a select cult that some people choose to do. It’s an expression of passions and interests. It’s a collection of carefully crafted moments, stories, or words that have meaning. I recently started reading a book about chasing life knowing you’re unqualified. The best writers ALL started at this point, unqualified. All came from not knowing what to write about, but knowing they wanted to. The best authors had an idea and just let it go. They wanted to see where it went. It doesn’t mean the first publication was popular, but it laid a foundation. It made them realize it was possible.

If that’s you and you want to start, get out your laptop. Or go back to the “stone ages” with a pen and a notebook. Write some general thoughts. What inspires, interests you? If you jot down a somewhat cohesive short narrative, ask yourself; “Can this be expanded? Can this be a piece of something larger?” Or if it’s poetry, jot down some emotions or themes. It doesn’t have to fit together perfectly. An important piece is to go back and find cohesion. Does it flow, does your writing have a journey and purpose? Then have someone look it over. Get outside input because that helps more than fixing grammar, but it can offer expanding thoughts into what you’ve written. Start with an online blog or look for a local writing group or small publication. But experiment and have an idea of what you believe you want to write.

So, in the end, you have to ask yourself, does writing have value? For me, even if only one person read my book and was impacted, I would be grateful. That doesn’t mean I don’t want a greater audience, but we should ask ourselves what’s important. I think that’s encouraging and helping others. But it could be opening a story world or poem or even informational piece that benefits someone else. In the midst of negative stories, why not craft something that pulls us to something better?

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