Writing is a gift, a skill, a compulsion, a talent, a solace, and much more.
This morning in Church, the youth pastor spoke about the tiny little book of the prophet Habbakuk. Very loosely, Habbakuk lived in a time when the early Israelites (no saints themselves) were being punished by having Assyrians as their overlords. The Assyrians were sinful (according to Habbakuk's complaint) but their doom was to be defeated by the Chaldeans, which --as far as Habbakuk's people were concerned-- was a case of Meet The New Boss, same as the old boss...
Habbakuk believed that God told him (Habbakuk) to write down his vision, which Habbakuk obediently did, and so Habbakuk is forever famous... in a very minor way.
Also today, I read a lovely article about Jane Austen by one Walker Larson of Wisconsin. Now, I cannot give freelance journalist and cultural writer Walker Larson a link, because he writes for a publication that cannot be cited here on pain of being bot-consigned to the equivalent of the blogging oubliette.
Walker explains that Jane Austen lived in a time when writing for profit was considered to be the literary equivalent of prostitution. Men could do it openly. Ladies risked reputational damage, so had to write in secret.
The difficulty for Jane Austen was to find time to write without friends, neighbors, domestic servants and others discovering her work and work product. Fortunately, Jane Austen had a supportive family, and presumably had no lack of ink, quill pens, small pieces of paper (easy to hide if visitors turned up without prior notice), a writing nook by a window (for daylight), and an in-house critique group (her mother and sister.)
Depending on ones circumstances, one can write for publication, or posterity, or one can write for one: a distant lonely parent, a son or daughter in need of encouragement, a faraway friend... By letter, email, or whatever the means, by all means, keep ones hand in.
By the way, the Post Office in the USA will be putting up the cost of Priority Mail and other delivery charges between October and mid-January. If you have a manuscript to mail, plan to do it sooner rather than later!
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
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