The writing process: a mysterious & marvellous charisma

I recently read these words from a FB post from Dr Andrew Walker, one of my colleagues at Southern: “There is nothing glorious about writing: It is just sitting down and plodding along.”

It got me thinking about my own experience as a writer, one that stretches way back to my childhood more than sixty years ago now.

One of my early memories is using pages from my French exercise book at King Henry VIII Grammar School in Coventry to write a story (taking pages out of your notebook was a no-no, it turned out, for which I was reprimanded).

Having spent a considerable amount of my life helping students learning how to write, I have come to see writing as a gift—for me as a Christian, a charisma. Not all have it, no matter how much one prods them.

Nor do all feel compelled to write. I am always amazed by scholars who earn their PhD (and write a thesis in the process) and then never really write another thing in their academic career. I can think of more than one scholar in this category.

That is not me: even if I had not earned a doctorate, I would be a writer. To my mind, it is a gift, a calling.

The fact that it is a gift does not mean that it does not take work—”plodding,” as Dr Walker puts it. The writing process is mysterious. Sometimes, I begin an essay or article and am not quite sure where I’m going. Then along the way—and it might come at the very end of the literary piece—I realize, “Ah, that’s what this is.”

Yes, for me, the taking of a blank page and filling it with alphabetic script that has meaning that can move heart and will is nothing short of marvellous.

PS A big thank-you to Revd Jared Skinner for encouragement to put these few thoughts to paper!