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In his 2003 Nobel Prize Banquet speech, honoree and author J. M. Coetzee used his moment on the stage to reflect on what a shame it was his parents hadn’t lived to see this day: 

“Why must our mothers be ninety-nine and long in the grave before we can come running home with the prize that will make up for all the trouble we have been to them?”

-J. M. Coetzee – Banquet speech. NobelPrize.org.

I thought this was an odd, and dispiriting way to thank the Nobel committee. 

Perhaps it struck me because I lost my dad in the summer and am going through the process of getting used to not being able to tell him things and see the reaction on his face.

But what I know in my bones is that, though he would have been tickled pink by my current and future achievements, his pride in me was based on who I am, not any big outcome, or prize. (And yes, I know I was privileged to have pretty awesome parents.)

It’s Not The Prizes

It’s not the big moments that make up a life—or a writing practice.

It’s the millions of tiny decisions and actions we take, day after day, that tell people who we are, and that add up to a life.

• It doesn’t matter if your writing goes well today. It matters that you did it.
• It doesn’t matter if you wrote 5,000 words today. It matters that  you come back and add more words, soon.
• It doesn’t matter if your first draft is ropey. It matters that you finish; that you summon up the courage to revise it, and revise it again; that you decide you are bold enough to share it.
• It doesn’t matter if your writing is ‘on trend’. It matters that you spend your time working on something that delights you—even as it frustrates you; something that only you could write.

Who Tells Your Story?

After playwright Tom Stoppard died this month, a widely-shared letter appeared in the UK newspaper The Times. 

In the letter, surgeon and cancer researcher Dr. Michael Baum recounts how, while attending a performance of Stoppard’s play Arcadia, he was introduced to Chaos Theory, which changed his thought process about a thorny problem in treating breast cancer. He ends the letter,

“Stoppard never learnt how many lives he saved by writing Arcadia.”

Prizes are nice.

Publication acceptances are nice.

Being able to make some money from your writing may, or may not be, nice depending on how you feel about turning your avocation into a job.

But writing is weird.

It’s a way to place our ideas into the heads of people we’ll never meet. 

It’s a method for manipulating the emotions of people in a future we might not see.

It’s a stone cast into a vast pond, causing ripples we can’t possibly track.

The Point

The work is the point.

The work is the starting point.

We might never receive the prizes, the publication, or the acclaim, but we can certainly never receive them if we don’t build the habit of doing the work. 

And doing the work has to matter enough to you that you would do it even if you never hear that your parents are proud of you or that you saved lives with your writing. 

You may never know what you writing means to other people.

What does your writing mean to you, and can you find a way to make that ‘enough’?

Keep writing,

Julie

P. S. Need more practice turning everyday moments into key scenes in your stories? Consider the StoryAWeek newsletter: 52 weekly lessons and writing prompts. Find out more.