What Fills The Void?

I keep on writing, even though it often feels like I’m getting nowhere. I keep coming back, keep getting rejected, living for the few morsels of good news that might keep this little dream alive.

There’s an ironic cruelty to writing. Writers are often some of the most sensitive among us. Keenly affected by subtle emotional changes, observant of every micro-change in the ways people talk to one another. We are affected deeply by the smallest things.

And yet, we are subject to persistent, unyielding rejection on a regular basis. Many writers say you need a thick skin to become a successful writer. But was it not also your thin, fragile skin that made you become a good one? It appears that you need both, and some weeks it feels as though I do. But mostly it feels painful, putting my vulnerability out to the world, only for it to be swatted away as unnecessary noise.

Still, I accept the rejections, the downfalls, the disappointments. I understand that it is just not yet my time. It will come. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’. And it is this understanding, that allows one to keep returning, keeps us showing up despite it being entirely reasonable to pack it in.

The truth is, I’d write anyway, even if I was never published. In fact, I DO write still when I do not get published. I don’t know how to not write, how to be not be writing. I’ve been drawn to it since I was a boy. Call it a compulsion, an instinct. It is something that brings sincere comfort, purpose, meaning, even if nobody else is reading. Writing brings order to my days, reveals explanations for any suffering. It fills a void in me, a void we all have. And writing, I have found, is the best solution for me. And I wonder, what is yours?

I also write a Substack