The High Cost of Cheap Words

I recently ran into this post, written by my friend, Kristen Lunceford, on the occasion of her darling daughter’s 3rd birthday.  It is beautiful and elegant and powerful.  It’s also from three years ago, which is longer than I’ve been following Kristen, so had she not retrieved it from the archives and re-posted, I would have missed it forever.

When people ask me for advice on writing, first I look around frantically for someone I perceive to be a Real Writer, and then I realize they’re talking to me and so I give them this answer:  Start by blogging.  A blog is your own little writing universe where you can practice building your skills and honing your craft and you can try stuff out on your “crowd” which will probably be your mom and your best friend to begin with, but it will grow from there.  Especially if you’re good.  Especially if you write consistently, aka: several times each week.

And this is exactly what so many would-be writers are doing – becoming actual writers with the push of the publish button on WordPress and I think it’s fantastic.  We’ve never had access to so many brilliantly-crafted words.  An author can write a novel over the weekend and I can buy it for a buck (if I can find it) in the Amazon marketplace by Tuesday. Johann Gutenberg himself couldn’t have seen this coming, when his printing press would seem like  a slow stream of molasses in the publishing world.   And if you’ve hung around America for any length of time, you know that Fast = Good.

Except when it doesn’t.

Sometimes, fast just equals fast.  And sometimes fast = filler.  And sometimes fast = dumb.  The pressure on writers today to build an online presence is acute and there is no building that essential, elusive “platform” without a lot, lot, lot of words.  I see it on my blog all the time – the stats tell the story.  When I write every day, readership skyrockets.  When I don’t, people just naturally move on to newer, fresher stuff as it rolls through their Facebook and Twitter feeds like sushi on a conveyor belt.

I get exactly why this happens, and I still believe blogging is a great way to build writing skill, but I wonder what we’re doing with all these words.  I, frankly, don’t even have to wonder about the worthiness of all MY words.  I can clearly point to blog posts written out of desperation to stay relevant.  I see words rushed out to the world that had not yet spent any amount of time in the furnace of refininig.  They weren’t necessarily wrong words, but neither are they weighty.  Conversely, I know the posts that simmered in my spirit for bit before being wrestled onto the page, where they remain cemented by unshakable conviction and timeless truth.  I’m proud of these, but I know their beauty languishes in the dusty archives of yesterday’s news, surrounded as they are by the packing peanuts of posts created mostly just to hold my place on a tiny, tipsy platform.  Admittedly, I feel far less pressure now that I have publishers who believe in my work and are willing to turn these words into ink-on-a-page, but I’m still a part of the system that often rewards Right Now over Timeless Beauty.

Do you want to be an author?  Write well.  Write weighty.  Go back and read your early work and, even if it isn’t crafted well, remind yourself of the concentrated passion that caused you to pick up a pen in the first place.  And pray. Pray and wait for words that are filled with supernatural significance, refined by suffering and celebration, ready to be offered as a feast to a hungry world.

That’s all my words today.  I do not take it lightly that of all the blogs in all the world, you happened to stop by mine.  Thank you. I hope I never waste your time.

In gratitude for the One, True Word-Made-Flesh,

Bo