Shall I Go On Writing?

This excerpt from my personal journal was written on May 30, 1982. It reflects what I felt after a three day retreat in Northeast Iowa near Guttenberg, Harper’s Ferry, and Galena, Illinois. Most significant in this piece is the first instance of a decision to follow the path of short, written pieces like daily journal entries, and later, letters to the editor, newspaper articles, and blog posts in my writing. This decision was key to what I became as a writer. I couldn’t get rid of all the male pronouns without changing the meaning, yet I wrote it intending it to be gender neutral. It is lightly edited.

Shall I go on writing? There are so many things in the world to be done, yet I go on writing. I think a majority of people in my generation would “like to be a writer.” That is, they would like to deal with images. But a writer cannot deal solely with images. He must address the realities of his and all the people’s situation.

The writer must be socialized into the culture of which he writes. As a member of a culture, a writer has a vested interest in his culture. He seeks the continuance and survival of the vital elements of his culture.

Too, he seeks change. Not only change that is the essence of a day’s spontaneity but change in terms of his conception of both the past and the present. Although a person can have misconceptions about the nature of the world, the meaning of the world, he is required to act based on this knowledge.

In every case, this is far less than a science of action. In fact, the notion of science we share is obsolete. There is science only insofar as we can all agree on what that is.

But shall I go on writing? Yes, at least in the pages of this journal. For it is one of the things that has sustained me for so long I cannot give it up yet. Nor shall I. Yes. I will go on writing. I’ll fill the pages of this and many another book like it. For this is the path I’ve chosen. (Personal Journal, Iowa City, Iowa, May 30, 1982.)