Ode To A Big Chief (why I Write)

Ode to a Big Chief (Why I Write)

From my first Big Chief tablet with its pale-blue, alternating solid and dotted lines, I’ve long been smitten with empty pages. I started writing young—a word nerd from the get-go—and I never stopped. I was writing poetry at eight. Penning short stories to entertain myself at ten. I wrote out my prayers and filled up journal after journal through high school and college, where I was . . . wait for it . . . a journalism major who took literature classes for fun (and easy As).

I’m often asked now, as someone who writes for a living, “How do you become a writer?” I’ve learned over time that the question is not about me—it’s about the questioner. It’s less “How did you become a writer?” than it is “How can I become a writer?” Understanding this, my answer is always the same: writers write. They don’t simply dream of writing or plan to write someday or talk of writing or read books about how to get published or “build a platform.” They sit down before an empty page or screen and paint with words whatever insistent image beats its wings against their mind and heart, fighting to get free.

They write because they have to. They write because the weight behind the words demands the service of a voice.

If I never sold another piece or landed another book contract or received another assignment, I am certain the sight of a Big Chief tablet (or its grown-up cousin, the Moleskine) and the smell of a few sharpened pencils would still make my heart beat faster. And why wouldn’t it? I follow a God whose story never gets old. The sky-wide narrative arc of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration lies at the heart of every true and beautiful story, because it’s the echo of his story. He makes all things new, and in him, all things hold together.

And let’s face it: all the Big Chief tablets in the world set end to end cannot contain all the ways to say, “He loves you,” to a world that needs to hear it. So I write.

There are so many other things Jesus did. If they were all written down, each of them, one by one, I can’t imagine a world big enough to hold such a library of books.

John 21:25, MSG