I Have Something to Say

or so I must tell myself

I stare at the blank page, halfway through the first draft of my novel. The curser blinks in and out of existence. I consider my outline. I contemplate my themes. I wonder if I’ve done enough to flesh out my characters, if my prose is too flat or too flowery, if the world is vibrant and immersive or if I’ve left the reader lost and confused. Have I gone too far? Not far enough? Do I give up, throw in the towel, retire from writing altogether? Will they misunderstand me? Have I misunderstood myself?

I lose myself in the questions and the second-guessing.

My confidence wanes.

The wells of my own creativity go dry.

I’m an imposter. A fraud. A wannabe. A try-hard. No one sees me. No one hears me, what I’m trying to say. I’ve held open a door that nobody wants to step through. The other side isn’t interesting enough, compelling enough, original enough, professional enough.

My voice is lost. The stories I want to tell have already been told and by someone far better at it than I, far more qualified, far more skilled, far more beloved. I try to imitate their skill and literary prowess in the hopes I might become as successful and as prolific as they have; I lose myself in the process.

There are voices in my head, and they sound like the angry contents of one-star reviews I shouldn’t have read.

Doubts have stitched and sewn themselves into my skin. Fear has made a scarecrow out of me; my blood and bone becomes straw, chaff in the wind. I am carried away by tempests of insecurity and inadequacy. Why would they read anything I write? If they won’t, why write at all?

Thoughts like these become the company I keep in the late hours of the night when I work and rework the story in my mind. And as if by sheer force of sudden epiphany, and in defiance of the potential death of a boyhood dream, I realize that I Have Something to Say.

My stories are not a tree that has fallen in the forest with no one to hear it; they happen whether observed or not, because my voice matters. If His Word does not return void, then do mine not also? I am made in His image, after all. I have His mind, His heart, His hands, His feet; do I not also have His tongue?

And if I have His tongue, then certainly I Have Something to Say. Each story the consummation of all my fears and hopes and dreams. The sum of all my wounds and bruises and broken bones.

I Have Something to Say to the Prodigal and the Wanderer, and it is this: that home is never far and there will always be those who await your return with open hearts.

I Have Something to Say to the Outcast and the Misfit, and it is this: that belonging and acceptance are possible and family’s can be forged and found as much as born.

I Have Something to Say to the Sinner and the Rogue, and it is this: that no sin, no trespass, no tragedy, no trauma is so great as cannot be forgiven or redeemed.

My words—my broken words, my misspelled words, my honest words, my improperly formatted words—are not empty or void.

It’s an easy thing to forget.

I write stories and I conjure up worlds and I think that is enough.

And I forget that I Have Something to Say; it is not story for story’s sake, or adventure for adventure’s sake, or character for character’s sake. It is not shallow entertainment. It is Parable. It is Communion.

Truth hides within the inky letters of the myths I make.

I must remember this. I must not forget that I Have Something to Say. If I forget, my stories will become a shriveled husk of their former selves. But if I hold fast to what I Have to Say, the story will mean Something.

Even if only to me.