Why Did I Bother?

Why did I bother?

You know the question if you’ve attended enough critique group meetings.

On rare- oh so rare- occasions, your writing soars and transports. Your critique partners sigh or laugh or scowl at all the right places.

Other times nothing works. The piece you brought might as well have been written in Sanskrit.

None of them ever actually voice the ‘Why did you bother?’ question. It’s something a frightened and cowering part of our own psyches ask. If this is all I can squeeze out after a month or a week away, why do I even show up?

But I’m starting to see the reasons now. Without the prototyping, without the scrutiny, without the prove-every-rivet stress testing, my writing would never improve.

Then one day, you have something worth saying and the words come when they’re called. You swing your axe and find the words sharp and the writing solid. You yank it out and swing again and it bites deep and true into the mind, into the heart.

Then you know why you endured a thousand nights of ‘Why did I bother?’