Literary Statement of Faith

I know--long time, no blog. I have had a few things brewing, but I can't seems to edit them into any kind of shape. I also don't have a lot of time this semester. But hey, here's another one of those blogs that I'm not sure anyone would want to read. It's another something in which I--sigh--write about writing. I've really gatta get some new material. Oh well--here it goes.

Literary Statement of Faith


"A well-known writer got collared by a university student who
asked, 'Do you think I could be a writer?'

'Well,' the writer said, 'I don’t know…Do you like sentences?' The writer could see the student’s amazement. Sentences? I am twenty years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, 'I liked the smell of paint.' "

-From Annie Dillard’s A Writing Life, as quoted on p. 112 of Joyce Carol Oates’ The Faith of a Writer.


I don’t know when it started, because I always thought I was born to be a musician—or maybe a magician or scientist or something. I started off in life wanting all the things I wasn’t all that good at. For instance, I began high school thinking that at 5’2” and 120 lbs I was going to be a multi-sport varsity athlete. Perhaps I could have played varsity fast-pitch if I wouldn’t have wanted it so bad. Instead of playing the game, I dreamt about being good at it—possessing it—so my dream began to possess me. I choked when it counted.

Meanwhile, I was busy not trying too hard to be a writer. I was quite fine to never be a writer at all.

I left high school accomplishing almost none of my athletic or academic goals. I had broken promise upon promise to myself, and shuddered thinking of the points at which I had left my character in the dust. I still shudder sometimes. I left high school having never felt so humbled, but all that failure had left me to sit in the dust I was eating and listen to the wind. No striving, no pressing, no wearing myself out by wanting things too much. Just me, God, and the wind—waiting to see what would happen.

I wanted to remember a time that I felt free enough to dance in front of people. Suddenly it was a year earlier, and I was sitting in front of the computer smelling tomato and short-rib from my mom’s cooking of dinner. I asked her for the name of a really bad movie. “Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. Wait, why? What are you doing over there?”

“Homework.”

I was typing an apology to my English teacher. The assignment was to update a scene of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing into modern vernacular. I couldn’t do justice to Shakespeare, so I want to introduce my work with an apology. It was so non-academic and nonchalant that I was thinking I’d get in trouble or at least a talking-to. When my mom forbade me to turn it in, I knew it was what I was looking for. I was in a ridiculous mood that evening, and I wanted to test this new-found freedom from my English teacher who seemed to react positively to my humor. But when she had previously complimented my writing style, I was certain that this was not what she meant. A part of me even wanted to prove her wrong. Yet I felt so free to let my personality out of its cage—I couldn’t help myself. So many years of, “Sarah, you can’t say that,” flashed through my mind after I turned it in. As good as it felt to write, there was no way this would fly.

But she liked it—I was so confused. I made it my goal upon entering college to figure out how I could make this happen again. After all, it’s our greatest challenge in life to learn how to dance freely like we did when our sense of balance wasn’t what it is, because we’ve grown up now and are expected to contain ourselves in public. If nowhere else, I had found a place where I felt free enough to dance in front of people—to let my arms and hips go where they would in genuine response to the rhythms of living.

But then, of course, started the trying. I learned about great writers and wondered if I could ever be almost as good as one of them. I wondered if I could be good. And then started the wanting it and freaking out and obsessing over it. So I switched my major to Bible and Theology. I spent a few semesters pretending that I didn’t want to be a writer, and this is what I came up with:

I do love sentences. I love the smell and taste of them. I like to finger paint with them—squishing the reds and yellows in my fist and being mesmerized with what happens when I drag two fingers slowly across a giant notepad propped impromptu on a window sill. Since I love the smell of linguistic finger paint, hours slip through my hands like the wet soap I use to get the dried pigment from my now discolored finger nails. I exhale, satisfied, having spent that time with paint instead of something else—and happy with what product came out of it, even if no one ever cares what I painted. I simply love to paint with sentences.

I only stop when I think about what I’m supposed to do with sentences—when I stress about what they say an essay or a poem is supposed to be. No, little girl, you just take that red and yellow paint in your hands and stop to listen in on your wildest dreams for a minute. Then, craft something that looks like that. Take up your pen; ink out that question they never let you ask in Sunday school and the inspiration you held inside because you didn’t know with what medium to say it. Slouch in your chair late at night—laptop light reflecting on your face—and peck out a rhythm that seems too far outside of the box. Maybe you just like the open air. All of this, I gathered while reading The Faith of a Writer as she continually said, “write your heart out.”

Alright, if you say so…

For now I pretend that I don’t know what it takes to be a good writer. For now I’ll dance in the dust I’ve eaten—just me, God, and the wind—letting whomever sit in and watch. I don’t know what people want to read, but they can watch me dance if they want. If not, at least me and God are having fun. Oh, and dancing doesn’t stop when I get to my academic or theological writing. I don’t know what they want to read either, but I hope they like what they get. If they give me dust to eat, I’ll just dance in it.

If art is a mirror to the human condition—for better or for worse—then this is what I look like—for beauty or for ugliness. My only hope of creating something beautiful is that God might make me beautiful--which is like the dollar my Father gives me to put into the offering that's going towards buying a gift for Him anyways. And like life itself, this love of sentences, too, is a gift that I did nothing to deserve. So let my finger paints and late nights be my offering and my prayer to the One who gave them to me—letting my personality emerge from its cage. He will perhaps, in His mercy, use this medium to let my spirit do the same.