Why Write: Write for the Work Itself (Part I of II)
Why do you write? You’ve likely heard some iteration of this question if you’re a writer. Perhaps a blogging guru online told you to craft a mission statement on your about page as to why you write. Maybe a curious family member asked at a get-together. Or perhaps you’ve found yourself staring at the blinking cursor once again and questioned why you’d put yourself through such agony in your free time.
In the midst of World War II, Dorothy Sayers, a contemporary and friend of C. S. Lewis, posed the question, “Why Work?” in an address delivered at Eastbourne, England, on April 23, 1942. She feared that when the war was over, her society would fall back into its previous ways and views of work: work simply to make money, regardless of what that work might be, and create things just so they would sell, regardless of worth, goodness, or quality. In this address, Sayers called her listeners to a better theology and ethic of work.
If you’re like me, you may not consider the work you do as a writer as your primary work. But Sayers’s words about work still apply for us, even if writing isn’t our full-time job. She helps us ground ourselves in a theology of work and discover the better reason as to why we write.
To Serve Our Neighbor?
The good, Sunday school answer to, “Why write?” would be, “To love my neighbor.” Sayers responded with yes . . . and no. She said, “There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the community is to falsify the work; the only way to serve the community is to forget the community and serve the work.”
Before you fling your hands up in confusion, let me share Sayers’s three reasons behind this paradox.
First, Sayers said that if we’re constantly looking to see how the community is engaging with our work, we’ll be distracted from the actual work. “If your heart is not wholly in the work, the work will not be good—and work that is not good serves neither God nor the community; it only serves the Mammon.” By constantly checking stats, comments, and the like, our eyes fall away from the work of writing and turn instead to how people are receiving our work. Rather than editing a piece for clarity and beauty, we catch ourselves turning out as much content as possible to raise our stats. This then leads to the next problem: writing for the praise of men.
Sayers said that by focusing on “serving” others, we set our sights not on the goodness of our work but on the praise of men that we receive from it. “You will begin to bargain for reward, to angle for applause, and to harbour a grievance if you are not appreciated.” Oftentimes our desire to love our neighbor through our writing can become clouded with pandering to the hottest trend or topic of the day, and, in doing so, we stop loving our neighbour by simply creating more noise. Then, when we aren’t heard, we begin to struggle with fears and inner criticism. Why does no one like my writing? Should I give up? Am I a horrible writer? In all this, we’ve lost sight of the love for the craft that captivated us so long ago.
Finally, she said that if we are striving to serve the public demand, we will never succeed. The public demand is always changing, and to work towards those ends won’t create something beautiful and lasting. Using theatrical plays as an example, she said:
Nine-tenths of the bad plays put on in theatres owe their badness to the fact that the playwright has aimed at pleasing the audience, instead of at producing a good and satisfactory play. Instead of doing the work as its own integrity demands that it should be done, he has falsified the play by putting in this or that which he thinks will appeal to the groundlings (who by that time have probably come to want something else), and the play fails by its insincerity. The work has been falsified to please the public—and in the end even the public is not pleased.
Instead, she called her listeners to simply be a part of the community at large and do the work well. Not only will the work be true to itself, but it will be something good and beautiful.
If we should take our eyes off our neighbors (or readers), why should we write?
For the Love of Words
Sayers said that we create and work because we are made in the image of our Creator, and as our Creator found pleasure in creating, so we should as well. She said that man’s “satisfaction is found in the fulfillment of his own nature, and in contemplation of the perfection of his own work.” She goes on to compare this to how we passionately work at a hobby even though it has no financial return. “That, in practice, there is this satisfaction, is shown by the mere fact that a man will put loving labour into some hobby which can never bring him in any economically adequate return. His satisfaction comes, in the god-like manner, from looking upon what he has made and finding it very good.”
What if the reason we wrote was because we simply loved the craft? What if it wasn’t about building a platform or brand, getting a message out there, or to earn us a book deal? What if we wrote because we were simply delighted in weaving sentences into paragraphs and patching paragraphs into pages? What if our reason for writing was only that we loved to write? As Sayers said, “If your mind is set upon serving the work, then you know you have nothing to look for; the only reward the work can give you is the satisfaction of beholding its perfection. The work takes all and gives nothing but itself; and to serve the work is a labour of pure love.”
It’s this love and delight for the words that will keep us moving along each day—applause will erode, the waves of hateful criticism will crash again, words won’t always come easily, and the winds of fears will assail us, but the passion for writing will be a bright light. If it doesn’t, why are you bothering to put pen to paper each day? Let love drive you, and if love is not there, find a better hobby that you do delight in.
A New Way: Good Christian Art
Christian art has a bad reputation. Sayers spoke out about this reality in her time as well:
No piety in the worker will compensate for work that is not true to itself; for any work that is untrue to its own technique is a living lie. Yet in her own buildings, in her own ecclesiastical art and music, in her hymns and prayers, in her sermons and in her little books of devotion, the Church will tolerate, or permit a pious intention to excuse, work so ugly, so pretentious, so tawdry and twaddling, so insincere and insipid, so bad as to shock and horrify any decent draftsman. And why? Simply because she has lost all sense of the fact that the living and eternal truth is expressed in work only so far as that work is true in itself, to itself, to the standards of its own technique . . . She has forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church; that a painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred painting; that work must be good work before it can call itself God’s work.
We need a greater motive to write than simply a desire—Sayers called her listeners to not just love the work, but love to do the work well. She also reminded them that although theology and piety are essential, we likewise need to strive to write the truth well and beautifully.
Before this calling leaves you feeling hopeless, remember that no first draft is perfect, and sometimes not even second drafts stand strong at inspection. The third drafts come closer, but often still need work. You will read the words you wrote four years ago and cringe… and four years later you’ll do it again with the words you write right now.
Strive to grow each time you write, not to become a perfect writer. Keep your eyes off what the public says about your words and instead train them on the work. Seek to write lovely yet meaty words rather than write about passing trends. I invite you to write because you love to, and not let anything distract you from it. Write to the glory of God, rather than man. Isn’t that what this is all about? To love writing so much that you work to bring glory to God through it by doing it well.
* To read Part II of this series, click here.
Lara d’Entremont is a wife and mom to three from Nova Scotia, Canada. Lara is a writer and learner at heart—always trying to find time to scribble down some words or read a book. Her desire in writing is to help women develop solid theology they can put into practice—in the mundane, the rugged terrain, and joyful moments. You can find more of her writing at laradentremont.com.