This past weekend my friend Heidi Johnston and I led a session at the Rabbit Room’s Hutchmoot UK in Oxford, England. Our topic was delight and the writer.
The things you delight in are a clue to what you ought to be writing, we suggested, a clue to what you have to offer in your creative work. The world needs your delight more than it needs you skill or talent or cleverness—even more than it needs your “message.”
But in the discussion time at the end of the session, a man named James asked what’s a writer to do if he is in a season of life when he feels he has no access to delight, only grief. I thought that was an excellent question. Also, I felt ill-prepared to give an answer.
As it turned out, James and I sat other across from one another at supper that evening. Doug McKelvey was at our table too, so we posed James’s question to him: When a writer is in a season of grief, with no access to delight, how does he keep writing?
I wish I could give you a verbatim account of Doug’s answer, which was beautiful. I can’t, but here are a few highlights: In a season of desolation, Doug said, it’s important to remember that you are given the present hour, the present minute to steward. You may be able to do only a very little. But maybe you can do that little, a minute at a time, an hour at a time? It may feel like you are trudging through waist-deep snow. But maybe you can keep trudging, just a short step at a time? When the winter ends and the thaw comes, hopefully you can look back at the little path you forged in the hardest season. But even if you can’t forge ahead, that time isn’t wasted. Even grief bears good fruit. And the winter always ends.