Every day I write. In the morning. In the afternoon. Sometimes in the evening.
It’s not a choice for me.
It’s a calling. And when I stopped running away from myself, I heeded the call.
You see, when my pen touches the page, that’s when I feel grounded, centred … at one with myself and the world.
Writing is the truest expression of who I am.
The ‘Why’
I don’t write with the aim of becoming a New York Times bestselling author or hoping to win the Man Booker International Prize. Sure, those things could happen, but that’s not what keeps me in the game.
Writing is about witnessing the world around me, taking a snapshot of a moment in time — and trying to make sense of it all. Writing lets me tell a story through a different lens, from the experiences that have shaped my life and helped me to become who I am. Writing frees me from the hate, intolerance and misunderstandings plaguing our world today. Writing is a golden opportunity to showcase the beauty that is this world and the great things we’ve done — and can still do — when we come together in spite of our differences.
That’s why I must write … every day. When I don’t write, I’m irritable, grumpy and feel like I’ve lost my footing. That’s how I often felt on days when I went without coffee (before I gave up caffeine).
Like I said, it’s not a choice for me. If it were, I would have abandoned writing when my novel, Freestyle Love, flopped in 2011. But I kept writing and, not letting self-doubt get the better of me, self-published The Flowers Need Watering in 2017. I could have given up after receiving countless rejections from various literary journals and publishers. Instead, I kept writing, honing my skills and opted to share my stories online through Twitter Fiction Tuesdays (#TwitFicTues) and my Fiction Friday series.
Yes, I kept writing for the love of the work, to see it through to completion, to — in some small way — be of service.
Never Give Up
Despite my passion, despite my commitment, there are still days when I ask myself: What’s the point? Am I on the right path? Is anyone paying attention? So, I take a moment to remind myself of what Steven Pressfield says in, Do the Work!: “Resistance is a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.”[note]Steven Pressfield, Do the Work!, Do You Zoom, Inc., 2011.[/note]
That’s when I buckle down and focus. Resistance won’t have dominion over me.
When we write, paint, compose — create — for the love of it, I feel like that’s the moment when providence moves. The stars align and our creative world comes into focus. We know exactly where we are, where we want to go, and what we need to do to get there.
When we show up each day for the love of the work, we know we have the necessary courage and faith to do whatever it takes to make our dreams come true.
That’s why we’ll never give up.
And Doubt coupled with fear is a deadly combination. Lately, I’ve been consumed by fear. I’m afraid that, maybe, Steven Pressfield is right, and 
The journey you’re on is not for the faint of heart. You’ve experienced success and failure … lots of failures. But you don’t let that faze you. You 
It thundered from all sides, cut through to my core. No, I wasn’t ‘happy’ with my life because I wasn’t where I wanted to be or living the life I’d imagined for myself. And if I wanted to bring that vision to life, I had to make changes. Otherwise, I’d end up stranded and not doing much of anything when what I really wanted was to be the best version of myself. Or, as Winfrey writes: “All of us are seeking the same thing. We share the desire to fulfill the highest, truest expression of ourselves as human beings.”[note]The Wisdom of Sundays by Oprah Winfrey, Flatiron Books, p. 8.[/note]
My head starts to spin because I foolishly believe that I can do it all — and do them all well — in one day. At some point, I feel my chest tighten because I know I can’t do it all, but I want to. That’s when I say to myself, “Oh, let me just check in quickly on Twitter.” Next thing I know, I’ve lost an hour. Or I say, “Watch one episode of The Brave” (I have a bit of a man-crush on Mike Vogel). Three episodes later, the TV’s still on. One distraction leads to another, and then I end up procrastinating the day away.
Let me back up a moment. I didn’t always know that I wanted to be a writer. That’s because I kept running away from who I really was.
But it was, at twenty-two, when I accepted that I was gay — and more than telling my friends and family a year later — that I’d been set free. That was when I began to love myself. In the most important of ways, I had found my footing. And looking back over the years, I can see that through my writing I’ve tried to be of service by helping people get to that other side of forgiveness. That place where we [I] can forgive ourselves [myself] and each other for the past that was, moving along conscious and alive in the present moment.
I write for a lot of reasons. Mainly, I like to explore, through the lens of a personal story, the aspirations of the individual against those of the collective. I hope to challenge the reader’s, as well as my own, belief system. It’s not just about asking, for example, “What are we doing here?” but also “How did we get where we are?” and “Could we get here another way?”
Let me be clear. When I talk about living in a state of grace, I don’t mean it in the religious sense. I don’t think about it as being free from mortal sin. Living in a state of grace is about honouring who you are, not who others think or wish you to be. You, the abstract painter. You, the master chef. You, the fifth-grade teacher. You have unearthed the thing that has long poked at your heart, called you into service … and you’ve heeded the call.