Do you ever have one of those days when you ask yourself “Why do I keep writing?” Me, too. There are likely as many reasons as there are writers asking the question. I was recently reminded of an experience that may give you yet another reason to keep writing.
Several years ago, I was a volunteer English tutor for a large local non-profit. I worked mainly with people who had moved here from outside of the USA where English was not their native language. Many of my clients had a little English knowledge and needed help filling out job or college applications, reading work documents or completing school papers.
But one client stood out from the rest and I think of him sometimes when my writing starts to feel like work.
He moved here from the Middle East. He spoke English well, but could not read it at all. Despite that, since he arrived in the USA, he worked in several restaurants as a cook, in some places as a manager. He worked in a deli and a catering service, again in management. When I met him, he had started his own business and had secured the contract for one of the diners on the campus of a large tech company. Again, he did all of this without being able to read.
I was fascinated by this and we would take breaks from his sessions to talk about how he did it. Over time, he developed skills to keep his reading deficit a secret from those around him. He would tell his managers that he would read the corporate documents on his break when he could focus on the material. He would ask people to read to him the parts of a document that they thought was most important. He would say that he didn’t quite understand the content of a letter and would ask someone to interpret it for him.
He had wonderful people skills and no one questioned his abilities.
One day, I had to ask the question. Why, when he had already experienced multiple reasons to learn to read, what motivated him to seek help to learn to read now?
With a huge smile on his face he said “I want to be able to read my daughter a story before she goes to bed.”
I was in tears. That was the purest motivation to learn to read that I had ever heard.
This post may appear to be more about reading than writing. But consider this.
How might your writing impact someone? In the hands of a parent, will it help a child to go to sleep? In the hands of a young adult, will it inspire them to pursue a specific profession? When read by a dreamer, will it spark their imagination to invent the next way to travel through space?
That’s just it. You don’t know. All you can do is keep writing. Because someone out there needs to read what you have written.