Lift Up Your Hearts!

"How do you decide what to write?" I know that other writers have been asked this and similar questions, and I don't speak for anyone else, but for me this is not the problem. The question I wrestle with constantly is, How do I decide what NOT to write? I find it more like sculpture: somewhere inside that big block of marble is an angel; the trick is to know what to take away (paraphrasing Michelangelo).

Earlier this year, I set out to declutter and organize the nearly 400 links that I had bookmarked and saved in a folder called simply, "Write." For years, whenever I had come across an article, or a podcast, or a blog post, or a news event that inspired me to write, but which I couldn't deal with immediately, I dumped it into the Write bucket. That folder was my closet, my attic, my basement, and it was no easier to clean out than any of those physical locations.

As with physical accumulations, some things were easier to deal with than others. Some links had been taken down, or put behind pay walls, so "delete" was an easy option. Other subjects were too topical and had become out of date. Delete. It was harder to deal with subjects that were still interesting to me, but which I knew would be less so to most of my readers; they'd be fine for filling in on a slow news day, but I haven't had one of those in months, and I've been accumulating a large stock of more interesting fill-ins anyway. Delete, if somewhat reluctantly. Ditto for the stories and videos that didn't quite express themselves as well on a second look as they had at first. I could have filled in the missing pieces—but I'm not looking for extra work!

That process whittled my stock down by about half. I was determined not to leave the rest as simple bookmarks. If they were worth keeping, they were worth starting blog posts for, if it were but to create a title, give it a category, and put the link in the post body, saving the result as a draft in my blog software. Sometimes I would then get inspired, and make a good start on the post. Sometimes I even completed it.

You guessed it: I have returned to my earlier practice. If I have an idea I create the beginnings of a blog post and save it as a draft. I'm not sure that's an improvement over the Write folder, although it's a little more organized. But now I have well over 200 blog posts in various stages of completion. If I were to publish one a day it would take more than half a year to go through them all. And that's only if I never get inspired to write something new—which we all know just isn't going to happen as long as I'm conscious.

I don't have to bring them all to completion; they're there to provide inspiration. But I must write. Writing is how I communicate; writing is my therapy; writing is how I relax. Writing is how I think. More than that, while many of my posts are personal, light-hearted, or trivial—though good humor is anything but trivial—I often cover serious subjects, and believe I need to make available to others whatever knowledge and wisdom I've gathered in my long years. That may sound arrogant, but what's the point of learning and experience if you don't share it? I feel this especially strongly because I"m aware that nearly all of the good ideas I've implemented in my life were inspired by someone else—usually what someone else has written.

To use the old-fashioned term, I also believe I am called to speak out, and as long as this is my calling, I must write. The question, always, is not so much what to write, as what to leave behind. For that, the pressures of time and everyday life are for better or worse the broadest chisel: better in that I'm forced to prioritize; worse because it biases what I publish away from what takes long, hard work to write. Maybe that's not all bad; every diet needs variety. I pretty much follow my gut, keep praying to be useful, and hope that enough of the time I can distinguish a piece of stone from the feather of an angel's wing.

I have been expressing my thoughts online since the end of the last century. In 2015 I set myself a goal of writing at least 10 posts each month, or about one every three days. This I have done without fail for more than 10 years. My posts now total over 3500, more than half of that since 2015. Sometimes I write a lot more than 10 posts per month, due to an inundation of noteworthy events on every level, from personal to international. Sometimes I must work harder to meet my goal, when the necessities of life make finding time to write difficult.

I do fear overwhelming my audience. But that's the beauty of the blog format: it's up to the audience if, when, and how much to read. Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, should someone eventually have time and interest in what I have to say, it will be found here, patiently waiting. I'm called to write, I'm called to speak the truth as I've been given to see it—but I'm not called to convince anyone of anything. Changing other people is above my pay grade.

So, yeah. That's what goes through my mind when someone asks, How do you decide what to write?