What inspires you to write?

Unsplash.com — Thought Catalog

Let’s talk about inspiration. Remember reading The Diary of Anne Frank while in school? Remember her family hiding in the secret annex of her father’s business building until they were betrayed? The entire family was hauled to the concentration camps. Recently I read the newspaper account of the woman who held Anne Frank in her arms as she faded to death from typhus just weeks before the camp was liberated.

I am inspired when I read beautiful writing. Anne Frank was a kid who died at fifteen in a concentration camp. But she wrote a book that changed the world. I am inspired by stories of people who give their best to make this world a better place. I am inspired by her simple words: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

When I headed to college I hit a funk. I dreamed of being a writer, but my first English teacher tortured me with B after B on my essays. The homework was heavy, and my brain could not cozy up to calculus. Eating comforted me, so I put on fifteen pounds. My roommate hated me. She was caught up in love and peace. I was at war — with myself, uncertain about God, faith, and meaning. And I had no outlet for all the questions stacking up inside me. I had left my writing journal at home, believing I was too grown up to spend time reflecting on those pages. I was wrong, of course.

Although I no longer wrote in a journal, I did begin to acquire a small paperback library. I discovered Siddhartha in the bookstore and devoured it. I related to the struggle, the life journey. Then a friend gave me a well-worn copy of Man’s Search for Meaning. I believe it changed my life as much as any book I have read. It told the story of Viktor Frankl, a well-known psychiatrist who was deported, at the height of his career, to a German concentration camp during World War II. Beneath his coat he hid his only copy of an unpublished manuscript that held a record of his ideas. But in one instant this manuscript, his life’s work, was taken from him and destroyed. He could have given up, as many of the prisoners chose to do, but Frankl decided to find meaning in this event. He learned — and taught me — that we can’t escape tragedy and hardship, but we can control how we think about it.

From Shakespeare to Anne Frank — words and writers have inspired me. And teaching writing inspired me as well. I have read passages from a young woman in a correctional facility who was trying to understand her drug-riddled neighborhood. I have laughed at the wonderful silliness of C. Ellie Walker as she discovered her writing voice in her first novel Mouse; and I have marveled at the energy of Randall Bird as he raises kids, works full time as a night watchman, and writes endless drafts of both stories and books. There are many others.

And I am inspired when I find a quiet space or arrive at my local café and begin to pound out my words on my computer. It is in these moments, I find my voice. My purpose. My meaning. And this is why I am inspired to write and why I encourage others to write.

I hope you will share your inspirations with me. I want to thread together a community of writers in search of our voices. The goal is to create a community of writers who are trying to find and use our words in meaningful ways.

Please join me.

Your Turn: What inspires you to write? What do you hope to write?

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What inspires you to write? was originally published in The Story You Need to Tell on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.