This week I judged nonfiction essays in an adult writing competition. I am always a little perplexed by the urge that some people have to write (even though I encourage it by teaching occasional writing workshops). Writing, like every art, is such a difficult thing to do well, and even if you succeed at that there's no guarantee that you will ever get published. Professional writers who've been at it for years live a life of constant rejection. What hope do you have against them? And why subject yourself to that? Of course, these days anyone can have his or her writing made public on the Internet; Paul Theroux's old claim that all good writing eventually finds a home has been expanded to include the mediocre and the awful.
But reading the essays I was quite moved. Not so much by the writing - which for the most part was amateurish - but by the desire that produced it. The authors were not dreaming of publication; at most, the chance to read their essays in front of an audience. But they all felt the need to salvage a memory - a beloved grandmother, a summer's day on a river, a reconciliation with a spouse - by putting it in words. It seemed, whatever the quality of the outcome, a very noble thing to do.
