Writing has Given Me a Life

By Shawn Smucker

I am in bed and I decide to warn him against it, to encourage writing as a hobby but not as a passion, not as a means for making a life.

Yes, that’s what I’ll tell him.

I walk down the stairs and the boards are creaking but he has his earbuds in so I stand at the bottom of the stairs and consider the best way to break this news to him, that writing is no way to spend your days. I watch him as he wrestles with this character or that scene or this conflict. I recognize the hum of a new idea, the speed of his fingers on the keys, the aura of confidence that glows like his computer screen.

And I can’t move towards him, I can’t warn him away from this writing thing, because seeing it from the outside, seeing him writing, I am reminded of all the things that writing has given me. The relief from inner turmoil. An outlet for anger or love or hate or confusion or longing.

A life. That’s what it is. Writing has given me a life.

I do not turn around, but I take one step back up the steps, still facing my son. And another. And another. He catches my movement in the corner of his eye. He pulls one earbud out and looks at me expectantly, as if I have something to tell him.

“Yeah, Dad?”

But I wave him off.

“Nothing, buddy. Keep writing.”

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Shawn Smucker is the author of the young adult novels The Day the Angels Fell and The Edge of Over There, as well as the memoir Once We Were Strangers. He lives with his wife and six children in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You can find him online at www.shawnsmucker.com

The Writing Path

By Shawn Smucker

There is something I can count on now, when the lights are out and the house is still and the city outside my window is quieting. I know that if I get out of bed and creep through the shadows, walk down the stairs, and peer into the living room, my son will be hunched over his laptop, biting his lip, scowling to himself, cracking his fingers, and writing. He has done a thing that has been wonderful to witness: at an early age he fell in love with books, and then he fell in love with stories, and then, before I knew it, he turned into a writer.

There are worse things your son can turn into. For example, he could want to be a builder who constructs strip malls in the Amazon rain forest, or create those loud toys for children that don’t have an on-off switch. He could turn into the kind of person who puts the toilet paper roll on the wrong way or designs the kind of robots that will one day take over the world. But he is none of those things. He is a writer. And that is a good thing.

Right?

I mean, there are easier ways to live a life. “Get a job,” I could say, “a good paying job that has benefits and health insurance. Always insist on the health insurance.” Or I could list the benefits of submerging in corporate America, with its six-figure executive paychecks and winner-winner-chicken-dinner mentality. Success there seems so easy to measure.

The truth is, the writing path is one of heartbreak and insecurity. It is a winding, tortuous route that can leave you questioning not only yourself but every decision you have ever made in life. It is the path of rejection and disappointment, one that never seems to have a destination.

Writing always asks more of us. If you are going to write, you have to give more of yourself than you ever imagined more of yourself than you thought even existed.

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Shawn Smucker is the author of the young adult novels The Day the Angels Fell and The Edge of Over There, as well as the memoir Once We Were Strangers. He lives with his wife and six children in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You can find him online at www.shawnsmucker.com