How I Became a Writer (it wasn’t easy)

I didn’t like writing when I was a teenager and I didn’t think I could write in my twenties. In fact, I largely hated what I wrote and I desperately wished it were otherwise.

I was a latecomer to books. I read them as a kid because my school teachers required it of me. But I always preferred to be outside, kicking the soccer ball around or building firecrackers from scratch, which is what you could do when you lived in Guatemala where gunpowder was easy to come by.

I did fine in school because I worked hard, but I never really picked up books to read for fun. My parents read to me as a kid and I watched my two sisters devour books with indifference.

But books didn’t really do anything for me. Running cross country and mucking around on a bush hog with my teenage friends in the small town of Russellville, Arkansas: that’s what lit me up.

I didn’t discover a love for reading until my sophomore year of college. And I didn’t learn how to write a proper essay until the end of my time at the University of Texas. But by then I felt that it was too late, and I worried with a kind of panicky fear that I would be playing catch up my entire life.

Five years of seminary and two masters degrees later, I still disliked everything that I wrote. It didn’t sound right; it didn’t flow right; it was too much of one thing and not enough of another. And I found myself haunted by a fear that I would never get it right.

By my early thirties, I realized that I needed to make a decision.

Would I live in perpetual fear of failure? Or was I more afraid of waking up with regret in my fifties because I never *really* tried? I decided that I couldn’t bear to live with regret.

And now that I’m in my fifties, with my ninth book coming out and a tenth in the works, I remain grateful for the three habits that I took on in my fourth decade, which I talk about in this video.

Does talent matter? Yes—to a degree. Does ambition come into play? Most certainly it does. Is it possible to flourish without wise instruction, a dogged commitment to hone the craft, and a company of friends cheering you on? I don’t think so.

So hang in there, dear artist. You’re not done and you’re not alone. Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up.