H is for Hope
“ I thought I had completely lost ‘it.’ That thing that gives our writing, our life, propulsion. Purpose. ”
I did an experiment last year. The premise was simple. Don’t talk about it. Be about it. You say you’re a writer? Well, then. Do it. So, I did. I kept my head down and I wrote. I dedicated myself to 365 days of writing, for at least half an hour.
This particular voyage was inspired by some cutting words I heard during David Sedaris’ MasterClass. He recounted how an aspiring writer asked if it was really, absolutely necessary to have a daily writing practice (like David is famous for maintaining), and David responded by saying something to the tune of, “well, I’m sure it isn’t strictly necessary, but I don’t know any writers who don’t write everyday—I’ve never read any of their books. They haven’t published any.”
Oof. That got to the heart of it for me, or so I thought. If only I’d write every day—well surely, I’d be a published author then, right? It sounded like a simple solution.
Dear ones, I wrote over 350,000 words last year. Three whole novels’ worth. I wrote on the best and worst days of my life. I wrote when my grandmother was dying. I wrote on the day of my beloved aunt’s unexpected funeral. I wrote on a plane to Mexico City. I wrote in Boston. Bristol. Chicago. Indianapolis. San Francisco. I wrote in the car, I wrote on my phone in the dead of night, I wrote inside, outside, and under the covers. I wrote through hiccups and giggles and tears and so, so, so very many tears. I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote.
And what did I publish? Even by myself, on my website? A scant handful of posts. To be sure, the idea of “What She Saw” came from that writing experiment, which was a concept for my backlog of interesting art photographs. Great stuff, but to this day, it remains a series with a singular entry.
Why? Why did producing so much actually make so little a difference?
I couldn’t answer this question until three days ago.
There was something pretty terrifying about those months I was sat in front of my screen, writing to fulfill a time limit, to impress a man who doesn’t know me, to keep a flippant promise I made to myself on the last night of 2023. Things got dark, fast.
Why?
I was writing without any purpose, or rather, my only purpose for writing was to fulfill a quota.
I don’t think there is much I created last year that I want to share with you all. Most of it was an internal soliloquy of my most odious shortcomings and pervasive fears. Cheerful stuff, right? To be sure, I wrote a one-off poem (and the beginning of a murder mystery). But the majority of my unstructured writing time was spent deep in the bowels of hopeless lamentation.
Why on earth is this so? What made this different than the time I used to bang out my first manuscript in 2017, which in itself is a deeply personal novel? Like my 2024 journals, that book is also full of a lot of those same tiny griefs and daily fears. So why am I so comfortable with that, and not with this? Why can that be a book, yet those journals need to be burned?
I know now. It boils down to one word.
Hope.
Or rather, the lack of it.
I spent 2024 writing with a distinct lack of hope. Now, please indulge me as I let this become a bit of a college entrance essay. Can we define hope? I think it is crucial to our understanding of what I mean. Also, for Christ’s sake. When I came up with the “lexicology” concept nearly a decade ago, it was meant to be a personal dictionary—a slipshod collection of twenty-six self-defining words. So, indulge me.
Hope. “A feeling of expectation or desire for a certain thing to happen.”
Desire. Expectation. I was writing with so much of that in 2017. A desire to be a helper, through my words. I know this will sound horrifically trite, but I truly started this journey because I just want to write and publish things to help create little pockets of joy and reflection for folks. If I can save someone from feeling alone, from feeling as though their experience on Spaceship Earth is meaningless, or worse yet, singular—then I have have done my job. I write because I desire to reach across time and space and hold people’s hands. When I wrote in 2017, I did so with the expectation to produce work that meant something. That was my only hope.
What I was writing last year was largely hopeless. Now, that’s not to say there’s no place for hardships in art. My God, I’d estimate that 75% of my creations are mucked and muddied in my own tears. So often, humanity’s greatest pieces of genius of are also painful accounts of immense pain, suffering, and trauma.
What made my latest accounts of suffering different, then? Well, there was no desire or expectation. No desire for change. No expectation to be helpful. No, it was a pure spiral directly into the depths of the void. I held a mirror up to my greatest fears for 365 days, but during the whole process, I refused to open my eyes.
That hopeless writing made me end my experiment on December 31st of last year. Instead of filling my coffers with inspiration, it made me scared to put pen to paper. I thought I had completely lost “it.” That thing that gives our writing, our life, propulsion. Purpose.
I’m experiencing a sea change now. The tides have shifted and I’m beginning to feel more like myself. More like I’m ready to be seen—to share my version of hope through these words. Not for admiration or accolades, but for the very reason I started writing in the first place—to be a compassionate companion, to be a voice that exists throughout the ages—that is willing to sit with you. To hold your hand. To be a person who can offer you the one thing we all need to make meaning of this place: Hope.