Greetings my angst-ridden novitiates of Our Lady of Literary Communion. Today’s sermon, as always, concerns recognizing and overcoming the obstacles to becoming one with our inner writer and a conduit to that fickle goddess we call The Muse. Specifically, I want to talk about the sin of overthinking. The wages of that sin are blank pages and wooden prose where blood and breath, joy and sorrow, life and death should reside. Perhaps, my brothers and sisters you feel that you are unworthy to ask anything of The Muse as you are now. Perhaps you think that if you study enough of the prophets she has spoken to before—If you wander through the desert as a disciple, and flagellate yourself with every literary misstep you have made—The Muse will recognize that you love her, and your devotion will move her to love you back.

I say to you now that you sell your goddess’s love short to think she requires anything of you but the heart that beats in your chest and the soul the guides your love. I say to you now that all the tools you need you possessed before you ever picked up a pen or stroked a key. The only thing that you need for The Muse to embrace you in her love and inspiration is the story you have inside you right now. You have been telling stories since you first decided you didn’t want to go to sleep at bedtime when you were four and recounted to your mother the day at the sandbox and the little girl with the green bucket, and how you made pie and pancakes and got married and Barbie was justice of the peace.

I see some of you in the congregation chuckle and shake your heads. Surely, reverend, you say, surely it is more complicated than that. My teachers, and my critics and my friends talk about metaphor, and setting, and theme and motivation and I say unto you my brothers and sisters these things are like the bones and the feathers of a bird. When the fledgling stands on the edge of the nest does it know that its bones are hollow? Does it know its feathers grow in such a way that they offer resistance on the down thrust and surrender on the up thrust? No. It only knows it must leave the nest. Its nature tells it that it must leap to live. It only knows it must fly. And so, The Muse stirs in us the need to write, to tell our tales.  We must stand on the edge of the page and story is the leap we must make. We only know we must write.

Tell me, when you meet an old friend, or come home to your family after you have taken a vacation or a trip to the store and have something you think is interesting to say to them, do you first think, “what is my underlying theme? What is the setting? Who is my protagonist?” Did you go to your sister to tell her of the doctor you met on the beach in St. Kit’s who collected Steuben glass like she did and pause to think, “is it too much of a coincidence that I met a person a thousand miles from home that has the same hobby as my sister? Is it unrealistic that he remembered seeing her at an antique glass convention because she is six feet tall and wears tie-dyed peasant skirts exclusively, and he got a wistful sort of longing look in his eye when he thought of her?” Of course you didn’t, because it was true, and it will be interesting to your sister and you will tell the story flawlessly because it happened, and you have been telling stories since you could babble in the crib.

But, Reverend Tom, you say, I want to write a novel, a movie, a poem, not relate anecdotes about my vacations to my relatives. And I say to you what is the difference, my child?  Is the difference only that the Steuben-collecting doctor and your sister are real and the story you want to tell is not?  I say woe to you ye of little faith. The Muse asks nothing of you but to cast thy breath upon the water of your story and let your characters live as your goddess has let you live.

Do not think that I revile the meditators and the ascetics who secrete themselves in their library caves and contemplate their literary navels. To devote oneself to your craft with all your being is an admirable and noble endeavor. However, I tell you that The Muse would rather you come down from the mountain and share what you have learned. Who does the hermit help but himself? And does he even help himself if what he learns is never implemented. What good is the most noble thought if it is not made material and shared? Faith without works is dead.

So, I say to you in closing, do not come to The Muse with old psalms you have memorized, but improvise a song of your heart to her without audition. Do not seek her praise because you can detail the hero’s journey. Show us the hero that is within you. And finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in every writer who has moved you, for they have added a truth to the world that can free our own. Yet, never think that you will find your story in another writer’s heart.

Just write, my friends.

Happy Holidays