Dear Writer, You Are An Artist

Stop doubting that you too, create the beautiful thing.

There’s a little bubble of anxiety in your chest as you sit to send off this week’s pitches. You believe what you’ve labored over for days is a great read but what if your editors don’t think so? What if the internet doesn’t think so? And Black Twitter? Forget it…

Hey, writer… You’re an artist. I know that sometimes you get caught up in the rat race for multiple income streams and in the midst of a pandemic, you’ll write any old thing at this point to help make those ends meet each month. But I beg you to put it all down, step back, and reconsider. Remember when you did it for the love.

Remember the concepts marching to and fro in your brain. Remember the words gushing to one another about making their debut onto your page. Remember the sentences waiting to be strung together by your pen and keyboard. They are a gift.

You are a gift.

You take the circumstances we each believe are unique to us and you mold them into that which is both nuanced and universal.

You tell stories — our stories. The main squeeze. The marginalized. The mother. The murderer. The misunderstood. The miraculous. You excavate and marry narratives with intrigue and empathy, meekness and strength.

What you purpose to do with words is a salve, a lighthouse, a rescue chopper. It can be considered holy. A form of art that takes on many different lives and fills the cracks, crevices, dips, and divots of our lives in ways we didn’t know anything outside of us ever could.

What you do takes all that is abstract but true and shapes something concrete and awe-inspiring.

Whatever you do, remember that The Sistine Chapel is a part of infinity and so are the words that describe it.

You make Basquiat AND Bambara proud.

Love the words you use. Revel in how they come to you.

You are a gift. You are an artist.