Writing is a tough life.

Granted, it’s not like I have to dodge bullets or duck for cover when planes fly over. I don’t have to dig my food from a dumpster or deal with droughts or famine. By comparison to some, in this great big world, I have a very cushy life. By comparison to most, even.

Writing isn’t necessarily a life or death struggle physically, but it can take a toll on you emotionally and spiritually. And, well, yes… physically, too.

Ask Hemingway. Ask Plath. As Poe.

I have great admiration for writers. All of those who can face the blankness before them, the existential nothing that demands to be filled with the very soul of the writer—it’s a brave bunch. I’m honored to be counted among them.

Recently I saw this tweet online:

You become what you write

— HUSTLE & CONQUER (@hustlenconquer) February 9, 2021

Five simple words. No punctuation. One of the biggest ideas I know. It says everything I could ever want to express about writing, in far fewer words than I could force myself to use in its expression.

Writing is a tool—my favorite tool, my hammer for every nail—that can illuminate the writer as much as their subject. It can define the explainer even as they explain. Handy stuff. A powerful force.

I’ve told you before, I’m a “discovery writer.” I pants my work. I make it up as I go. I really never have any idea what’s going to go onto the page until I read it, much the way it works for the readers themselves. So it’s as much a surprise to me as it is to you, when I say something clever. It may even be a bigger surprise to me.

The power of writing to shape and mold our lives is simply profound. If you think about it, writing is that very thing that we often wonder about—the answer to the question, “Can thoughts really become things?”

They can. They do.

You’re reading through my thoughts right this second. The aftermath of my thoughts becoming things is right here for you to explore. It’s incredible.

And it can be life changing.

Hopefully it is so for the reader, more often than not. But I don’t count on that. When I write, it’s with the intention of changing only one life: My own.

Everyone else is a bonus.

But to this idea that you become what you write about, I want to share a single thought:

Writing allows you to shape who you are, which allows you to shape the world within your sphere of influence. If you want something, if you need to change or to grow or to become someone else, writing is the tool that will help you do that. Writing down who you are and who you will become will be an important first step. Writing down what you want will make it more real to you. Writing down the world as you would like to see it will open your eyes to it as it unfolds.

I recently pulled together a short story collection I plan to release, and titled it “Lies that Tell the Truth.” Short fiction is, effectively, an untruth, at its core. But stories can, and often do, contain the kernel of a truth that may be profound to the reader. They’re a way for us to explore dangerous ideas with a safety net. They let us think like someone else, experience something new, understand something complex.

Writing does that without demanding you do anything more than run your eyes over the page or screen. How wonderfully profound is that?

I love it.

I have always loved it.

Good writing can and does change the world. It starts with the writer, it leaps from their mind to that of the reader, it spreads with that reader’s love and enthusiasm for the work. Good ideas pass. Bad ideas die on the vine.

If you want to change the world, change yourself. And if you want to change yourself, write.

That’s my advice, anyway. Let’s see if it takes.