Why I write
on my journey to the glories of written expression
Tl;dr — I write because of what the Lord has done.
No, but seriously. Writing is a craft and potential engine for both beauty and utility. It has to be honed, nurtured, and cultivated. It does not particularly come easy, and its general dislike amongst students usually starts at a young age. Many who write didn’t always do so. I’ve heard countless people say they didn’t even realise it was something they would enjoy until later in life.
On the flip side, I’ve met—and have friends—who have always enjoyed writing little stories since they were very young. They, or their parents, have countless little handmade books or reams of forgotten stories collecting dust somewhere in the attic. For these people, writing has always worked for them, and they have long revelled in it.
I used to envy this latter group because I can’t say the same. I wished that I could have looked back and pointed to little me writing furiously in the annals of some long forgotten purple sparkly notebook, to be able to pull out daft little stories for my future children to be able to chuckle at.
But I now glory in the fact that this was not true for me. Because the Sovereign Lord always has a better plan. His ways are higher than mine, and that is a delight.
I write because He has graciously pushed me towards this method of expression before I was even aware of it.
When I was young, probably starting around age 9, my father would have me get ahead on a few areas of math and language arts over the summer. (I remember doing integers on the beach one year as a consequence lolllll.) He had a yellow binder that had some writing exercises and different essay formats to work with. If I remember correctly, the first summer we worked on narrative writing. I wrote about the time we visited family friends in Sacramento. The following summer, I think I had to write a persuasive essay. I still remember the little Spartan composition books my sister and I wrote in.
I did not have a great affection for working on these essays at the time, but I am so grateful that it was just one of many areas that my father pushed me in (kindly, might I add). The same man who taught me to read that I might read the Word of God and know Christ was the first to encourage deeper writing skills.
I remember not enjoying writing from 6th to 8th grade but still knowing that I was doing what was required of me and earning high marks on each essay. School and learning, by the grace of God and the educational upbringing of my parents, was rarely difficult and always satisfactory and rewarding as I gained new knowledge and advanced well. Thus, I liked that I was writing well, even if it wasn’t my favourite part of language arts.
This feeling grew as I started high school. I recall enjoying essays on Antigone, Romeo and Juliet, and An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. I handwrote some of these in a notebook before typing them up—I wonder if I still have that thing somewhere :’)
And then, I had the joy of experiencing the canon event of having an English teacher that the Lord used to change my life. (That class as a whole, actually, changed the trajectory of my intellectual and spiritual life in ways that I wouldn’t fully realise until much later, and it is but one of many wonders that is demonstrative of God’s glorious providence in my life.)
Mrs. Gleason in A.P. Rhetoric and Composition my junior year of high school—what a star. A.P. Comp is a class that is designed to teach students how to identify rhetorical devices used in speeches, essays, and other non-fiction pieces. And, if you have a really good teacher like Mrs. Gleason, it is aimed towards making you a better writer, and not just a student who can write an essay identifying how Ralph Waldo Emerson’s use of strong syntax and effective diction communicated his Transcendental ideals and individualism in “Self-Reliance.”
I started that class with what I would now characterise as near-passivity towards writing. I ended my junior year with a new and burning love for composition. It is this class that made me realise that I could write non-fiction, and didn’t have to be a fiction-writer in order to be a true writer.
I had tried journalling and keeping a diary before then, sometimes consistently for a short season, but mostly irregularly. I started a journal the summer after junior year and have kept one ever since. Without realising it, I began to exercise my writing muscles regularly, and that has truly made all the difference.
A.P. Comp taught me about the beauty of writing: I learned about how intricate and layered it is, how intentional one word could be, or how repeated phrasing could affect the message of a piece. I began to read like a writer. Tolkien and Lewis’ work, for example, became even more beautiful as I was realising that I loved their stories not just for their themes, characters, and worlds, but for the way those were related through the written word and stylistic choices.
And then college came. I was originally an English major, wanting to one day teach the same class that had changed my perspective. I took three English classes the first year, and all of them made me better. I would switch my major to History before sophomore year started, but that didn’t stutter my growth as a writer—it actually made me better, especially the last two years of college.
Writing as a student of history meant that I got to engage with historiography: the writing of history and the study of historical writing. I continued to better my critical thinking skills as history became even more colourful, and I was learning that it could not be viewed in a simple cause-and-effect model. History is cyclical, complicated, and even non-linear. The many eras of human history intertwine and overlap far more often than we realise. I developed research skills and learned how to pit various perspectives, including my own, against the myriad historical accounts of one singular event. I wrote my favourite paper of all time: “Dunkirk: The Reality of the Miracle,” and others like it.
I even got to take one creative class for each of my last two years. One was focused on creative non-fiction, and the other was a general creative writing course; both improved my skills. One of my upper division general education courses was on American literature, and I enjoyed my professor so much. He was far and away the best I had my junior year, before I transferred to Liberty (online) for my senior year. His writing assignments and feedback truly challenged and strengthened my abilities.
My transfer to Liberty was encouraging for many reasons, but I’ll limit myself to two here. First, I finally had so much choice when it came to my courses. I wanted to take as many American history classes as possible, since this is the subject I’d like to teach at the high school level. Secondly, and most importantly, I loved that almost all of my professors were aware that historical writing has long had a tendency to be dense and not always enjoyable to read, and they urged their students to write history beautifully as well as factually, and I have aimed to ever since.
The last three years of college as a history student, meant that I wrote more than I ever did as an English student. I never stopped writing, truly. Whether it was short, in-class essays (something I hadn’t had since junior year of high school), or long very long term papers (supplemented by shorter papers throughout the semester), I wrote all the time. The more you write, the better you get, just like with most things. I finally began to feel like I was truly a writer those last two years.
And of course, I have had my blog since my senior year of high school. I left it alone for the first year of college, but I returned to it and remained consistent from sophomore year of college to the end of 2021. Regularly writing creatively and academically for an extended period of time was transformative.
I also began my journey to becoming Reformed during 2020. Wrestling with heavy theological topics for the first time, and facing so many of my spiritual fears, made me a much better Christian and thinker. I began to formulate a way to defend what I had come to believe, what I now knew to be wholly biblical, and the best avenue for that was, of course, writing. My siblings and I wanted to leave our childhood church and find a more biblical resting place, and we were going to present this to our parents. With all that I had learned so far—about writing, theology, and church history—I felt equipped to do this properly. By the grace of God, we did this "perfectly” according to my father, who does not dole out words wantonly or imprecisely.
If you can think, and speak, and write, you are absolutely deadly.
Writing is thinking formalized. You gain the ability to think by first learning to write very, very carefully. Then, when you can write effectively, you can do anything you want, and no one will stop you.
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
Freshly Reformed, one of my new, greatest joys came in my writing. I would find that writing even the shortest of spiritually-themed vignettes came to me so easily and wonderfully. A simple three to four sentences centred on the perseverance of the saints, for example, flowed freely and effusively, with prose that felt lively and pretty.
This makes so much wondrous sense. Because of course it would come easily. After spending most of my 20 years wrestling with the most important part of my life—my walk with Christ—it is not surprising that a spiritual shift would change my writing. It is not surprising that when the Holy Spirit illuminated my understanding of the Word—bringing me to a fully biblical perspective on God’s sovereignty, soteriology, pneumatology, and even eschatology—that the foremost engine of self-expression would transform as well. It is not surprising that I now have so much delight and satisfaction in writing on the things of God.
And that is truly what has brought me to Substack, after four years of living before the face of God with such spiritual rest. I have always loved my blog and hope to maintain it, but I have long known that I would benefit so much from an intentionally (almost exclusively) spiritual creative outlet.
I do sincerely aim to glorify the Lord in all I write and share here. May He continue to better my craft for His honour and the magnification of His name. Thank you again for your support!