An Open Letter to My Father From an Aging Novelist
Dear Dad,
I write these words, which will likely never reach you, not to hurt you or humiliate you, or in anyway show that I do not love you. I’ve been blessed to be your daughter, but there are some things that weigh heavy on my heart, and I wish to release them now. They are, in their own way, leaving, disappearing, dissolving, but it is time I am done with them so that I may move into fulfill of my purpose.
When I was young, I had but one dream: to write. I had but one love: novels. To me writing - poetry or short stories or my loftiest dream, a whole novel - was the highest achievable form of art. Books shaped and affected me, and as I grew, I wanted first to tell stories and to move people, then later to shape people with my pen.
But you always said no. I do not begrudge you this now, but for a long time I did. Some of the greatest hurts in my life were caused by you in my youth. You, not allowing me to study English. Me, finding out years much too late that I could have studied at my favorite writing school, with some deception from a family member. And the worst moment of my young life, you, telling me you were not proud of me when I stayed home to try my hand writing a novel - my dream crushed.
It is not your fault. Your scientific mind was allotted proportionately to me as well as mom’s literary one, and my aptitude in math was stunning, considering I cared not a bit for it. Even later, I returned to school, time after time, always too scared to pursue my passion, but instead, squirreling along numbers in neat, clean, lines. It made me feel smart, but it did not make me feel worthy or useful.
And just as you, my father on Earth, pushed me into your direction, more frequently, my Father in heaven pushed me His way.
You see, Dad, Writing is his purpose for ME. I cannot change that. I have tried to lose it, dodge it avoid, or turn it into something else - writing for profit, for advertising, for employment. But these forms are not my calling.
God has called me to an artistic calling - creative writing - in the worst of times: When there is no money and no living to be made from it, when Amazon and Barnes and Noble chains have taken profit out of the rare published author’s hands, when the internet and TV and iPods have reduced reading novels to a quaint affectation.
So here I am. I have asked God to take away my desire for completing my degree in this direction, and instead, I have now come to find that studying my craft is the one way to truly achieve the heights I desire to scale as a fiction writer and, maybe, one day, a poet as well. I have a school. I have courses. I have a gift. I have to practice, hone, tame, expand, learn, train, and amplify this gift.
I can do nothing else.
Dad, it would be my dearest dream to hand you my successful novel, but you are sick now and novels take time and care and crafting. I’m afraid I’ll be too late for you to ever be proud of me as a writer, but it’s not too late for me to feel that pride for myself.
