YOU MIGHT AS WELL WRITE

Since you can't take it with you, you might as well write it down and leave it behind. It really does not matter what "it" is. It could be memoirs, it could be poems, it could be fiction the likes of which has not been read, ever. It is the writing of it, the springing it out of the teeming brain, the getting it into the public domain before the grave closes over you, that is important. No! I correct myself. It is not even important to get it into the hands of the public. Nice, but not necessary. Just bringing it into existence is the vital part.

The depth and breadth of the thoughts behind the writing don't count for much, either. Yes, it would be better to write from a large base of profound thought. Yes, it would be better to write from the 'moral high ground.' Yes, it would be better to write great literature. I would like to write at the level of the brightest philosopher, or at Shakespeare's level, or at the level of . . . fill in your own favorite names.

It is of such lofty aspirations that the failures to write are made.

I have a dear and long-time friend who hesitates for months to write a letter, whether to me or to someone else. It doesn't matter who. Mostly, he does not write because he is pre-convinced that his letter will not be up to his standards of excellence or, perhaps, to the critical standards of the reader. What is sad about that is the fact that he is an excellent writer with many worthy things to say, even when he is writing about the ephemeral events of the moment.

It has been my nightmare to endure long periods of 'writer's block' simply because I want to wait until some muse, or other, touches me on the shoulder and permits my thoughts of great moment to become words of immortal caliber. Better to write banal lines than to suffer the frustrations that come from locking the words, any words, away from the blank sheet, from keeping them in that private place that is the human mind.

Writing is a bit like muscle building: You can't build up your writing talents by only thinking about writing, any more than you can build up muscles by thinking about the necessary exercise routines.

Writers, write. Dilettantes think about writing, or talk about writing, or do just about anything except write. Forty, and more, years ago, I knew a man who talked incessantly about the book he was writing. When he died, no manuscript was found. Somehow, he got the social rewards from others that he needed by telling people that he was doing that most magical of all magical things-to him-writing a book. I don't recall what the subject of his book was, which does not necessarily mean that his topic was a trivial one. Without the written word, there is no memory hinge. Our conversations about his book have slipped from my brain, as surely as the ebbing tide at the Bay of Fundy.

Louis L'Amour told me, not too long before he learned that he had the lung cancer that took his life, that he had fifty more books in his mind. Since some of his last books were: "The Walking Drum," "The Last of the Breed," and "The Haunted Mesa," one can only wonder at the treasures of literature that he took to the grave with him.

Set aside each day to write. Whether it be a little or a lot, no one can take the products of your mind away from you if you make them manifest. Since you can't take your thoughts with you, as far as we know, leave them behind in the form of the written word. However easy or hard it is for you to forge those thoughts into words, the satisfaction of having done so, even if the results do not, at first or ever, measure up to your standards, will be more than worth the effort. Words are just as much a legacy as are other kinds of wealth.