Writing Life

By Nichole Giles

As the signature at the end of all her emails, my good friend G. Parker has written, “Writing is life.” And while most writers generally agree, at Authors Incognito, we tend to take that statement very literally.

I believe I am guilty of taking this fact for granted. After the conclusion of the LDStorymakers conference, we were blessed with the addition of several new writers to our group. Those of us who have been members since last year (or longer) have become accustomed to checking our emails every day to see a question or comment from at least one of our many writing friends. But, these questions or comments don’t always pertain to writing.

It was one of the new additions—Rebecca Talley—who mentioned the existence of other lists out there that allow writers to only comment on writing. And I thought, how sad for them.

This is not the case for our group. Our discussions vary, according to the day and season, and have covered a multicolored range of random topics. From pets and gardening, to parenting and laundry, cooking and cleaning, and health and happiness. Our topics have even been known to lead us down the road to religion and death. Granted, we all belong to the same religion—kind of a prerequisite for our group. The only topic we try to stay clear of is discussion of politics, since political discussions often turn into debate.

Writing is life. It gives life, it feels life, it becomes life, and it is all about life. And the thing is, you cannot write about a life you have not experienced. Every bit of writing, in every genre and every topic, has a piece of someone’s life. As writers, we are required to share pieces of our lives, and often the lives of those around us, with our readers. That is the reason some of us choose to write.

We share with each other, because we are writers, who are writing about life. If I knew them—I would ask the moderators and rule makers of those other groups; what part of life doesn’t have to do with writing?

When you figure it out, let me know. Because I cannot think of a single thing.