"The Dastardly Dangers of Winning at Writing"

If you could only win at writing,
would it scratch your itch?

When you finally managed to snag the attention you never got,
or the praise, or the trust,
or the respect,
would you know at last who you are?

Haven’t you seen how the surge of victory
inevitably rolls down, down
into a starving doubt?

Love, it is far worse for the winners.
They shudder,
procrastinate, and stutter.
Their eyes are wide,
their veins full of cortisol,
their countenance reads:

“What did I do?
How did that happen?
Can I do it again?
Do I have it in me?”

They pull the veil down like Moses,
afraid that their glory is fading.
If you could know them truly,
you would want to tend them, not be them.

Stop wanting their burden.

Stop wanting a hunger that is worse
than than the hunger you already carry in your gut.

Blessed are you who have both words and questions.
Today you have a God who will meet you in their intersection.

Blessed are you who have been taken into the desert,
far from the commodities of the city.

Blessed are you who reach for truth in privacy
who write for three honest men,
or twelve,
or for a little child.

Blessed are you who create rough drafts, who revise,
who read your manuscripts aloud in some chequered wood
before a living God. (The groves were His first temples.)

This is the land of milk and honey.
This is your masterpiece complete.
You have already arrived.