The novelist Thomas Mann said once that “a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” I love that quote and laughed at it, although I will say that writing has never been all that difficult for me.

Excellent writing is another matter.

I started writing letters to my local newspaper when I was 10 or 11, and once I saw my name in print, I was off and running and never stopped.  I finally have the luxury of looking back on my writing and wondering what it was all about.

My constant writing is not driven or shaped by perfectionism or a passion for literary niceties and language. I have never cared what the literary snoots thought of me, and once I realized that they gave no thought to me at all, I began to be free.

I’ve written 26 books and am proud of my books, but until I started writing on this blog in 2007, I didn’t know what freedom was for a writer like me.

My books were all collaborative, as corporate publishing books are, and editors, publicists, marketers, talk show hosts, booksellers and critics all had a hand in shaping what I wrote. I never once wrote a book that was not changed or altered by others.

The irony is that none of my publishers or editors would ever allow me to write or say the things I write on my blog every day. Every single thing people say they like about the blog are things that were not allowed into my books.

On my blog, nobody shapes what I write but me, that is a blessing and a curse. But it has also been good for me and my writing. This is a Czechoslovakian Spring for me, this is why I love the blog so much.

I can’t claim sainthood. The blog was something of a marketing decision at first.

In 2007,  as the Great Recession loomed, I sensed that my publishing world was about to collapse.

So I started the blog to support my books. Once I started writing, I abandoned that goal. I never wanted the blog to be about selling books or anything else. I turn down ads almost every day. I want the blog to be the story of a life, for better or worse, nothing more, nothing less.

My writing is driven by two things: a fierce curiosity and the use of writing to heal me and save me and help me understand who I am and what it is that I believe. Before the blog, I wasn’t sure.

At first, my writing enabled and screened a chaotic and bewildering life. Today, it reveals my true nature to me in a way I can’t merely do by myself, without my fingers or keyboard.

Writing grounds me and brings me closer to sane. I’m often surprised by what my fingers say. I rarely re-read what I write, and when I do, I am often shocked.  Did I write that? Is that what I believe?  Sometimes, I am delighted; sometimes, I am horrified. Same with you all.

I don’t know where my ideas, insights, and choices come from until I see them on the screen in front of me, or a book or magazine. But my mind has paid my bills for a long time, now I am grateful for it.

There is something deep inside of me that drives this engine; the spirit down there uses my hands and mind when he/she/it chooses.

I stumble over my insights and ideas; they are not the result of calculated or even coherent thought. I have no idea what I am going to write until I see the words in front of me on my big screen.

If I had to boil it down to one thing, I would say that writing is my search for reality and truth. The reality of my life and the truth about who I am and what I believe. Am I discovering, inventing, or unconsciously borrowing some of my ideas when I write?

I think the answer is yes, yes, and yes.

I like to give voice to things that other people feel. I am happiest when I am writing something that makes other people think. What I most want is for people to say, “yes, I know that,” “yes, I feel that.”  I don’t want to tell people what to think or persuade them to the point of view.

The best thing is: “you make me think.” Don’t ask me about my health, ask me if I am living my life fully.

If what I’m writing does not feel like the truth, I stop and start over. I will never lie to myself or anybody else again. I ask myself two questions every time I sit down at the computer: “where am I right now?” And “is it the truth?”

I seek a happy marriage between truth and reality and words. Words must honor truth and reality, and by that, I don’t mean grammar and spelling and misplaced modifiers, I mean words that convey experience and reality.

The best and most important experiences and ideas mean nothing if I use the wrong words. There is much confusion and anguish these days about truth. I worship the notion of truth, it is to me the most powerful and enduring force next to love.

The truth will endure, and it will prevail, in my life and in the lives around me. If you don’t believe, believe God. He said so.

I seek to be a spiritual person and an authentic one. Sometimes one reality collides with another, sometimes they all come together as one.

We each have our idea of treasure.

In religious terms, wrote Parker Palmer, the treasure for the writer is God. In secular terms, it is truth and reality. I have a friend, a musician, who claims to speak to God all the time on her daily walks, and he helps with her choices and decisions.

God does not speak to me, I respect and admire him, but we are not close. He stays out of my writing, and as far as I know, my choices. And thank God for that. God’s editing and input would be a lot worse than my publisher’s marketing department.

How does one argue with him?

My words are the vessels I choose to convey what I know and believe, and I do pray to God sometimes that it is the truth.

For me, there is also the humbling of my life, the many missteps, and mistakes that persuade me the truth is only my idea of it, I can’t ever succumb to the fantasy that I know for sure what the truth is, or that I am a blessed messenger to the world.

That’s too high up for me.

Lately, I’ve found that my words can be used to do good, and that has lit the lamp for me. If God is behind that, bless him, and bless him again.

I just always remind myself that the treasure I seek is flawed and imperfect and powerless by itself, and it ought never to be confused with the treasure itself.