If we take writing as an act of creation we immediately realize that at least half of it is a conjuring act that manifests things that are mostly immaterial and invisible into things that are material and visible. Writers enter the ethereal domain of thoughts, imaginings and ideas and draw things from it that next appear as squiggles on a page or a screen that can be touched, read and, in the case of a physical book, can even be tasted, provided you are willing to bite one.

This makes writers gods of a sort. Words exist. Everyone can see them. We created them. Books can be touched, bitten (!) thrown and burnt. They contain the words we wrote. Words forms sentences, paragraphs and chapters. Each clustering groups abstract meaning into evidently manifest classes. The very act of classification creates a structure that enriches the underlying meaning that supports it.

Words, then, the building blocks of meaning become the foundations upon which structured knowledge enters into our real world. And it all happens because a person (in this case, me) thinks about something and then writes down their thoughts.

Amazing, right?

Right. Which is where the paradox creeps in. In order for all this to happen the writer has to pull off the impossible. We have to actively reduce the uncertainty we encounter so we can better understand something new, which we then present with such confidence that the reader can accept it.

The process is the same regardless if you’re writing fiction on non-fiction. In the case of the former we call it “suspension of disbelief” and in the case of the latter we call it credibility and expertise of the writer.

The paradox is that if the confidence we felt was 100% real then we’d have no problem with how we feel the moment our work is released upon the world. A chocolatier, for instance, doesn’t sit in the corner, feeling like a nervous wreck when their chocolates are on the shelf ready to be consumed by a chocolate-hungry public. Nor does, I imagine, the factory worker who puts together parts of a Ford car go home at the end of the day wondering if his work is going to be admired and loved by the car-buying public.

Yet, writers, the moment our work is complete have to go from a frame of mind of total immersion in our subject and confidence in its quality to one where we feel distanced, incomplete and vulnerable. At that point the variables we don’t control: readers’ mood, experience and expectations, reviewers’ context and sensibilities, the vagaries of fashion in reading material and external events that may draw attention away from a book, are so many that it becomes exceedingly easy to slip into a mode of helplessness and panic. Angst and depression are the next stops on that path.

While the transition from virtual god to virtual supplicant to the goddess of fate is easy it needn’t be necessary. Sure, as writers we expose part of our self every time we write. And yes, a bad review can hurt as much as a good one uplifts. Yet, it is impossible to appeal to everybody. The best writing in the world and the most carefully produced book can still miss their mark and sour a reader’s mood if the circumstances are wrong or the reader is mismatched with the book.

Just like chocolates have to be produced and cars need to be made there will always be a need for books to be written. The writer who feels this knows how to handle the paradox of the transition from ‘god’ to ‘mortal’ and back again without, each time, losing sense of who they are and what they do. It takes thought though and a far from small measure of a true sense of purpose.

Intentional: How To Live, Love, Work and Play Meaningfully