Writers Change the World
A Love of Reading and Writing
Hello friends. I took a week off last week to recharge my batteries. I am considering changing the day I publish my newsletter, but I haven’t decided what day of the week I will choose. I will keep you posted. I hope all is well with you. Here is this week’s post.
I have mentioned in several of my previous Substack posts that I teach freshman composition. Through the years, I have often told my students that writers change the world. I told them this to attempt to get them to understand the importance of learning to communicate well, and that the essays they do in our courses are to prepare them for writing more than just essays, and that language is powerful. I have also told them many times that I hope, by the end of the course, though they may not come to love writing, maybe they will no longer hate it. I believe that has actually happened a few times.
The examples I mention when I say that writers change the world are usually famous people who have written important things like Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein who revealed the information behind Watergate, or Rachel Maddow, David Frum, and Christopher Wiley, who have all written about political corruption. I also discuss some important books written about historical atrocities such as the Holocaust by William Styron and Victor Frankl.
These are obviously significant works, but it occurred to me that I should also mention writers who changed the world another way.
I should include works that are of no less importance than those mentioned here that elevate the reader, illustrate beauty and joy, books that celebrate and elevate. Writers who produce works that change the world with beauty, beauty created with poetry and prose that lifts the reader into a different dimension are world changers also, maybe even moreso. These types of writers change the world by building an alternate universe a reader can choose to visit through the mastery of language that brings the reader on adventures, fun, joy, happiness, and sadness in exciting locations with characters becoming new friends and heroes, leaving the writer satisfied and smiling or crying at the end.
These writers, the ones who take me to all kinds of places and show me different cultures, histories, customs, and beliefs are my favorites. Some of these are: Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Harper Lee, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Coyle, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dean Koontz, David Baldacci, Stephen King, Michael Connelly, Steven Pressfield, Anne Lamott, and many, many others. I have a varied interest which stretches across literature, nonfiction, and genre fiction. Writers have changed my own world, as much as they have changed the world we live in.
I suppose the reason writers love to write is because, deep down, we love to read other writers and visit their worlds. I’ve told many people over the years that I love to read because I can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone, including time travel, so my desire to write emerges from my inner self so that I can aspire to touch other readers as I have been touched.
Each writer has a unique voice, and all should have the opportunity to be heard. Despite the negative things I have read about the publishing world and how hard it is to sign with a big five publisher, how hard it is to make a bestseller list, how hard it is to market and sell books, and how hard it is to make a living at writing, writers are going to write. That makes me happy because as long as there are books, and as long as I am able, I will read them and let these writers change my world as I attempt to do the same for others.
I will also continue to convey my love for reading and writing to my students with the hope that I can prove to them, even if it is only one, that writers change the world and we always need new voices to add perspective to our ever-changing world. After all, art makes life more livable, and writing is art.
Karen Taylor’s first attempt at changing someone’s world:
Learning to Respect my Strut: My Journey as Woman Warrior