THE GIFT OF GOOD WRITING

Give yourself or a loved one the last selfless gift available to give

In a hyper-commercialized season saturated with a psychological blitz to purchase increasingly disposable “things” for yourself, friends, or loved ones, I recommend a far more life-long and subversive departure for gift-giving: good writing.

There is nothing I can think of that I need that would warrant the start of a list let alone an entire letter to Santa. Of course, there are practical items like tools or Tupperware (which is always in an oft-unreciprocated lending program with family) and sooner-than-later-needed larger items like appliances or metal porch roofing that have been on a to-get-when-we-can list for most of the year — but those are things that we’re putting money aside for or will purchase when the need becomes an emergency (“I have nothing to put all these leftovers in!!!”).

We don’t need another TV, gaming console, or any more electronics. I don’t need more hunting or fishing gear (blasphemy!!!). There are more pairs of shoes, boots, and sneakers in the garage than we have storage for — the same can be said for jackets, hats, and gloves. Clothes barely make it back to dressers and closets from the folding table because the dressers and closets never empty in the first place and it’s easier to grab what’s needed from the folding table. There are two full baskets of unpaired socks gathering dust as I write this.

We don’t need things.

We do, however, need good writing.

My wife recently gave the 8-year-old a decades-old, generational hand-me-down copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “You’re old enough now — it’s time to introduce you to Huck Finn,” she told him after dinner a few nights ago. The boy is a good reader, but also a Nintendo Switch and YouTube fiend. Even so, he took to it immediately and was laughing to himself within ten minutes.

I remember discovering Tolkien, the Hardy Boys, Choose Your Own Adventures, Huck Finn, Jack London, and even some Hemingway as a young kid. I remember being fascinated by stories of expeditions into the Yukon and Northern Territories. I remember finding One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test on my parents’ bookshelf, and Patrick McManus and Chuck Adams in Outdoor Life and Field & Stream as a teen. These were rites of passage for me, one and all.

Good writing is, I’ll say it, the last front in the battle against being irrevocably overrun by technology and social media. Good writing will never fail or need to fall back. Good writing leads to good questions and better ideas. Good writing keeps our heads up and our feet under us. Good writing connects the disparate and disenfranchised. Good writing keeps us honest. Good writing makes us care and get involved.

Good writing is the only thing keeping us human.

I’ve been spending more time reading stories here on Substack and, as a result of teaching writing and lit, been revisiting the volumes on my bookshelves and restoring those I’ve loved and lost through the years. No, I haven’t been writing much, but I am feeding. Something that more of us need to do more of.

I urge all of you this holiday season to feed yourself, your friends, and your loved ones with good writing. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry. Novels, memoirs, anthologies. Hardbound, paperback, online. Give the most selfless and empowering gift left to give. Return policies be damned.

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To get started, consider joining the journeys of any number of fantastic writers I’ve found and recommend here on Substack. I also wrote about a handful of great books in my last post.

To sweeten the pot, I’m offering a 20% discount on an annual subscription to Glorious Mayhem through December 31. My book, Revision of a Man, is available, too. Your support of my writing is appreciated more than you know.

I’m sure I’ll write something else between now and the end of the year, but in the meantime — be well.