From Writing as a Sacred Path:
One mark of a warrior is the knowledge that what she does can make a profound difference in the world. Because of that power, warriors are trained never to act recklessly or in malice. The writer, too, must live with that awareness. Like the warrior, you possess the power to alter the course of people’s lives—for anything you write, no matter how trivial it seems, might change some reader’s beliefs or impel her to act. That power makes you honor bound to write wuith the utmost integrity. If you are a writer, you are engaed in a battle for truth, justice, and peace, whether you want to be or not. This is an awesome responsibility, but learning from the warrior, sutdying his practices, and following his code can help us rise to the challenge.
Of the four paths I explore in Writing as a Sacred Path—shaman, warrior, mystic, and monk—it’s the warrior that intrigues me most. Maybe that’s because it’s the one I’m least like. I’m not physically strong. I don’t consider myself a particularly courageous person. I wouldn’t last five minutes in battle or even boot camp. Yet, the image of the writer as warrior fascinates me.
When I was working on Writing as a Sacred Path, I read extensively about warriors and the warrior archetype—about what it means to be a warrior. I paid attention to warriors in folklore, fiction, and popular culture—such as the Knights of the Round Table, Jedi Knights, and the Klingons of the Star Trek universe. I was interested in why people are so fascinated by these fictional warriors. And I was also trying to figure out why I even wanted to write about writers as warriors. I kept wondering why was I comparing the two? Did it even make sense?
After much waffling on the topic, I sat down and started a list of qualities that characterize great warriors in myth, history, and literature. Courage was the most obvious one. A warrior has to be brave to face the foe. Great skill at the arts of war was another quality that came up right away. A warrior must train long and hard, and continue training for a lifetime to be prepared to go into battle. That requires another of the warrior’s qualities—enormous discipline.
But the greatest warriors—the ones of legend—have qualities that go beyond these. They have honor and integrity. They never fight out of hate or malice, or simply because they enjoy victory. They fight out of a commitment to truth, to justice, to doing right by those who can’t fight for themselves. When I read about the warriors who people emulated and honored, it was that commitment that stood out the most.
When I finished my list of warrior qualities and read it through, it became perfectly apparent why I wanted to write about the Warrior Road. Because all of those qualities are ones writers absolutely must aspire to. We might not go physically into battle, but we sure need courage to face the blank page, our personal demons, all the struggles and difficulties of the writing life. If we want to write well, we need exquisite skill developed through years of training and practice. We need the discipline to sit ourselves down and write, even when we’re tired or depressed, when the ideas won’t come, when we’re discouraged or frustrated and would rather be doing anything else in the world. And, above all those things, we must have honor, and a rock-solid commitment to truth.
I still have the list that I made when I wrote about the Warrior Road in Writing as a Sacred Path. It is posted next to my computer, where I write every day. It is there to remind me of the qualities of the warrior-writer. I can’t say I live up to them all the time. But when I feel myself getting whiny, irritable, or distracted—and especially when I start making excuses for not writing–I read that list. I have a simple question I ask myself: Is this what an honorable warrior would do?