A Letter to the Ones Who Write
Writers write because they must.
Not for fame. Not for algorithms. Not even for applause.
They write because the words don’t leave them alone.
Some write loud — voices that split the air like thunder.
Some write soft — threads of breath barely loud enough for the page.
But neither is better. They are the same coin, both sides, in full.
There are writers who enter the world already mid-sentence —
natural scribes, born with ink on their palms.
There are poets who translate silence —
uninvited, but undeniable.
There are aspirers — watching, learning,
hungry to become what they imagine a writer to be.
And there are the market-minded —
chasing trends, crafting hooks,
measuring resonance by return.
Each has a place.
But only some carry that quiet ache — the one that says
“If I don’t write, I won’t know who I am.”
“If I don’t write, I don’t know how to live in this world.”
And then, there is Poe.
He wrote to eat. He wrote to stay alive.
He wrote from the gutter and aimed for the stars,
though he rarely saw either clearly.
He birthed the short story, the detective,
the speculative whisper of science fiction.
He wrote tales soaked in dread,
and poems that held grief like a lover too long gone.
His own life was filled with death —
his wives, lost one by one —
but he kept living, aspiring, writing.
He kept writing from himself,
from the lives too common to be noticed,
except in how he saw them.
He was edited without consent.
Mocked while breathing.
Cited only after burial.
He died barely known, only partially respected,
but his shadow came to dinner generations later —
quoted, canonized, dissected, misunderstood.
He was loud because he had to be.
Desperate not for vanity — but for visibility.
And still, he wrote.
Even when he was starving on the street.
And then, there is Dickinson.
She wrote from upstairs.
Not just in her house — but in her head.
Her poems were rooms — compact, peculiar,
exquisitely furnished with silence.
Publishing, she once said, was “as foreign to me as Firmament to Fin,”
and yet, still she reached.
Reached through letters, through guarded friendship,
through slant rhyme and punctuation that knew more than it said.
She did not hunger for fame like Poe,
but she did wonder whether poetry, left unread, could still matter.
She questioned the echo, but still sent out sound.
She lived a life pressed inward —
unmarried, unseen, often unread.
But the poems kept arriving,
as if the language itself chose her and not the other way around.
She wrote toward an audience
that perhaps she never believed would come.
Yet here we are —
and still,
she wrote,
even for the audience of self.
To the Natural Writer
You didn’t choose this. It arrived as a birthmark, inside and out.
You write not for a reason, but because the words insist.
You don’t always want an audience. You just want the page to stop looking empty.
You’re already enough. The pen knew that before you did.
To the Born Poet
You feel in metaphor. Ache in enjambment.
Life hands you salt, and you shape it into song.
You weren’t taught this. You just breathe this way.
Let your strange rhythm stay strange — it’s where the music lives.
To the Aspiring Writer
You squint into the light of other voices,
wondering if yours belongs there too.
You study the form, chase the feeling,
tinker and discard and revise.
That longing isn’t weakness. It’s the beginning.
Keep reaching. You’re closer than you know.
To the Commercial Aspirer
You count the clicks. Watch the trends.
Sharpen the hook until it glints.
But somewhere beneath the packaging, a story waits —
one that still matters when the numbers don’t.
Don’t lose it chasing applause. It’s why you began.
And so, I return to where I started.
I don’t write for the market.
I don’t write for applause.
I don’t write to convince anyone that I’m a writer.
I write because I have to.
Because silence itches.
Because thoughts stack like bricks
until a sentence lets them fall.
And yes, I share what I write.
Not to be discovered, but to be accompanied.
To say: if you recognize this feeling, take the next seat.
I’m not waiting for you, but I welcome you.
That is the grace of writing —
not to be seen,
but to keep seeing.
Not to be validated,
but to remain true.
That’s where this ends.
And where I always begin.
Afterword:
Edgar Allan Poe lived, and lives on, eternally.
Emily Dickinson lived, and lives on, immortally.
I don’t write for others. I write because I must.
I don't need validation as a writer,
because I have always been one —
Naturally.
So I have written. So I have said.
And so, this is who I am,
and who many of you are too.
The ones who Write.
Copyright June 2025 M. W. Van Dyke
All Rights Reserved
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