How to Write Like there is a Universal Truth

Good writing and the innate reward of discovery

This Weekend Edition of Ecstatic is by Claire Nelson. This month’s features are brought to you in partnership with Fuller Seminary.

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“Such deep knowing about our true selves is surely what John is pointing to when he says, ‘It is not because you do not know the truth that I am writing to you, but rather because you know it already!’ (1 John 2:21). Otherwise he would not have had the self-confidence to write about spiritual things with such authority, nor would I. We are all drawing upon a Larger Source, the unified field, the shared Spirit.” — Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

Any art that we’d call good possesses some unnamable quality that exists far beyond the bounds of its technical components. Its sum is larger than its parts, and it has that je ne sais quoi that speaks to some part of us we don’t understand but feel, and feel deeply. Take bestselling novels, for instance—they seem to embody some phenomena, sentiment, or feeling that is experienced by many in the author’s broader society. The real substance lies behind the book, almost as if it were borne of something beyond itself and its author. Upon reading it, it’s like you're brought into an awareness of something you already knew. 

Is the author of such a book brilliant? I don’t think so. When we call an artist brilliant, we are suggesting that their art marks them as a special person, one uniquely capable of producing art worthy of celebrating and thus uniquely worthy of being celebrated themselves. Creation can become a show of ego, a means of exaltation. Matthew 23:12 reads, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” I find this verse to have so much practical truth. If, for example, I’m ever really trying hard to make someone think I’m funny, I inevitably become much less funny than usual. I think this is because when I try to socially exalt myself, I direct my mental energy away from the conversation and towards the maintenance of my ego. Instead of thinking about whatever I'm talking about, I begin thinking about another person's perception of me, trying to maximize an image of myself within their mind. Naturally, the thing that I really should be trying to do, which is simply to converse, suffers in quality. 

My first major writing project showed me an alternative way to carry myself in performative pursuits. It took place in my senior year of high school. I applied to a lot of colleges, which required me to write a total of approximately fifteen thousand words in supplemental essay material. Many college applicants approach the Common App essay with the same fear: that they haven’t lived through something extraordinary or devastating enough to make for a brilliant personal essay. I, like them, understood writing to be a process by which the writer comes to the paper with some profound insight at the ready, then finds suitable language to render unto to the reader what they themselves already knew. It was a simple translation—and a rather boring one.

Claire Nelson

However, as I began to write about my experiences, it was often as if I uncovered things that had always been there but that I’d somehow never seen before. I was for the first time experiencing my experiences, seeing and feeling their timeless, indelible wisdom as opposed to understanding them as dead, two-dimensional facts. It was not so much an act of creation as a process of discovery. I would start with one fact, follow all the strange, surprising trains of thoughts that came after it, then suddenly find myself transported somewhere that I’d never been before, somewhere that I certainly couldn’t have taken myself if I’d tried. Yet this new place always possessed a deep resonance that was entirely familiar to me, like it had always been here, quietly undergirding everything.

In an interview on the Podcast Can I Say This At Church, religion and spiritual commentator Diana Butler Bass was asked to describe God. She spoke about her vocation as a writer, saying “I always hold myself accountable to letting my words carry a reality that moves beyond the words… The very best thing that my words can do is cause someone to read what’s on the page and then stop and feel the presence of what’s beyond the page.” When I heard this, I had to pause the podcast. It hit me like no description of writing ever had. This was it—the craft I’d fallen in love with—and someone else had experienced it just as I had and named it perfectly.

Theologically, I understand this to be among the functions of an incarnate God. Sometimes I am able to feel my own soul as something real, like I’m not just my biology or my psychology, like the universe really isn’t absurd or random, like there is a real Truth alive in everything, and in fleeting, earthly moments I can peer into it. That is what writing enables me to do.

I generally experience these states only when I’ve written quickly and without distraction, that is I have created conditions for a psychological flow state to emerge. When I write under these conditions, the writing I produce tends to elicit much more praise than writing that I produced in a more forced, grinding manner. The praise inflates me every time, but more and more I come to feel that the real prize is the process of discovering, that no form of extrinsic reward could ever live up to the feeling. After I’ve been swept up by writing, I kid you not, I can listen to the same song I’ve heard a million times and feel it like I never have before. It’s as if I’ve been brought into close communion with some Life Force, some unified field, some shared Spirit. Perhaps that’s what it means to be exalted.

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Claire Nelson
Student & Writer

Claire is an undergraduate student studying English, and she has written for the Minnesota Daily and the Pioneer Press. Enjoy her feature essay in Ekstasis here: ekstasismagazine.com/blog/2022/ultimately-insatiable

Thoughts on Claire’s article? Leave a like and share in the comments!

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