Piper's Pen and Prose: The Writing Life

I have stopped writing, and that is a big relief. I intend to renounce it for good, if I can live in solitude. I realize that I have perhaps suffered more than I knew from this ‘writing career.’ Writing is deep in my nature, and I cannot deceive myself that it will be very easy for me to do without it. At least I can get along without the public and without my reputation! Those are not essentially connected with the writing instinct. But the whole business tends to corrupt the purity of one’s spirit of faith. It obscures the clarity of one’s view of God and of divine things. Thomas Merton