Write, write, write

It is quiet in Llaregyb, just the bible black fishing boat bobbing sea...Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas, the poet extraordinaire, Irish by birth. Somehow those lines came back to me this morning as I sat at the desk, hoping for some fresh inspiration to write.
I remember George Bernard Shaw saying how he contributed to the Life Force by disciplining himself to write every day. Somehow I picked up on that and write something wherever I am, at the airport, in a hotel room, at home, in a train, in a restaurant, and I remember how I used to write from an early age, even in my room as a school boy.
When the teacher gave us five topics to write an essay I would write about all five and let her choose which one she wanted to mark. And then in Matric I wrote excercise books full for my friends to read - just because I wanted to write. I have never stopped writing.
My shelves and my metal trunks are full of notebooks from an early age. Whenever my granny told some of her unforgettable stories about the life of Afrikaners in Vrede, and in Brixton, I would go to my room and scribble them down. I intend to publish a book about Oum Jannie's stories and I want to turn it into a one-woman-drama with my daughter Yve who is expert at communicating with an audience as an actress.
Pilate made a statement that bears repitition: what I have written is written. Nothing can change that. What is not written is forgotten. There is so much in life that is forgotten because nobody wrote it down.
My stint as a journalist for the Afrikaans newspaper Beeld taught me to be accurate with words. I was a court journalist. If you do not give an accurate report you could be arrested. So every word counted. It disciplined my writing.
We have given out over 350 000 free Harvest Times newspapers over a period of two years just before the change of the century. I have written copiously, manuals, books and sermons as well as short booklets and tracts.
Somewhere someone will read something I have written and it will change a life it will sow a seed it will be a blessing it will meet a need.
Napoleon's statement the pen is mightier than the sword bears repitition and wherever I go if people tell me their stories I encourage them to write, write, write. And if they don't I keep notes in my little Moleskine notebooks of the outline of what they shared with me.
It passes the time to write and it is not a waste of time either, because it is preserved for posterity.
The man that encouraged me to keep a notebook was Camus, the nobel prize winning novelist from Algiers and France who was also a goal keeper for France in his hey day but died in a tragic car accident at the age of 40. He was an existentialist and some of his philosophies are not what I believe at all, but his lucid mind and his turn of phrase and keen observation inspired me for a life time to always keep a notebook handy. Because what you did not write down you forget.
If parents would remember to do this they would enjoy the treausre of their children's antics even more. Photographs do not do justice to any memory. It is a two dimensional reminder, whereas a written paragraph preserves the feelings on paper and gives perspective on multi-levels to preserve for ever.
Thanks to the Jews who preserved the writings of Moses and the Prophets for us and for the churches that preserved the writings of the Gospel writers and the epistles fo the apostles. Where would we be if it wasn't for them? We would be nowhere at all.
So in all my writing I comfort myself with the thought that someone somewhere woudl read what I have written and it would serve to improve their lives and benefit them far beyond my comprehension today.
There is much going on today on the Internet, Facebook, Twitter and all, but in the end writing is a key to preserving the present and to remind us of the past and help to predict the future.
What have you written today?