Some excerpts from Echoing Silence; Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing

One of the tools that we writer's use to improve our own skills is that of reading other writings.  So for this purpose I am enclosing some excerpts from Echoing Silence; Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing

There is nothing wrong with praying to be, as a writer, as everything, obscure, unknown.

There is everything wrong with praying to be a bad writer.  

I would pray to be the best writer of a certain time and never to know it, and to be also the most obscure. Saint Therese probably never considered herself a writer.  Bloy was the best writers in a time when there were some good writers; and also the most despised, one of the most obscure; "L'Invenable."

 But I am not here to think about being a writer; except I am here to learn humility and how to do God's will and serve Him the best way I can, and writing has something to do with all these things, accidentally, because it happens that I like to write, and try to know how. (10)

 And further on page 16.

 I seek no face, I treasure no experience, no memory. Anything I write down here is only for personal guidance because of my constant gravitation away from solitude. It will remind me how to go home. Not to be like the man who looked in the glass and straightaway forgot what manner of man he was; yet I shall not remember myself in such a way that I remember the person I am not.