The Question Every Writer Avoids

Elie Wiesel survived Auschwitz. He survived Buna. He survived the death march to Buchenwald. He survived the death of his father, who died on a wooden bunk three months before liberation.

Then he stopped talking.

For ten years, Wiesel said nothing about what he had witnessed. He became a journalist. He wrote about other things. He carried the camps inside him like a sealed room.

He knew how to write. He had plenty of subjects. But the one story that mattered—the one that had chosen him—remained unwritten.

Why?

Because he hadn’t answered the question every writer must eventually face: What is this for? What good can these words do? Why should I be the one to write them?

When Wiesel finally wrote, he wrote 900 pages in Yiddish. Then he cut them down to under 120.

Every sentence that remained had earned its place. No sensationalism. No exploitation. No preaching. Just a boy and his father trying to survive, told by the man that boy became.

He called it Night.

In the preface, Wiesel asked himself the question directly: “Why did I write it?”

His answer: “I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer—or my life, period—would not have become what it is. That of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.”

Not because he wanted to say something. Because he had something to say—and he understood what that something was for.

The book nearly disappeared. Publishers rejected it. The first edition sold few copies. Critics didn’t know what to do with it.

But it didn’t die. Readers found it. Teachers assigned it. One person handed it to another and said: you need to read this.

Sixty years later, Night has been translated into thirty languages. Millions of copies. A permanent scar on the world’s conscience—the kind of scar that reminds us not to repeat the wound.

None of that happened because Wiesel mastered craft, though he did. None of it happened because he understood the market, though he worked as a journalist and knew how publishing functioned.

It happened because he knew why he was writing. His purpose was so clear, so necessary, so deeply felt that the words carried weight no technique alone could give them.

Most writers never find this clarity. They produce book after book, technically sound, commercially viable, and somehow empty. They master how. They explore what. They never settle the question of why.

 

The books land and leave no mark. Readers finish and forget. The words do their job and nothing more.

Then there are the other books—the ones that stay. The ones readers carry for years. The ones that get handed from person to person with the instruction: “You need to read this.”

Those books share something. Their authors knew what they were doing and why. The purpose came first. Everything else served it.

You have something to say. Not a topic—something deeper. Some truth that found you, some understanding you earned through living, some knowledge the world needs and only you can offer in exactly the way you’d offer it.

The craft books can teach you how to say it well. The market books can teach you how to reach readers.

But no book can tell you what your words are for. That answer lives in you. It has been waiting.

Wiesel waited ten years. He needed that long to understand what his testimony required of him—what it could do, what it must do, what would be lost if he remained silent.

You may not need ten years. But you need the question.

Why do you write?

Answer that, and everything else follows.

If you’ve ever wondered what your words might wake in someone else, The Power of Authors explores what happens when you stop waiting for permission. You can find The Power of Authors on Amazon: http://bit.ly/3K6o8AM. If you’d like an autographed copy: http://bit.ly/4pgmzjM

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Start Your Publishing Journey with Expert Guidance.
Unlock Exclusive Tips, Trends, and Opportunities to Bringing Your Book to Market.

About Us

Kindly contact us if you've written a book, if you're writing a book, if you're thinking about writing a book, we can help!

Departments

My Account

Social Media

Payment

Publication Consultants Publication Consultants

Copyright 2023 powered by Publication Consultants All Rights Reserved.