Spending all day yesterday on planes gave me plenty of time to reflect. I was on my way home from the Florida Christian Writers Conference, where I had encountered questions about the ethics of writers.

I agree with what John Gardner presented in his book On Moral Fiction, that whether or not we writers aim to be teachers, we are. And what we teach has consequences.

At the conference, student writers, aside from matters of craft and marketing, were presented with strange ideas such as that writing isn’t just about making money, and that we could do well to find contentment in our work, rather than in our bank accounts or egos, and we’ll only find aggravation in comparing our success to others’. Though I’ve been to dozens of conferences and my job was to teach, I also learned, and came away feeling blessed and inspired.

And a new wild idea came to me.

Here goes: the world only has room for a finite number of popular writers. Ergo, the more of us who seek and present the truth and grow to become masters of the craft, the less room will remain for those who would write any piece of nonsense that pays.

Jerry Bumpus, a wonderful friend and teacher, told me long ago that if we get good enough, we’ll break through the competition and succeed. Not that many fine but unsung writers aren’t better than many successful ones. Still, at some point in their growth, if they keep growing, live long enough, and put their work into the world, they’ll get discovered and read.

So:

If enough principled writers dedicate themselves and thereby become good enough to displace the perpetrators of easy answers and other lies, they can transform the world.