Do morality and writing go hand in hand?

Do morality and writing go hand in hand?

As a writer, I have always waited in front of the blank computer screen, fingers ready, waiting for “inspiration.” If I didn’t feel like writing, if I didn’t feel the creative juices flowing through my veins I just simply wouldn’t write. But if I feel some, dare I say it, “supernatural,” powers come over me, suddenly my fingers will tickle over the ivories.

So, yes, I’ll admit I do give into the so called naïve view of inspiration in the case of writing. Does that mean that my work is divinely inspired? And not only in the case of writing somehow coming from God above, is writing in general a moral act or can it be used for a moral good?

In the reading, “The Four Ages of Poetry,” by Percy Shelley, Shelley claims that poetry improves society. Because of poetry, and writing in general, imagination is boosted, fostered and grown. Imagination leads to ethics and ethics leads to perfection. If this is applied to the human race what a great world we would live in if everyone just read poems all the time!

So is this the case? Is Shelley in the right by saying writing leads to imagination which leads to good sound ethics? This would mean that poetry is intrinsically moral, that it holds some type of goodness that would affect anyone who reads it. This means that the poet would be writing down some great Truth with his pen. Do we give a human such credit?

Human. That’s a good word. Are humans not flawed? If you would agree that humans are flawed beings, that we ultimately fall short, would that not mean that our creations would also be inherently flawed as well? If that is the case, can we feasibly say that our creations, our “poetry,” are good and can be used for good?

When I sit down before my computer to write I don’t think that God is dictating my every word. I feel like he gave me gifts and has inspired me to use them and can inspire me to sit down and write. But yet it doesn’t make me perfect and it doesn’t make my work perfect. But just because I am flawed and my work is flawed doesn’t mean it is totally bad. I think there is some good we can find in our creations, especially literary creations. Like Emerson said, we fall short in the end, but hopefully our works are a tool to point something higher and greater and better than we could ever produce. We are all made in the image of God and are God’s creation, which is good, and have been given the ability to create ourselves, which is good. But we are human so ultimately our good won’t be good enough. We try and fail. But the important thing is that we try.