This is 2nd in a 5 part series of posts based on an interview with Patti Digh. Read other posts from the interview»

That time frame was really compelling to me, and I literally did start asking myself every morning, “What would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?”

It took a couple of years after my stepfather’s death. He died in November of 2003 and it was January of 2005 that I actually stopped what I was doing and started writing. It was January 3rd, I believe it was, that I started writing “37 Days.”

My answer to the 37 Days question was that if it were true—and who knows if it is or not—I would want to write down all my stories for my girls, so that they would have a sense of who I was as a human being and what I cared about, what scared me, what I laughed at, what I had screwed up on. And so, literally, that was the catalyst for starting some writing that I had never done before.

I mean, I would literally sit every day and write for eight hours. I described it to a good friend of mine recently as the most fulfilling, happiest time I can remember in my life. And I think that sense of fulfillment – that sense of happiness was that I had found what is mine to do in the world.

I had never really written down my stories or considered myself a writer. And I didn’t even so much then, but I knew that I had an internal, incredibly intense intention behind it, and that was simply to leave these stories behind for these two girls.

And I actually think that the single intention and the urgency that I felt around it was the thing that drove people to the work. I first sent it out to 12 friends, just to say, “Look, I want to keep myself honest about this, so I want to post an essay every week. Would you just email me if you don’t get it on Monday?” And those 12 people sent it to 12 other people, et cetera. And within six months, there were between 15,000 and 20, 000 people reading this blog.

What I took from that was that there’s just this shared, underlying motivation for our lives to have more meaning, that we’re all urging toward that like a plant to the sun, but so many other things get in the way. And I really do believe, I mean, this was the best example in my life it’s really the only example of having a very clear, solitary intention. My intention was not to create a successful blog. My intention was not to write a book. It was just to leave these stories behind for these two girls.

I said to my business partner David at one point, “David, how would you approach your art if you truly believe that your art could provide everything that you ever needed or wanted?”

If I really believe that my writing could provide everything that I ever needed or wanted in my life, how would I frame it differently? How would I approach it differently? I think that is a really compelling question, as opposed to “Wait until the proof is there.” If I had waited to see if writing this book would be a logical way for me to make a living, it would never have been written.

Patti Digh blogs at 37 Days. She is the author of Life is a Verb. Follow her on Twitter.

Published Tuesday, June, 30, 2009