The Courage to Write

There is a piece of advice I frequently gave to my writing students:   Be Brave.   It would often be my answer to a wide variety of questions.   On the first day of class, I would give each student a short stack of index cards, and tell them they could, anonymously, ask me any question they wanted.  “Think about the person who will be evaluating your writing - what would you want to know about that person?”  I told them they could ask questions about the course, about me, my teaching, how I grade, or personal questions, and that I would answer any question I could as long as they were genuine and respectful questions.  After a few minutes, I’d gather up the cards, shuffle them in full view of the students, and then pull out a half dozen or so to answer that day, and continue that once or twice a week until all the questions were answered.

The questions varied pretty widely - did I like Jazz?  (Yes, but not that knowledgeable about it).  What made me want to teach?  (Nothing - I started as a favor for a friend, and have never looked back- I love watching people grow). What sport do I like (“Baseball is the only game”).  Did spelling count for the grade (not in rough drafts, but in finals).  And, then, the real ones:

• What do I do if I don’t think I have anything to write about?
• How can I keep from boring the reader in a personal essay?
• If you don’t agree with me, will it affect my grade?
• How do I get started?   I can’t think of anything to say!
• Why should anybody want to read what I write?

…… with that last one being at the heart of their fears…. “It’s just me,” they’d say to me in conference, “why should anybody else care what I have to say?”   There were a number of classroom and conference strategies I used to get them past their self-doubt, all of which boiled down to:   Be Brave.   

What do you do when someone you love needs advice?  You tell them a story about how you handled something similar, or how someone you know solved a similar problem.  You connect with them by showing them that all of us have something to say to the others, and that we all need to hear from others when we are not sure - we use words as a balm for each other, as a way to teach each other, as a way to warn each other - we do it every single day, verbally.  But when we face the blank page, the notion of putting what we have down to say in permanent form seems to cause all of our demons to rise.   

So, be brave - write about that one thing that scares you the most because it matters the most, even if you’re not sure you’re right - say what you have to say, listen to critiques, and do better next time.  Dare to be bad, learn from it.  

Slowly, over time, they would get it (or they wouldn’t), and their writings would start to show their voice, and, miraculously, as they were exploring those issues that were their individual passions, at the same time their sentence structure, their grammar, their syntax, all seemed to fall in line.  Clear thinking, it has been said, makes clear writing. My years with those students proved that to be true.  But, more than that, their courage in sitting with a page, never having had anyone tell them that they had a voice, that they had things to say, and putting their thoughts on paper for someone they’d barely met - that courage inspired me.

It is a bravery I struggle to achieve now.  I want to be brave on the page.  I want the words in each story and essay to raise the heartbeat of every reader, to spark a fire in their minds, to make them see their own world reflected, with all it’s beauties and dangers and their own responsibility for it.  I want to be daring with my pen, to show the world both as I see it and as I wish it could be, and to hold that up to others and dare them to look.   I want the gumption, the spirit, the daring to put in my stories and essays and poems the whole truth of what I believe, its power to either elevate us, or to defeat us.

And that, each day, as I sit down to face the page, is the battle I join.