Made to create

I am currently working my way through Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider in preparation for the creative writing class I will be teaching in the upcoming school year. I have now slogged my way through more than a few books about teaching writing, and while I've gotten a good idea here and there, they have been rather uninspiring. So when I picked this one up (because it was the next on the stack), I was not expecting very much. I think that is probably why the bit I did read today struck me so forcibly... I wasn't expecting it.

I took a lot of notes, among them were these quotes:

"Not being able to write is a learned disability" because we are all storytellers.

"Genius often emerges when there is intimate support for it."

"Genius is hidden everywhere; it is in every person, waiting to be evoked, enabled, supported, celebrated."

"We are created in the image of the Creator. Creating is what we were designed to do."

"You are an artist. Accept it, celebrate it, and practice it for the rest of your life."

"Genius cannot mature without intense practice, intense commitment, and intense solitude." 

Much of what she details in the beginning chapters is encouraging people to see themselves as having talent... genius... even though having survived the school system, many people feel exactly the opposite. It is rather a grim indictment of the method of teaching writing. Being taught to write shouldn't be something you need to recover from, but I'm afraid it is. 

It certainly sums up my own story. By the time I had graduated from high school, with a 4.3 GPA and a full ride scholarship to any Arizona state school, I looked good on paper, but was utterly and totally convinced I could not write. So I didn't write. Well, I didn't write except when absolutely necessary because it was a class assignment. When I did, because it was the only time I wrote, I did not do so well on those assignments, which in turn just cemented the belief that I couldn't write. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Those of you who only know me through my writing might find this a little difficult to believe; after all, I churn out thousands of words a week here and in the other places I write. In fact, if you go back to the very first posts on this blog, way back in 2006, you'll find that J. wrote a good portion of them. I can remember feeling very tentative about putting words out into the world when I knew I wasn't good at it. It all became a easier as I wrote more every once in a while, sometimes going weeks before sitting down to write something. 

Then, a couple of years after we started this blog, I decided to give myself a challenge: to write a post every single day no matter what. I had read enough that the best writing advice anyone could give was to just write, so I decided to test it out. I really did think of it as a sort of experiment. I'll admit those first few months were tough. I wasn't used to looking out for possible blog material at that point, and often when I sat down, there was nothing in my head that I felt was worth sharing. (I still sit down with no idea about topics, but have become a little better about looking at the day and finding something. If there is a plethora of photographs, you'll know that a topic never appeared.) In the end, the advice was correct. Writing was the way to become a writer. 

I've written here before about how I do not actually teach writing to my children. I am also not teaching them that writing is onerous or something they are not good at or something other people do. I give them rich language and vocabulary. I give them time. I give them space. I am perfectly okay with my children being idle. How else are they going to know themselves and what they think? How else are going to have time to come up with interesting ideas? How else are they going to be able to closely observe the life around them, make connections, and develop a sense of wonder? Writing is merely an outpouring of all these things. 

But this isn't just written so that parents can be encouraged to see the education of their children differently. I really want you, an adult, to spend some time thinking about what ideas you have about yourself that perhaps aren't really accurate; that are merely a reaction to something someone said to you once that you have hung onto. Do an experiment. Practice that thing you don't believe you can do. Practice it every day if you can. I gave myself the goal of a year. If I made it through the year, I could set it aside if it wasn't working. Clearly it worked because here I am. Take a chance, make a change, try something new, and leave behind those old voices in your head telling you that you cannot.