Why do you write?

I’ll get to the pressing question above in just a moment, but first: a recap of my writing life since I dropped off the blog in May.

• I’m published! Granted, it’s a critical essay, but I’ll take it. Sidenote: Mason’s Road is a great way to get your stuff seen and possibly published without any submission fee! Reading period opens soon; in the meantime, check out the awesome stuff in this issue.
• My writing class at the library ended in May, and they’ve asked me to teach two workshops this summer: one on found poetry, one on horror/thriller writing for teens. The best news of all: this will be my first paying gig as a writing teacher. I hope to pick up the fiction class again in the fall with compensation as well. Fingers crossed!
• My favorite memoirist and I have made a pact. At least once a month, we have to send out a story or essay to literary journals and magazines. I’ve never actively tried to get published (except for my above credit), so this is a somewhat scary and exciting endeavor. I’ve tagged her blog here in hopes that she’ll feel inspired and/or pressured to update.
• I’ve just returned home from my last summer residency in the Fairfield MFA program. I graduate in January. Holy hell.
• All of this excitement coincides with my final semester; I have to write and polish my creative thesis–the first 135 pages of my novel–by Halloween. No pressure!

I think that’s all. Now, for the question of the hour.

“Why do you write?”

One of my favorite writers and teachers, Rachel Basch, posed this question during our residency workshop last week. She said we should determine the answer, distill it down to one sentence, and paste it above our work space at home to keep us motivated. A great idea, no doubt.

For me, though, “Why do you write?” is one of those questions that, as soon as it’s asked, wipes my brain clean of any answer; the same is true for “What’s your favorite movie?” and “What are you thinking?”. I’ve had some time, now, to think about this, and I figured my groping for an answer would be a great way to get back up on the blogging horse.

Blogging horse.

I write because I always have. I was raised in a house where my parents pushed me and my siblings to do whatever we desired. I tapped, I skated, I sang, I acted. If I’d cared enough, I could have pushed myself to make a living out of most of the things I tried as a kid, but none of them stuck. What was always there, what I never even realized I’d been doing all along, was writing.

The first thing I did when we got a computer was figure out how to do columns in WordPerfect and make a full-color newsletter for the kids in the neighborhood. I would force my brother and sister to take my reading and handwriting classes after school, with the help of a mini-whiteboard and old schoolbooks. I wrote a multi-chapter murder mystery in elementary school that beat out the middle school for best story and an essay about my hero–my dad–that landed me a meeting with Ruby Bridges. I typed up letters to the editor for my father and went on to write controversial editorials for my school paper on abortion, same-sex marriage, and our high school civics program.

I never put two and two together. I went off to college and all but forgot about writing. It wasn’t until my father passed away that I remembered. When something like that happens, it clears your decks of anything superfluous and leaves you only with what matters most. French and politics fell away, and writing rushed in. I wrote everything down: every memory, every question, every fear, every dream. It hurt, but it felt good. For the first time, my brain and heart were working together. A light bulb switched on somewhere, and I found my soul again.

So, that’s why I write. Why do you?

New Journey, New Blog.

I just finished my first residency on the way to receiving my Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Fairfrield University, and it seems my fellow MFA’ers are overwhelmingly fond of Blogger. In an effort to keep up with them and also let them know how I’m doing in the writing department, I’ve decided to create this blog. It’ll be just for my struggles and (hopefully a few) triumphs as I work towards my first completed manuscript.

I’ve never even tried to write a novel before. The closest thing would be a murder mystery I wrote in sixth grade: The Murders of (on?) Mirror Lake. Damn, I was proud of that thing. Sure, it was totally predictable (spoiler alert: the next-door neighbor who seems really nice…isn’t! Dum dum dum!), but it had chapters. Somehow, my eleven-year-old self was perfectly comfortable in long fiction. Since then, however, I’ve been strictly short, if not flash. I went in to the residency thinking I’d do a collection of short stories. But as I got feedback from my workshops, all I heard was “we need MORE from this story.” I realized that what I thought were short stories all these years were actually 10-page summaries of novels. This leaves much to be desired, as you can imagine.

So, I’m off to Novel Land, a country I know little to nothing about. But if my sixth-grade, Catholic school self wasn’t afraid, why should I be now?

Guess I should go try to write a few pages on my actual manuscript now that I’ve blown an hour creating this thing. Cheers!