Writers, writing

Today I tried to convince my Life Writing students that they are writers. 

Some of them don't have to be convinced--they already know they're writers--but others just need an upper-level class to fulfill a graduation requirement and assume that a course characterized as Creative Writing will be a breeze. They know they'll need to write, but that doesn't mean they think of themselves as writers.

I remember the moment years ago when I told a professor I wanted to be a writer and she said, "You are a writer." Powerful words! I'd like my students to feel that power, and one way to achieve it is to make them say it out loud. I asked them to respond to the roll call by completing the statement I write because....

They write because it unleashes creativity, gives them a sense of accomplishment, provides control over chaotic circumstances. One student said he writes because he has to do it to get a degree, and another said, "It makes me happy." Good reasons both.

We spent some time talking about what it means to have a Writing Practice, the disciplines that can unleash ideas, and the need to give the mind some time to wander. I urged them to set aside time for boredom in their lives, to regularly unplug from media and other inputs and just let the mind be. I don't know how many will take my advice but I felt compelled to tell them.

And then we worked on some invention techniques to help them choose a topic for a short memoir project. We put events on a timeline and then chose one event to explore in more detail, constructing a cause-and-effect chain to multiply the entry points into writing about the experience. Then we did some free writing starting from one of those entry points--and then we did a second round of free-writing starting with the gaps in the chain: What's missing? What were you afraid to write down? What does no one else but you know about this experience? 

I don't know what they wrote about but they wrote and wrote and wrote, which, after all, was the point. For 50 minutes in my classroom today, my students were writers. Let's hope they can carry that experience with them through the rest of their lives--or at least until the end of the semester.