write something

"We need a story" - Alvarez

I have spent the past 20 years in front a computer just trying to write. "Get up before dawn and write 60 mins before the brain is awake,” Susan Atefit-Peckham taught me as I studied creative writing. “In that time is the story." 

She would coach us on this practice encouraging us to write whatever we could and read it aloud. We would then pick one sentence or word and use that to segue into the next story. All these years later the practice has faded in and out of my memory. It might be one of the most difficult things I have tried to embed. When I think about the idea of writing for a set period of time (what some might call journaling) I am left with an "I don't know."

I don't know why I can't seem to sit and type out a steady stream of words on a daily basis. I don't know why it alludes me. 

Most recently, I went to see Julia Alvarez speak at Hope College as part of the Big Read. Alvarez, among many things, wrote about the Mirabal sisters who helped overthrow a 30+ year dictator in the Dominican Republic in a book called In the Time of Butterflies. It's a fictional account of a real-life story, woven between her interviews of the remaining sister and Alvarez's own creativity. 

As writers, "We are the world's most power force for change,” she told the crowd. “By writing we can show courage in small increments which allows the narrative to tell a story. And that story become a way to understand. To understand the self and to understand other around us; to understand the world.”

She gave two tips to be brave: 

We must Read. "It's so simple" she says. By reading, we enter other worlds and return with a new idea. Stories takes us somewhere and we return differently. Books allow us to become someone else. They allow free expression and creativity. We are transported by just simply reading. And by going somewhere we can see new things which can then be quilted into our own experience.

We must Write. Everyday. Sit and write. Put the words in your mind down on paper Every. Single. Day. Someone else may just want to be transported into your world, becoming someone new.

So I will return to the writing. Every. Day. 

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me.