Why writing?

Chapter Five of A Guide to Getting the Truth on the Page

New to this series? Start here.

“That you’re so bound up about writing tells me that writing is what you’re here to do. And when people are here to do that they almost always tell us something we need to hear. I want to know what you have inside you. I want to see the contours of your second beating heart. So write… Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker.” – Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things

Now that we’ve been up to this for a little bit it might be a good time to back up and get into some ’splaining. I wanted you to experience it a bit first though. What has it felt like so far to write the truth? Maybe you do this all the time in your journal or with a trusted group of friends, so it’s not that new or that big a deal. Perhaps you have no idea what you’re doing, or fear (or assume) you’re not doing it ‘right.’ Maybe your writing so far has taken you deep enough to unearth a detail or two that surprised you, a memory from when you were 9 that you haven’t revisited since it happened, or even a belief or preference you didn’t realize you had.

It could also very well be that you’re scratching at topsoil, turning the same chunks of dirt over in your hands, flinging pebbles out of the way only to find identical ones in the heap in front of you. There is so much of that to do in this process. Especially when we start, it can be hard to dive deep. We need to let the flywheel of our minds whir for a bit, to knock ourselves out going over the same narratives, the same stories we’ve told ourselves to get to this place. Armor is there for a reason, remember. It’s protecting something supremely vulnerable and potentially untouched. It’s not necessarily going to give up that easily, especially if we’re in our heads.

Hear this, please: it’s OK if you’re in your head! Good lord, how else do we survive in this world? We need to be smart and quick and clever and connect the dots and remember and anticipate. We need to have speeches prepared, resources at the ready, excuses to fall back on. Most of us have spent our lives working hard to craft an inner narrative that makes sense out of the senseless—out of that original, chaotic, unjust, and involuntary separation from who we really are, or thought we were. It’s hard to know anymore. Still, our minds strive.

So please, don’t leave your head too fast. Don’t pack up and move out of the space where all your stuff is, that’s given you shelter and rest, has transported you daily from point A to point B. That has so valiantly helped you survive. Honor that noggin. Let it say all the stuff it needs to say. The deeper dive will come—very likely sooner than you think.

That’s why writing—the ‘sooner than you think’ bit. No doubt there have been studies done and books written about the parts of the brain that get activated by the physical act of putting pen to page. How memories and insights and connections come forth through this simple act of creation—by making something out of nothing. There’s something supremely powerful about bypassing the tangled, impassible Shelob’s web of the rational, sense-making mind. I’m not terribly interested in reading or presenting those studies, but please feel free to look into it if you’d like. Let me know what you discover.

I don’t know the mechanics; I just know it works.

Here’s how I found out….

“What is this nonsense?” I whined inwardly as I scrawled a stop-start patchwork account of my childhood in a red 6”x9” 3-subject notebook. I looked around the little group of women, of whom I was the youngest at 22, propped on folding chairs and reclining on yoga mats in the middle of an echoey, dark-wood event hall. My coworker had invited me along to this mysterious event whose teacher, Nancy Aronie, a 6’-tall, wild-haired, effusive 60-something Jewish lady, welcomed us like the doting mother she was, like she’d known us our whole lives.

After not much ado she tells us to write a story about our childhood dinner table. I (like I’ve seen so many do since) briefly cocked my head in confusion, shrugged, and got to scrawling. It’s a tour through the cavatelli and raisin-dotted meatballs and balsamic-drenched salads, the way my chair was squeezed into a narrow space against the plaid-green-papered wall with the microwave stand to my right, blocking my exit. I wrote about how I’d sit there, trapped, my plate of food blurring before me with tears as my parents started to argue.

When we were done writing, we read our work out loud to the group. You’d think I was Joan goddamn Didion for the way this thing was received, the way my words were normalized, honored. Apparently how I’d simply laid out this one memory counted as good writing—amazing writing. Nancy led with her comments and the group echoed. This happened for everyone, of course—it’s how the whole thing was set up—but it made the feedback I received no less sincere or believable. I got braver, wrote my next piece about being an asshole in college. It too was declared brilliant.

After three hours, something had permanently shifted. My voice had come online. More importantly, I understood for the first time ever that it was OK to be me. That my stories, my life, were valid.

I got really interested in finding what else was in there. That day was the beginning of turning toward myself, realizing it was possible to live from whatever was underneath the armor. That indeed there was something there at all. That day I began the endless search for what exactly that was.

So… why writing?

I imagine that our suits of armor sit in gleaming, airless hallways of the mind, alongside all the polished trinkets and framed photos, awards and diplomas on pristine display. This hallway is home to the words that help define us: elevator speeches and lists of favorites and our tried-and-true anecdotes. It’s the stuff that’s easy to recall and speak about, that composes our public persona.

In writing—at least the way you’re invited to here—we might spend some time wandering that hall and admiring all we’ve collected. But we’ve spent so much of our lives there already, curating and arranging and dusting, and before long our pen pulls us to the end of the hallway, to that door we’ve glimpsed but haven’t wanted to open. When we finally do, we find stairs leading down to a dim, cobwebbed lair with a dirt floor. We may explore it a bit, peeking into the dark under the steps, watching spiders descend on gossamer threads from the creaky beams overhead. Then, over in a corner, we see another door. Passing through, we find ourselves in a dense forest that extends who knows how far in every direction. Scary as it might be, it also feels a little like… home.

We come to the page to bushwhack our way through those woods we were steered away from as babes, to find what we find, to keep our ears perked at every whoosh of wind, chirp of bird, snap of twig, letting the whole surround speak to us and keep speaking until we realize what we’re hearing is a voice—an actual human voice speaking in a language we recognize, saying unbelievable things in ways we had no idea we could say them. It’s our voice, speaking through us.

It’s not asking us to understand, just to listen. To witness. To record.

So. That’s what we’ll do.

When you’re ready… paper, pen, timer, begin.

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PROMPT: When I was small…

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As with the 8-Minute Essay prompts, you’ll make my day—and certainly not just mine—if you share your writing in the comments.

NEXT - Chapter Six: Just say what happened (like it’s that easy)