“Write For Your Life” by Anna Quindlen
Writers of every media (newspapers, magazines, books), all struggle to get words on the page. Sometimes writing and publishing is quick and easy, but often writers are blocked, or they query, only to get numerous rejections. Still, you own those words, they are gifts–in a diary, a letter, a stream-of-conscious page.
But the best part of being a writer, the part we all must do to insure we have something to say is: WE MUST READ. Because to create, we need experiences, thoughts, ideas, the opinions of other thinkers; we need to expose ourselves to a variety of ideas, let them simmer, and then write down our own.
READING/WRITING
Wherever I’ve lived, Chicago, Des Moines, California–I have within days, found the nearest library, signed up for a library card, making numerous trips to sign out books for reading joy. I also buy books, people gift me with books, but then, whenever we move, I have to go through my shelves, donating scores of titles. If I still had every book I have ever owned, they would fill an entire room, or more. In this house, there are books in every room, even the kitchen–okay, cook books!
WHAT I READ...
On my personal list would be: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arthur Miller, Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, Charlotte Bronte, Louisa Mae Alcott…also, Joan Didion, Anne Tyler, Anna Quindlen–just for a start.
The last three wrote both fiction and nonfiction. Quindlen’s latest publication, WRITE FOR YOUR LIFE, is so needed in a time when so much word creation is done for us. Sometimes it’s difficult to create an email, because the computer wants to splice in ready-made phrases. That’s not creative, Quindlen insisting that our words must come from the heart, the soul. She starts by quoting another amazing female writer, Flannery O’Connor: “I have to write to discover what I am doing.” I LOVE THAT. But let’s think about that.
I feel that way, when the world is crowding out birdsong and the sound of silence. When our society is weeping from death and illness. My immediate reaction has always been to write (from girlhood and into the future). The results: really bad poetry, entries in numerous diaries; (on a more positive note) letters to Buckingham Palace (I probably wrote six, always got an answer). Then in high school and college, I took Creative Writing. Did my teachers love what I wrote? Sometimes…, but that didn’t and doesn’t stop me. I am a writer and always will be. But I digress. Back to Anna Quindlen: Write For Your Life
A DIARY FOR ETERNITY
At the beginning of her book, Quindlen focusses on a teenage girl who needed to write to discover what she was doing, and to discover how she could live, survive. She wrote in her diary as if writing to a friend. She called the friend, Kitty–do you now know the name of that diarist? Yes, Anne Frank. But if you have never read the actual diary, I urge you to do so.
WRITE FOR YOUR LIFE: THE FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY
Erin Gruwell had read Anne Frank’s diary, and as a newbie English teacher at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, she began to see that Anne’s diary could be a model for the “hard case” students who now sat before her in English class. When Erin intercepted a racist drawing in that class, she told her students that the Nazis had done similar things to turn the country of Germany against all Jewish citizens–but her students had never even heard of the Holocaust. But Erin’s students were so enthralled by her honest and gritty presentations, how she let her students talk and write about their lives–the deaths, robberies and frequent shootings they experience in their neighborhoods, that the school (after many petitions) allowed the group to stay with Erin for the rest of their high school years. That class became THE FREEDOM WRITERS, and as they approached graduation, they published THE FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY, which made it to the NYT bestseller list.
Now you are remembering–the film of the same title. The actress who played Erin, Hillary Swank. If not, check it out.
WRITING PROMPTS
I truly believe that writing has always been a LIFE-LINE for humans. And though we all know the names of famous writers, we don’t have to be them–we just have to express our feelings, our sorrows, angers and joys, like those kids in THE FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY. You GET IT OUT…anger and sorrow, joy and confusion. Quindlan has lived that, knows after the untimely death of her mother, that writing sorrow and hurt on the page can free you. She quotes another famous writer of fiction, Alice Munro: (this quote would definitely apply to me)
I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.
But note, this is an author of numerous short stories, whose work has been acclaimed since she created her first short story collection. BRAVO, Alice!!
Quindlen also quotes one of my favorite theologians, Paul Tillich: Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man’s (woman’s) being alone. It has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the world ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.
Quindlen quotes Eleanor Roosevelt: You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
And this, Zora Neale Hurston: There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.
And yes, Langston Hughes: In all my life, I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.
Final Thought: this is a lovely, penetrating little book. Know someone who has a talent and isn’t using it? Someone who is suffering and writing bottled up emotions would help? This little book is a gift. Anna Quindlan will always be, a gift.
P.S. She spoke at a Democratic Women’s Group when I lived in Des Moines. Yes, Quindlan wrote fiction, but she was also a columnist for NEWSWEEK and damn good at it. I stood in line after her talk, shook her hand, hoping some of her magic would transfer to me. I think what did was my realization, that no matter what I do or don’t publish, I AM A WRITER.
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