Teaching Point: "Is Writing for Me?"

One thing that happens in my class, from structure to craft, is that writers will discover  how hard it is to write.  Naturally they will ask, "is writing for me?"

This is a very important question, especially in the arena of memoir.  The work ahead is great (as are the rewards), but are you up to the task?

Rainer Maria Rilke is my touchstone on this question.  In his Letters to a Young Poet, the following sustains:

"Go into yourself.  Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether is is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were deprived you to write.  This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?  Delve into yourself deep for an answer.  And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple, "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it." 

Rilke's next instruction is stunning.  He writes, "Next draw close to nature."

And it is this instruction which has me eying my own surrounding environment and a desire to live deeper in nature and also what inspires me to post this link from Orion Magazine about artist, Basia Irland, who carves books out of slabs of ice and loads them with seeds, as an effort to honor books but also to re-seed dying rivers.  CLICK HERE to watch this short four minute video, especially my artist students who wonder about the combination of medias--art with writing, sound with writing, nature with writing, photos with writing.

I hope the work you see here will inspire those who are simply not ready for the word, but who are still drawn to some combination of the word and other art forms.