About a year and a half ago, I enrolled in a nonfiction writing class as a free elective in college. I wasn’t very keen on writing for an entire semester though. The goal was to merely get enough english units to be admitted into law school.
Our first writing assignment was simple. It was to write an essay about why we write. I started my essay with “I don’t write.” It’s funny how different things were a year ago, and how different things will be a year after… but that’s for another essay.
Anyway, writing made me anxious. It exposed the insides of my mind and memory for readers to dissect, question, and even criticize. Even the process of organizing my thoughts to be made presentable and digestable on paper stressed me out. There’s a word for it, dread.
But looking back, I am now beginning to see that I was anxious about writing because I was afraid. There was a splash of insecurity that stained my paragraphs. The fear of judgment from others swayed my tone. I was shy on paper. I was editing on the spot. I was judging myself midsentense. Ultimately, I was never writing for myself. Everything was about pleasing the reader, being enough for the reader, writing only what they wanted to read.
That class with Ma’am Rica wasn’t your usual writing class. It was a class on bravery. Writing was bleeding on paper. And it became less about the requirement and more about putting our truths down on the page. No judgment, no fear. And eventually, the process was no longer dreadful (although at times it still can be), it has become an experience in itself. At times, the process was even more significant than the result itself.
Today I think of the writing process as something like this:
The experience begins with a vague idea of a destination. The traffic on the highway of our thoughts can be unpredictable. The dark alleys of our memories have some surprises waiting to be uncovered. And the windy uphill roads of our emotions provide a bit of thrill to our trip. But with patience, we arrive. From there, it’s just a matter of telling the story of how we got there.