"I am a writer"
On coming to terms with this role and its processes
I inwardly wince whenever I craft or utter that sentence. I don’t sit well in those threads. They both constrict and swallow me whole, ravenous for a better body—soul—to fill them out. And yet, I love words and I’m an external processor, so…
I always thought I would develop thicker skin. I thought I would become more able to receive others “notes” (which have just as much to do with what they probably ought to be writing as what they believe I should write or how I could improve.
Writing requires the thin-skin of transparency and the thick skin that comes with confidence and singularity of focus.
It requires excellence without the paralysis of perfectionism.
It requires specificity (in order to convey anything meaningful) and generalization (to give it broader appeal and not come across as pointed).
It requires everything I have and more because I reflects the now and not yet of who I am and who I hope to become in Christ.
I am not trying to make a profession out of my writing at Substack. It is, for me, more of a dumping ground for my clutter and a place to thrift other’s treasures. It’s cultivation, like the weeding and fertilizing processes in a garden. I could do this in a journal, of course. But something (or someone) compels me to return here to share my process; to practice that transparency; to seek others’ thoughts as sharpeners for my own. It is a place for growth and to encourage others’ growth.
Today, I’m asking myself how to bring just the right dimension to writing curriculum (because that is my main paid work at the moment, along with editing curriculum others write).
Our best human learning means head, heart, and hands engagement and goes deepest with the implementation of whole-person, “experiential,” and story-oriented practices. Asking reflective, open-ended questions to draw out the learning, peel back the layers, stir the soul…there is an artistry to it that sometimes comes easily and other times is hindered by real life.
Hindered? Would you, dear reader, agree with that word? I used to. I used to think that I needed quiet and stillness, to dig as for clams into the recesses of my heart and mind and come up with whatever pearls I could dredge up. But I was mining in the wrong direction. The reality of life with children, neighbors, church family, extended family—it augments even the dry-seeming work of writing curriculum. It presents the pearls—if I can but observe them and carefully present their fragile beauty in a way that does not stomp them to dust.
I am a writer. I write that phrase with fear trembling because words have power. Words can wound. This shaky hand needs the Spirit to steady it for the task he has given, and the wisdom to navigate it with truth and love.
Image used by permission from Pixabay.