Earlier this year, I told my 9-year-old, Autumn, to “write a letter to someone who inspires you.” She had been struggling with her writing assignments and I thought this would be fun. She just finished reading A Letter to Mrs. Roosevelt, in which a young girl the same age wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt asking Mrs. Roosevelt to save her family’s house during the Great Depression.
Sitting at the kitchen counter with a blank piece of paper and a pencil, it wasn’t long before she yelled, “I just don’t know what to write!” Her cheeks were red with frustration and anger and her eyes glistened. I paused from putting dishes away, leaned over the counter, and said, “You inspire me because. Just fill in the blank. Why does she inspire you? Why did you choose Michaela dePrince?”
“I GIVE UP!” she screamed as she threw down her pencil. Tears started to fall. “I just don’t know, Mama. I don’t know what to say.”
I took a deep breath, walked around the counter, and sat in the chair next to her. Opening my computer and taking her pencil away, I said in my calmest voice, “Tell me everything about her. Tell me every reason she inspires you. I’ll write it down, and you can choose what to write in the letter, okay?
We spent the next few minutes brainstorming. I asked open-ended questions, trying to spark memories from the books she read and the documentary she saw. “Why did you choose Michaela dePrince? Why do you like her biography so much? What challenges you and inspires you?” I took lots of notes and then hit print.
“Here,” I said gently as I handed her the paper still warm from the printer. “Highlight the things you really want to say, and then leave it alone for a few days. You can finish it next week.” She walked to the table with the paper in one hand, her favorite pink highlighter in the other, and a smile on her face.
“Here it is,” she said, a week or so later, as she handed me a piece of paper folded into a tiny square. “I’m not sure if I did what you wanted me to do.”
“Did you write a letter?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell her why she inspired you?”
“Um, I think so.”
“Then you did exactly what I wanted you to do.”
I didn’t need to read the letter to know she did an excellent job. If I handed out grades, I would have given her an A+ before even opening it. Not because it’s the best writing she’s ever done, but because it’s some of the first.
There will be time later for revising and editing. For correcting grammar and spelling and sentence structure. At that moment, I wanted her to build confidence. I wanted her to believe she could write. I didn’t want her thinking about my expectations when writing her first draft. I wanted her to forget about what people might think and simply write what’s on her mind.
Later, we sat on the couch, the smell of cinnamon lingering as steam rose from the cup of tea in my hands, and we debriefed the writing exercise she completed. “Once I got going, I could do it,” she said. “It wasn’t really that hard. I just had to get started. And then, it was kind of fun.”
Watching her struggle with not knowing what to write, I realized I get stuck in this same rut. I often sit down at my computer and think to myself, what if I don’t write the way they want me to? The fear of what other people think creeps into my brain and paralyzes me from creating my masterpiece with words. What if they want to read more action? What if they don’t care about what my childhood was like? What if they want more drama? Less faith? What if I’m getting too political? What if I have nothing new to say?
What if … what if … what if …
But once I force myself to get started, it isn’t quite as hard as I thought it might be. If I forget about what my assignment is and just focus on writing, it ends up being kind of fun.
A few weeks ago, I was doing dishes when I heard a small voice in my head. It’s usually when I’m doing housework that God speaks to me; probably because it’s one of the rare times I’m alone. As I put sparkling clean glasses in my cabinet I heard, There’s enough room for all of us here.
I immediately stopped what I was doing and grabbed a notecard from the top drawer. As I wrote the words I heard, I realized there can never be too many stories. There can never be too many shared experiences. Just like every story I read changes me in some way, every story I tell also changes me. I fear being undiscovered, but the truth is, if I never write, I will never be discovered. Unless I write, I will never feel fulfilled. No one can tell my stories but me.
Jane Austen is dead, yet her stories live on.
I couldn’t pick Kristin Hannah out of a lineup, but I know her characters deep in my bones. What if she never wrote the stories in her head because she was afraid of what people might think?
In January, I promised myself I would write every day. Part of that was for me—because God created me to write, and I haven’t been doing much of that since I became a Mom. But part of the promise was for my children.
I want them to see me do things I love, and mess up in big ways, and know my next creation will be better because of the mistakes I made. I want them to see me struggle when I sit down and search for words so that they know “just write” is a thing we do. I want them to watch me carve out time to write because I want them to know the act of doing the things we are created to do is good and holy, and worth the effort.
Neither of my children may grow up to be a Writer, but I know they will each grow up to be a Creative. And I want them to know that the first step in embracing who they are is stepping out on the ledge and just doing the thing we are created to do.
The truth is, it doesn’t really matter if anyone ever sees our creation. The audience isn’t what makes our art special. It’s the act of creating that makes us an artist.
The beauty of creating is not only in the finished product. The beauty emerges from the act of creating. The essay, the poem, the painting, the dance—whatever piece of art we are working on—that is our unique creation. The act of creating takes us to a place we’ve never gone before. It opens us up to see the world differently than we ever have before. It changes us.
Like my daughter’s writing assignment, there will always be time for critique and revisions. But we can’t get to that place if we don’t take the first step in the act of creating itself.
This first step often feels like the hardest. The doubts and the fears start to creep in and we think there’s no way we can make something beautiful. But if we stop focusing on what we want the creation to look like and enjoy the act of creating itself, we just might find that it’s not as hard as we thought it might be. That it’s really kind of fun.