Here’s the Thing About Writing: The Santa Cruz Young Writers Program

This week I begin six weeks of volunteering as a writing assistant in a fourth grade classroom. I have been looking forward to the experience for months, but as the time grows closer, I find myself waking up in the middle of the night with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. Will I be able to relate to the youngsters? Offer them useful suggestions as they embark on their story? Will they think I’m too old? Too conventional? Too stuffy? Why am I doing this anyway?

Does this ever happen to you when you start something new? It happens to me all the time. During my 30+ year tenure as a college instructor, I went through the same process every September, a kind of stage fright. I worried that I would go to the wrong room, carry the wrong textbook, be totally unprepared to lecture on the subject I was assigned. I am hopeful that, just as they did every year then, these misgivings will dissipate after the first week. I think it is the idea of the experience I fear; not the experience itself.

Mostly I’m excited. The winding road leading to this adventure began two years ago when I bumped into to a long-time colleague at a garden center. Both recently retired, we chatted happily about our new lives, and how we were adapting to finally being free to choose exactly how we wanted to spend our time. We had experienced long, satisfying careers teaching in local community colleges, but this was our chance to try something new — basically, anything we wanted. As we continued to talk over coffee, however, I admitted that I was feeling a little adrift from the lack of focus and structure that I was experiencing — a freedom that sometimes seemed a little awesome. There were so many choices.

I told my friend that I had started to write a novel, but was finding it a lonely endeavor. She suggested I contact the public library or school district and offer to tutor children or adults. That way I would be able to share my writing journey with others who were also trying something new. It seemed a good idea. My first foray into the area of volunteer work was to attend an orientation about helping adults learn English in preparation for attending a U.S. citizenship class. The training was extensive, and included several textbooks and lots of support, but the enormity of the commitment discouraged me. What did I know about teaching a second language? And more to the point, when would I ever find time to do my own writing? After two trainings, I withdrew, disappointed that this wasn’t the answer.

Some months later, a woman in my exercise class handed me a brochure about the Young Writers Project, and encouraged me to attend an orientation the following week. While there, I listened to classroom teachers and experienced writing assistants describing the process of mentoring a child through the writing process from brainstorming to bound book. They were passionate, excited about the experience, and very reassuring when they described the training and support we would receive. I signed up for the training and took a packet of material home to read.

Thinking it over during the next few weeks, I realized that helping children write their personal stories might very well dovetail with my own writing journey. I was struggling with the same elements of composition that the children would be — show, not tell; organization; use specific details; include sensory images; write in active voice. After completing two weekend trainings, I would be in the same classroom two hours a week for six weeks, and during that time would be sharing with four or five children both the angst and the ecstasy of the creative process. It seemed like this could be a mutually helpful exercise.

So here I am on the eve of my new adventure. I’ve completed my training, read the Volunteer Handbook and the Strategies and Tools for Improving Student Writing several times each, and reviewed my handwritten notes from the trainings. Tomorrow I will drive to an elementary school and meet my group for the first time. Their first assignment will be to write a short essay about the experience of writing. To start the project, Writing Assistants were asked to complete the same assignment.

Here is mine:

Here’s the Thing About Writing

Writing is a window into my soul; a vehicle to take me to new places; a moving picture that reveals the missing pieces to puzzles I didn’t even know I was trying to solve.

I often write to understand — myself and others, the natural order, sometimes even the baffling actions of our government.

Sometimes I write to clarify — a decision, a relationship, a problem that needs a solution.

I write to explain myself — a decision I have made, a challenge I am facing, a conundrum that keeps me awake at night.

I write to remember — what it was like to be a new mother; those carefree days at summer camp; my plans, my dreams, my joys, my pain.

I write to inspire — my children, my parents, my readers, even strangers who may stumble across my work.

Writing, for me, is a process more than a product. Through the act of putting words on paper, I discover meaning, motive, and fulfillment. Writing leads to self revelation, and only then, when I understand myself, writing becomes a way to communicate with others.

I write because I need to write; it’s addictive, and I never seem to have enough time to write everything I want to write.