The Homework We All Need To Do

Let’s think about writing for a moment.

We think of writing in two ways. First, there is the writing we do everyday. The phrases that we use to love our families, argue with our colleagues, and laugh with our friends are not to be diminished as clichés. We cut and paste generation after generation because the standard sayings that get us through everything from marriage proposals to funerals work.

They are good communication that has lasted the test of time.

Second, there is the American bestseller list, which is filled with books that have stood so many tests of creativity and will and marketing, they deserve their moment at the top. People are still nostalgic for the period in America when books like Invisible Man, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Catch-22 led the national conversation with their dust jackets.

You would think as a writer, I would have an aversion to publishing’s gatekeepers, but the Internet has shown us how much we need curators of our ideas. What I dislike about the publishing contest is how little imagination it has had for what writing can be and how intimidating it’s been to the rest of us.

Too many students who enter my class think that creative writing means they have to write about vampires or spaceships. Too many students in MFA programs across the country put all their writing into turning their personal experience into the Great American Novel—a limited form and a sign they are not that creative.

Too many of us believe writing is only for certain people. It’s not. Writing is the fundamental process that makes us human.

Writing is creative and best when a writer makes discoveries while writing—and when the words preserve that improvisational thought process so the audience can observe and take the same journey.

We should apply this kind of creative writing to our business memos and presentations, our academic papers, and our love letters. We should apply it to all the seemingly impossible problems and questions before the world right now.

And we are. This is the gift the Internet has given us. People who never would have considered writing anything beyond a memo or a school paper fifty years ago are wearing their hearts on their smartphones. You think the country is a mess? This is what the founders intended. The only problem is too many of us are cutting and pasting.

We are forgetting the process, the writing process.

Here’s your homework. I want you to find an hour to yourself sometime in the six months to write—no pressure—don’t put any pressure on this. Don’t think about the bestseller list and treat it like a diary entry.

I want you to write about something that’s important to you. Trying to express in words what you think you know in your head is a real challenge. I want you to struggle with it. Maybe even play devil’s advocate with what you believe and open yourself to new possibilities.

Then as soon as you feel you’ve said what you wanted to say well—delete it. Don’t save it as a draft. Just for this assignment and experiment—throw it away.

In the back of your mind, you will continue to work on these ideas without thinking about them. Even if it feels like you completely forgot about the ideas because you’ve been so busy since you sat down to write them, you haven’t.

If you sit down to write about these ideas again, weeks later, or if they come up in a discussion before then, you will find your ideas have evolved. You will become more articulate and more imaginative about the things you care about.

You will be amazed what your subconscious will do.

You will become in essence more you, not because there is a true you waiting deep inside of you—that’s nonsense. You will become more you by interacting with the ideas of the world and creating answers that are solely yours within your biology and imagination.

If you keep doing this, eventually you will write sentences and ideas that you never thought of before, maybe that no one has ever thought of before.

We have all grown up with this idea that writing is either what we do in an email or what we buy at a bookstore—either pedestrian or superhuman. The Internet has reminded us of a third type of writing: writing that gives each of us the power to move forward and take everyone around us with us.

Clearly we were not prepared for this. There’s so much angry resistance out there, but that’s because this new writing has already created tremendous change.

You have to remember when you look at an angry thread online. You are not seeing what’s going on in the back of everyone else’s head over time when they step away from that anger.

I have tremendous faith in our country, in our trolling devils advocate system, and I have tremendous faith, believe it or not, in the Internet. Teaching and my students taught me that.

I have the most faith in the writing process. You should too.