When I was a kid, elementary age, I wanted to be a writer. Or an artist. Or a newscaster like Connie Chung. I had many ideas. I had visions of writing and seeing my book in bookstore windows. I imagined the admiration from family and friends, being seen and celebrated. Being a writer or an artist is romanticized in the media, seeming to be an intoxicating career choice. For a while I did it. After college with my BA in visual arts and minor in creative writing, I combined my two loves into pieces of art that were figurative and integrated stories. I had an artist’s work loft and painted late into the night. I loved it. But I also had three jobs to enable me to buy canvas, oil paints, brushes and pay the rent. It was hard.
During that time, I remember one day, walking across the street, in a crosswalk. I was coming from one job to the next shift of another and had just stepped off the curb, when I met eyes with an older woman coming from the opposite direction. She scrunched up her face, looked me dead in the eye and said, “Get a job!” I have three I thought to myself, but not out loud to her.
It was shortly after that, when I realized I would need one good “day job” to enable me to continue my painting. Good pay and plenty of time to pursue my art. I heard teachers got out at three in the afternoon and had their summers off. I liked kids. So, I applied to the teaching program in my city thinking this would be my one good “day job.” And it was. Still is. But it is so much more. I pretty much left behind the art and writing as my day job took up my nights, weekends and summer. I do not regret it. I fell in love with teaching. But, writing challenges like this (Slice of Life) that force me to put my butt in chair and produce a piece of writing each day remind me how much I still love writing, painting, creating, expressing.
And yet, I sit here, writing one 500 piece of writing and struggle to put one word after word, sentence after sentence into something that is meaningful and coherent. It is not easy and yet I am drawn to it.
I think of the kids that we ask to write each day during workshop. It is hard. I can see the challenge for them when they jump up to get a yet another new piece of paper and either draw or start again, their left side of their writing folders filled with started pieces and the right side empty of any finished pieces. I feel for them. I have done the same for this writing challenge. doc after doc of started pieces. Writing is hard.
Thanks for sharing. This March, I’m struggling to knock the rust off my writing. I appreciate what you’ve created here.
So honest! You cover a lot of ground, from your young struggling artist self, to being a teacher absorbed in the job (and we teachers all laugh and appreciate how that off at 3:00 and summers took over your life!) And finally, now, a teacher -writer who has sympathy for student-writers. The old lady on the street was a wild card! Anyway, you already know you are a hard worker. I hope you will keep your writer’s identity.
The truth is just as you’ve said: writing is hard. It is no wonder that kids struggle with it. I can also relate to what you admit, “doc after doc of started pieces.” I occasionally look at the post statistics on my blog since I began with it and see all the false starts. Sometimes I’ll read the title, then what I actually wrote, and wonder if I can possibly revive it, make it say something after time away from it. That actually happened a week ago, on February 28th my last Tuesday of the year post, about graphic readers. I returned to what was there and found a new way in. All this too agree with you (I can just see the crosswalk scene and hear that woman’s words, “Get a job,” when you are juggling jobs just to keep your creative self in supplies) and let you know that those doc starts may actually become something at some point!