My maternity is ending. There’s been a lot in this maternity—a spinal tap headache, a stint sleeping in the NICU, an almost-blood transfusion, lots of specialist appointments, and repetition of that term, “failure to thrive.” At this moment, we are all okay, balancing out, so of course, it’s time for me to go back to work.
Our culture justifies both the mother’s return to work and the dedication to staying home. If you choose either way, someone will tell you that’s unfortunate. This is true about every part of parenthood. Even when announcing my pregnancy, I was warned by a childless friend of imminent disappointment. Back in grad school, I was told to have kids as fast as I could. That’s the way life is, especially now in our opinion-driven media culture. Someone has something to say, often implying that you shouldn’t trust yourself.
What I have learned in these last eight weeks of maternity is that this break in work should be longer for someone to truly heal, and also, yes, I should trust myself. And right now, I trust that it actually is time to return to work because, in part, I’m teaching creative writing in the Spring. And, somehow, I’m excited.
Over the summer, while hugely pregnant, I gave a conference presentation on the reflective process of writing and the natural potential for self-awareness in college teaching and administration. To explain this, I used the example of learning to do a kayak roll, and how the ability to flip a white-water kayak back to the surface when submerged taught me both self-confidence and the fear of drowning. But, I didn’t really understand this lesson until writing a short story on the topic of death in white water. For the conference, I attempted to translate this writing process to our everyday employment: Can a Dean find value in an interaction later on through reflective writing? Can a biology professor find value in an assignment by journaling its effect?
Writing creates power and value, even in the most seemingly insignificant points of life.
There are connections here between that presentation and pedagogy in general. But, of course, in this moment, I just want to write about the NICU, waiting for test results, showering in the family bathroom at three in the morning, and that empty sound of my steps as I passed the tiles honoring babies who didn’t make it. I want to write about how we were so unlucky and, ultimately, so lucky at the same time. My brain has been mining for meaning in the past eight weeks.
I predict that about 10% of my creative writing students in any given year will pursue writing creative works again in their lives. Maybe this is my pessimism. A far more significant portion of my students will find that creative writing helps them in other classes simply through familiarity with structure, audience, and grammar. This coming semester, I am hopeful that by resituating writing as a reflection of ourselves I can better focus my students on what writing can do for their personal conflicts, how it can draw a direct mirror on their lives, or, especially in the case of fiction, how it might work more like the mirrors of a funhouse.
Don’t get me wrong; this is not a new discussion or solution. But I am simply a different person considering it now after those eight weeks.
I’ve never tried to focus on writing what you know, but instead simply avoid writing about what you don’t know. So, if you don’t know, learn first. Or, find the human experience in your own life that others can connect with, avoiding that dull autobiography that Kazuo Ishiguro warned about. For a balanced view on this, I love how Mohsin Hamid notes, “I usually say I don’t research for my fiction, I just live my life” and “I write these things because I want to transcend my experiences…Writing isn’t just my mirror, it’s my astral projection device.” Obviously, this concept is more complex than just a few sentences here, and it really depends on the approach a written piece is taking and the cultural weight of the essay topic, plot, character, or poetic intention. But what if pedagogy focused instead on knowing what we know and then diving further into it? What if writing an essay for class about a personal experience also required academic research? What if a short story is based in a room the writer was in six months prior, but from a different character’s perspective? What if a poem is based on a major shift in personal philosophy at a quiet moment the writer journaled about first? I’ve used prompts like this before, but not in a manner that placed value on original inspiration.
There’s always that question when you teach non-English majors how you might make creative writing matter more. I’ve been wondering about this a lot as I’ve wrestled with returning to the classroom. There were a few times when I thought that it would be wiser to abandon the struggle—the question is too difficult and life too demanding. But instead, it seems that guiding students to find value in their own lives via writing might actually justify the value of their lives. Again, I return to Hamid who notes, “Storytelling alters the storyteller.” That in itself speaks to something beyond structure, plot, and line. And even beyond me and my kid, onward, to something bigger.
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