Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road

The Importance of Telling Our Stories

April 24, 2009 at 4:03 am 2 comments

“Is it okay if we use the word ‘I?'” my students often ask me after I have assigned an essay.

As someone who loves both reading and writing personal essays, and as a teacher who often assigns essay topics that would strongly encourage, if not actually require the use of the word ‘I,’ it seems like kind of a funny question to me.

I do know where it comes from (it comes from the admonitions of English teachers). But I’ve never really understood why.

Brenda Ueland, in the very beginning of her book If You Want to Write, proclaimed–as a chapter title, and a section head in italics, no less–so that even if you were only skimming the book you could not possibly miss it, “Everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say.”

I’m with Brenda Ueland.

I’m also with Julia Cameron, who has defended her practice of encouraging “non-writers” to practice their “right to write” in the face of criticism from other famous writers, who seem to feel the need to defend the sacred turf of writing from attack by the uninitiated.

Again, I wonder why.

“Writing is talking, thinking, on paper,” Ueland says, bringing the sacred down to earth, where I believe it belongs. For although writing certainly can be a sacred endeavor, I believe it is also a fundamentally human one. And that as such it should be made available to all humans, along with all the other fundamentals that give and sustain life–water, food, air to breathe.

Yes, some people are better at stringing words together, or more facile in the attempt, or have bigger vocabularies, or are more accomplished at the craft of writing.

But craft is not soul. And I don’t think that even remarkable writing skills and talents ever guarantee that the writing will be good.

I believe that good writing comes from good people who have the commitment and curiosity to find their own truths; and the courage and generosity to share those truths with others.

I also believe that everyone is “someone” from the moment they are born. (Actually, before that, but let’s not go there in this essay.)

So pick up your pens, or turn on your computers, “little people” of the world, and write your hearts out.

I dare you. I invite you!

And don’t let anyone tell you your stories, your thoughts, your writing from the heart is not important.

Because I believe that anyone who tells you that–or implies it–is just plain wrong.

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  She teaches literature courses in Paris and Hawaii for the Education Abroad program at Queens College, CUNY, and twice a year she offers Writing from the Heart workshops in a beautiful little village in the Champagne region of France.

Entry filed under: About Writing from the Heart. Tags: Brenda Ueland, inspiration, Julia Cameron, personal essays, stories, the artists way, writing, writing workshops.