Our literary connection began when she was born and I wrote a poem for her.

Baby in the nursery

Crying though she's not sure why

See how innocently she lies.

Maybe it's easy to see why I don't make a living as a poet. But my niece likes it.

Every so often, she asks me to re-send the file. "Hey, Aunt Dawn, can you send me that poem?" I know immediately what she's talking about.

These days, my niece and I share a lot of our creative work. We both write poetry, and we relish reading our work out loud during open mic nights at local coffeehouses; it feeds our desire for praise. We both write for love, although Jennifer argues that she doesn't. "I write for myself and for my characters," she says. But when she admits that she shows people most of her writing, I know, deep down, that we write for the same reasons.

She's pretty good at it, too, although I may be biased, being the doting aunt and all. As she gets older, we've fallen into a natural role of student and mentor. Still, self-doubts plague my critiques. I've taught beginning writers before, but no experience has been as profound as this one. I see similarities in our styles, and I wonder if it is coincidence, upbringing or DNA. I want to encourage her, but worry that I'm reading with a biased view.

I discuss it with one of my own mentors. "You've done this enough to know good writing, Dawn," she reassures me. "Teach her the best you can, and don't ever offer false praise or you'll lose credibility."

I know Jennifer gets A's in all her English classes, and that, too, gives me some faith in my assessment of her skills. So, we plod along, teaching, learning, discussing. We chat mostly through Instant Messenger, because it's easier that way.  

Today, I sit in front of my laptop at my kitchen table, struggling with this essay. She is 20 miles away, sitting in her bedroom, a little gray tabby cat on her lap, writing a story.

She is tackling the toughest story of her life, loosely based on a boy she once dated. In a coincidence I will call synchronicity, I find a quote on the Internet from Jenna Glatzer that is perfect for the moment: "There are some things in life that we need to write about, not for publication, and not because they're the 'best' stories, but because they're the ones that have parked themselves in our brains and won't let us move on until we've given them life in ink. They're the stories we don't want to write. The ones that terrify us."

I send Jennifer the quote and she puts it in her AIM profile, purple words in Franklin Gothic font. She tells me how it resonates with her, and I realize she is far braver than I am.

My job as a magazine journalist permits me to avoid the hard topics. I write about paintball gear, audiovisual equipment, and fitness. I call myself a writer but never, as Natalie Goldman calls it, truly "write down the bones."

This essay, if I finish it, will be one of the most brutally honest pieces I have written in quite a while. I'm analyzing a writing career, a family relationship, a friendship-- knowing my words may be read by family members, colleagues. But I resist the urge to censor myself. I must get it out, must, as Glatzer says, "Lock the critic out, and allow yourself to write as it comes… Whatever it is, it is."

And it's hard. I feel a wave of relief when the AIM box pops up on my screen.

"Aunt Dawn…" her sans serif purple type reads. "Can I have a chapter that's only two and a half pages long, if my other chapter is five pages?"

"If that's as long as it needs to be, that's fine," I type back.

"K," she types.

A half hour later, another message box pops up. "That chapter was bothering me, so I added another scene to it."

"That works," I reply.

I must let her discover these things on her own as she develops her own style, her pet peeves and favorite phrasing.

Sometimes she asks me seemingly random questions, like "Aunt Dawn, where do you write?" "How fast can you finish a page? Do you write with music on or off?"

Wherever I can, I say. As long as it takes. And off… always off. If music with lyrics is playing in the background, I pay too much attention to the words and lose my own story.

She nods with satisfaction. She always writes without music, too, for the same reason. And although I know plenty of writers who use music to set the mood and inspire them, to her, "music off" is the right answer, because I am the writer that she knows and I write with the music off.

*

Meanwhile, I plug away, wanting to know her secret for being able to become so immersed in the characters of a story that she forsakes everything else. She tells me one of her friends made fun of her because "she's always writing."

She's written 6,000 words in three days. It's an enviable amount, but she's hardly "always writing."

I think about how she carries a notebook with her to her mother's softball game, on shopping trips, family get-togethers, when she's out with her friends, and it inspires me.

Tonight, I don't feel like writing, but I let the dirty dishes stay in the sink and open up this file.

The questions begin, and, again, I am grateful. I have a valid excuse to avoid my demons for another few minutes.

"How's this?" she asks and links my computer to hers to send me another 500 words.

I read it, nitpick here and there, reiterate what I've told her about showing scenes rather than using exposition, and wonder if I can use any of this material in my project.

She knows I'm discussing our creative relationship in a personal essay and she has given me carte blanche. But it's not always that easy. There's a danger in writing when the characters tread too close to reality. I'm not talking about anything as clear cut as ethics and libel laws, either. When our characters share traits and experiences of family and friends, we censor ourselves, fail to write the whole truth. We are afraid of embarrassment, being judged, or hurting the feelings of those we love.

Of course, in the personal essay genre, those dangers are inevitable. I want to turn back. Caution signs block my mental roadway, and I'd rather take the easy path, the scenic route to fluff journalism.

I stop typing for a moment to stare at the screen. I scroll upward, add a comma here, a missing apostrophe there. I'm stalling, trying to figure out where this story is going. I know I don't have a conflict, climax, resolution. But it's all inside. If I keep pounding away at the soft black keys, it will come out.

The familiar ding of instant messenger comes through. Jen has sent me a particularly rough scene, one that I can tell just isn't working.

"I found this really confusing," I type, worried that my words will send her into the throes of depression. I fear she'll give up on the story, start something else, quit writing altogether.

"I KNOW!" she writes back. "I almost cried writing it and then my mom interrupted me. It was the hardest thing ever."

"I hate that. It's def fixable tho," I type in AIM shorthand.

"I don't know how to make it better."

"Sure you do," I type. I minimize my own document to stare at her story. I know what she's trying to say, but how can I rephrase it without making it my own? I'm still struggling when she sends me a new paragraph.

It works and I sigh with relief. "I knew you could do it," I type. She has succeeded where I failed. I'm happy and only a little bit envious.  

"Yes, but I couldn't before. I knew I needed to, but it just wouldn't work. Then I talked to you and I got it."

Once again, I can relate. I have friends like that; I joke that they are Muses on Instant Messenger.

 *

Another week has passed. I'm traveling on assignment-- headed to Pittsburgh-- when my phone rings. The familiar strains of a pop song boom through the mini speaker. I squint at the caller ID, then flip open the phone. "Hey, what's up?" 

"I finished it, Aunt Dawn."

"The story?!"

"I finished it," she repeats. "I don't know what to do with myself now. It was such a part of my life. Now it's done."

"You finished!" I squeal. I'm grinning, and my husband in the driver's seat glimpses at me, smiles. "Jennifer finished her story!" I tell him.

"I gathered that," he says.

I put the phone back to my ear. "I'm so happy for you. You finished!"

"What do I do now?" she asks.

Now, you re-write, I want to say. But I know it's not quite time for that. "Relax. Have fun. Do something else. Or start another story."

I can tell by her silence she's not crazy about that last idea. "Or just enjoy the fact that you're done for a little while."

I'm on the road with no Internet connection, and I can't read the piece. I'm sure it won't be perfect. It will be rough, not polished, with exposition where there should be scenes, some repetition, and a few awkward spots I know she can fix. This is what I'm expecting.

When I finally read the story a few days later, I'm surprised. It's not perfect. I see a lot of the mistakes I expected to find, but the climax brings tears to my eyes. I am utterly engaged. I'm reading for pure enjoyment. She's brought me into her world, let me meet her characters, and I am enriched for the experience.

Later, on Instant Messenger, she broaches the subject of publication. My friend, the one I mentioned earlier, recommended that Jen should complete a few works before getting bogged down in the re-writing process, that she shouldn't even consider publication until she's written a handful of stories, start to finish.

But I can see where Jen is coming from. Ms. Glatzer is right, there are some stories you write that are not for publication. Now that it's done, though, Jen knows this isn't one of them. Or maybe it's just that need for acceptance rearing its ostentatious head.

"It will require some rewriting, but I can help you," I type.

"YAY!" She replies, in pink capital letters.

"It may not be accepted," I type. "Probably won't. But you'll never know unless you try."

"I know that," she says.

And I know she understands what is written between my lines of Times New Roman text.

She's finished her story, and the deadline for this submission is approaching. Have I written down to the bones, unveiled my demons, revealed something about myself?

When we began our stories, this literary journey across the span of a summer, we thought we were writing only for ourselves, uncensored, for fun. But the drive for acceptance continues.

Baby in the nursery

Looks like, kid, it's you and me,

We'll make this world better to see.

When I wrote the poem 16 years ago, I was a teenager, the same age Jen is now. My skills have advanced since then, my ideas have become more sophisticated, but this stanza, at least, still rings true. Little did I know, staring through the nursery glass on that autumn day, that we'd improve the world together through our writing.

Dawn Allcot's personal essays have appeared in the Cup of Comfort for Sisters and Sacred Water anthologies. A full-time freelance writer and editor, Dawn is currently at work on a collection of humorous essays dealing with life in a bookstore. Her work has appeared in many diverse publications, including Sound & Communications, Church Production Magazine and RECON, the Magazine of Woods Paintball. Check out her blog at www.dawnallcot.blogspot.com.

Sponsored links

Ring binders

 

Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer!

How to find a book publisher

Home

Text on this site Copyright © 1998-2007 Absolute Write, all rights reserved.
Please contact the authors if you'd like to reprint articles on this site.  All copyrights are retained by original authors.  And plagiarizers will be rounded up, handcuffed, and stuck into a very small and humid room wherein they must listen to Barney sing the "I Love You, You Love Me" song over and over again.

writers writing software