18 years and a husband and 3 kids ago I explored Boston as a college freshman. I wore Doc Martins with tattoo tights and a biker jacket. I rode the T and smoked cigarettes and hung out in Harvard Square listening to street musicians. I created things. I drew and cut and colored things. I collaged my walls and I read books like Hope for the Flowers. My school was the size of a dime in the Fenway in Boston and it mass produced second grade teachers who did not wear tattoo tights or Doc Martins. I had a couple of friends and we explored our city together. There was one friend who created with me, or I with her. Poems and books and songs and videos and pictures. Self expression was an art.
18 years ago I walked into the right classroom with the right teacher and I fell in love. Before, during and after class I thought only about my new flame. I went to sleep at night and dreamed of her. Of writing. I strung words together and played with metaphor and alliteration all day. I put ink to paper and wrote stories inspired by my memories. My teacher was smart and kind and he pushed when I needed pushing and pulled when that was right. He called me a writer. While I was learning to be 18, I fell in love.
16 years ago I walked into another classroom with another teacher and my love grew. Creative writing. Now I walked around creating characters and dialog and finding inspiration in every interaction. I noticed what people said and did and how they smelled. I watched when they were angry or hurt. And I wrote it down. And again this teacher pushed and pulled and called me a writer. A few of us started a writing group together. We sat in a basement classroom once a week and wrote together and shared with each other. We published the college’s first literary magazine. We wrote.
I can’t remember when I stopped. I guess it was around the time my father got sick. 13 years ago.
A few weeks ago I walked into a movie theater and 96 minutes later I walked out differently. Diablo Cody wrote a weirdly wonderful movie about a quick witted, earnest, pregnant teenager and a bunch of other people. Kimya Dawson wrote and performed most of the songs in Juno.
Rewind. The friend I mentioned from college? Was Kimya. I started having flashes of the stuff we used to have and do and make and write and sing and say together. I pulled stuff out. I contacted my 2 writing teachers. I read and I read and I remembered writing these words, but it was like watching a different film. It had been so long. How could I have loved something so much and just let go of it?
I’m reconnecting with my friend, and with writing as a craft. And again, I am deeply in love.
I’ve been writing here for years. I’ve been a mom writing within a parenting community. Now I’m a mom who is trying to be a writer again. Make sense?
Why do you write?
P.S. I still wear my Doc’s all the time.
by Megin Hatch
[tags]Juno, writing, kimya dawson, diablo cody, creative writing[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by nikoretro, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved
8 responses so far ↓
A.L. Hatch // Feb 27, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Because writing for me is like breathing. When I don’t do it, I get sick in my heart. I left it for years, like you, when my own father got sick.
The birth of my girl gave me the heart and courae to pick up my pen again.
Bravo, Megin. Keep going.
IntheFastLane // Feb 27, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Funny thing…I have NEVER thought of myself as a writer. But, I used to write, a lot. My favorite class in H.S. was a lit class that gave extra credit by the page for creative writing assignments. But, I had so many other things going on that writing was never something I cultivated. It is only recently that I have made a connection with a need I have felt for years to create and to write. It is only now that I am even thinking of going beyond with my writing and wondering where I can take it.
SJ // Feb 27, 2008 at 1:23 pm
I also stopped (creative) writing when my father got sick.
maybe someday I will start again (currently I am a scientist, which has a different kind of creativity)
Meg // Feb 27, 2008 at 7:52 pm
SJ/AL: Sick Dads screw everything up. Especially if they have to go and die.
Sheesh, if you don’t know me right now you really think I am a jerk.
A.L.: The similarities… I’m so happy you came back, too.
ITFL: I am really excited to see where you take it, too.
Chris Brogan... // Feb 28, 2008 at 12:23 am
If I didn’t have creativity, I wouldn’t have much, because the gray things in life aren’t for me.
I love this post.
Chris // Feb 28, 2008 at 9:43 am
Megin, you have a way of reaching right into my depths sometimes! I didn’t live in Boston, but my brother did, around the same time. I used to drive from DC to Boston to escape my own college existence pretty regularly. Saw so many great bands there and worked out so much existential angst hanging out with my beloved little brother.
I wrote then, too, for its own sake. I filled notebook after notebook with ramblings and word plays. I had the admiration of my English teachers and was particularly inspired by one, then in her sixties, who had been a journalist in England during WWII. (She came home after the war to find no one would hire a woman. So she did what everyone seemed to do: married, had kids, and did the 50s haus-frau thing. I swore then that I would never do THAT. Hmmmm….)
I think when we lose someone precious, we suffer a sort of inner death that paralyzes our creativity. My best friend from high school committed suicide 10 years ago. I didn’t start to come out of my own fog until almost four years later and it took a a couple more years before I felt the urge to create again (and I’ve been creating away ever since, though I am still finding it hard to carve out time to write). I was inspired by your post to blog a bit about how I started back after my friend’s death.
Stu Mark // Mar 1, 2008 at 10:01 am
As I am feeling brave, allow for a little psychoanalysis: You are developing a deep love of yourself. You are becoming whole again, after you lost an important part of yourself (your dad). So I see this as a great thing, something to be celebrated. You’ve a real gift, your writing crosses emotional gaps and makes connections with people in a palpable way. Maybe we’ll see you at the Oscars in a few years.
PurpleCar // Mar 3, 2008 at 11:29 am
Fantastic post!
Why do I write? Because even though I can stay away from writing for months, even years at a time, I always come back to it, usually journaling or poetry. But in the last few years I’ve given up on journaling and dove into writing a novel. The journaling felt like screaming into the darkness: futile and egotistical. A novel is a work of art. It’s been a dream of mine since I was small.
I can’t NOT write. Eventually it comes back to me, haunting me, and just in general being a pain in the ass.
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