Guest Blogger Two: Why I Write

Terri Elders

Terri Elders lives in California and is, like me, a senior who writes and enjoys it. We have been in several of the same anthologies. Read her interesting response to the three questions I asked.

1.  Why do you write?
2. What does it satisfy within?
3. How do you keep your passion for writing alive and well?

Terri's Response

If This Won't Suit…

By the time I got to junior high and struggled through sewing class I learned I’d never be clever with a needle like Grandma.

Some dreams, though, die hard. My dreams had always involved succeeding at something that I loved doing. I’d love sewing, just like Grandma. When the school year concluded, I decided I’d spend my summer seeking another endeavor…and another mentor.

I’d already accepted I wouldn’t be a ballerina like Anna Pavlova or a long-distance swimmer like Gertrude Ederle. Now that I had to rule out Grandma, too, who could I emulate? Where could I find someone to model my life on? Then, one afternoon as I reread my favorite book, Little Women, it became clear. I caught my breath when I read Jo March’s ringing affirmation in Chapter 14. She’d just sent off some stories to a potential publisher.

 "There,” she proclaimed, “I've done my best! If this won't suit, I shall have to wait till I can do better."

Maybe a role model didn’t have to be an actual living person. Maybe a fictional character would do. I certainly could identify with Jo’s initial hesitation and subsequent bravery. I, too, had attempted to write stories, but aside from a letter accepted for the children’s page of the Portland Oregonian, I’d never been published.

But it might not be too late. I planned to talk to my counselor about taking journalism as an elective when school began again in September. I’d always looked forward to writing essays in my English classes. Maybe I could become a reporter for the school paper, The Naturalist.

This time, at last, I met with success. I appeared to have enough aptitude to pair with my attitude. I particularly relished taking my turn at writing the continuing column, “Silhouettes,”  profiles of teachers and student leaders. I’d play with fleshing my stories out, trying to make my subjects dazzle, like the characters Jo and her sisters so admired in Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers. Whenever my teacher or fellow students offered criticism on my stories, Jo’s words would echo in my mind, “If this won’t suit, I shall have to wait till I can do better.”

I never had to wait long. If I reread my own work a few days later with a critical eye, I’d find a way to do better. That’s when I learned that the secret to good writing, as Jo knew, lay in rewriting.

I continued to write in high school and college, never failing to delight in playing with words…just like Jo. When I transferred from a community college to a state university, some unidentified teacher had scribbled in the upper right-hand corner of my transcript, “Said to be creative.”

Over the years I’ve wondered about the identity of the person who wrote that cryptic comment or if that anonymous annotator realized that all I’d ever wanted to do was to succeed at something I loved. Like Jo, I know that writing involves play, playing with ideas, playing with words, playing until I can play better, arranging...and then rearranging.

Unlike Jo, I’ve never written a play or even a novel. I’ve stuck to shorter pieces, essays, commentary, reviews, and true stories for anthologies. Writing, nonetheless, has remained my lifetime avocation, my source of joy. A blank page always has been my playground.

When friends inquire about “writer’s block,” I claim I’ve never encountered it. Jo’s spirit always remains with me…she never thought of writing as work, as something to suffer through, as something to be endured. Oh, no! For her, it was always play. In a psychology class, I came across a quote of Carl Jung’s. He had written, “The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”

How true, I thought. Jo never doubted her ability. She never hesitated to retreat to her attic, assemble her words, and enjoy herself. Her creative spirit remains my inspiration. It never deserts me.

Even though I’d been forced to set aside the dreams of sewing my own prom dress, or dancing in the chorus of Swan Lake, or coating of myself with oil to cross the English Channel, I’ve never allowed defeat to discourage me from trying something else. Through trial and error, I, fortunately, found where my talents lay…in persistently playing with words.

Oh, sure, there’ve been times when I’m trying to write a story and patterns fail to form, or the message remains elusive, or I begin to feel too frazzled to dazzle. When it doesn’t feel like play, I put the piece away. I owe myself a break. I take that tip from Jo. I wait until I can do better. It’s the best advice I’ve ever come across.

It’s never a very long wait. And when inspiration strikes again, I remind myself that I owe it all to Jo. I am eternally indebted to Louisa May Alcott for creating her. That little woman has loomed large in my life.

Bio: Terri Elders, LCSW, a lifelong writer and editor, has contributed to over a hundred anthologies, including multiple editions of Chicken Soup for the Soul. She writes feature articles and travel pieces for regional, national, and international publications. After a quarter-century odyssey, including a decade overseas with Peace Corps, she recently returned to her native California. She blogs at http://atouchoftarragon.blogspot.com/