Writing Requires Courage

A behind-the-scenes look at my writing process and the book that I’m working on

Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash

When I talk to aspiring writers, many of them describe how insecurity stalls their work. Sometimes it makes them choose to self-publish because they are too intimidated to submit to a publisher. It makes them conceal their writing, never putting it out for public consumption. It often keeps them from writing altogether.

Writing is definitely not for the fainthearted. It doesn’t matter how many books or articles you’ve written. Every project is a new undertaking. You can spend weeks, months, even years pouring your heart and soul onto the page, only to have it ignored, rejected, undervalued.

Writing is one of those things where you have to “feel the fear and do it anyway.” Insecurity is part of the writing life, as is rejection. This summer I’m reading Alice Walker’s memoir, Gathering Blossoms Under Fire. The book is a compilation of thirty-five years of Walker’s journal entries. She journals a lot about the writing process, including the joys, frustrations, doubts, and criticisms that come with it. She admits feeling hurt about the criticism that she received about The Color Purple, especially when it came from Black people. Her family rarely read her work and few of them attended the awards ceremonies that she invited them to. Yet, thankfully, she kept writing, as have so many other Black women who write, as has everyone who has ever written anything. That keeps me going when I get discouraged, when the writing seems too difficult, when the reception is not what I want it to be.

That is happening with this fourth book project. This book picks up where I Bring the Voices of My People left off. It is about the stress, pain, and trauma that we endure when we advocate for justice, diversity, and social/organizational change. It’s about how we keep going when it gets hard. Because it always gets hard. And it shows no signs of letting up anytime soon.

Writing about hard things is hard in itself. I’m telling a lot of personal stories in this book. Sometimes I slip down the rabbit hole. I get caught in one memory after another. By the time I resurface, I’m spent. Sometimes I return to what I’ve written and realize it doesn’t fit the story that I was trying to tell. I’ve done more revisions with this one than with any of my prior books.

When I started sabbatical, I’d hoped to write about 9 chapters, including the introduction. I made really good progress during my four weeks at the Collegeville Institute. By the end of March, I had the introduction and four chapters done. Three months later, I still have the introduction and four chapters done (and redone). And I am starting to be okay with the fact that this one just wants to be birthed more slowly. It requires more rest and recovery between writing sessions. So I’m easing up on my expectations for myself and enjoying the ride.

Here’s an excerpt from chapter one. It’s an origin story of how I became an organizer in my high school. It epitomizes how even small efforts at making change can be painful.