Think back to the last time you sat down to write and the words simply wouldn’t come. Maybe it was your mood, or the surrounding circumstances: poor lighting, dreadful coffee shop tunes, or a pet/child/partner demanding attention. Perhaps a prompt left you uninspired, or a looming deadline paralyzed your imagination. Whatever the cause, as writers, we’ve all learned tricks for massaging the creative muscles back into performance, pushing through brain cramps and fatigue. But what happens when it’s your principles that hinder the process, when you must write something you don’t believe?
The easiest solution of course would be not to write the thing, but since when do artists do anything the easiest way? Let’s up the stakes. Say you must write this thing or risk losing your job, a relationship, or a scholarship? As an English student, I wrote essays about texts that bored or outright enraged me. In my Masters of Journalism program, I enjoyed the opportunity to interpret assignments my own way, like fulfilling the “Arts and Leisure” article requirement by attending and writing about the US Air Guitar Championships (a phenomenon my husband and I still obsess over thirteen years later).
Yet now I find myself stuck once again, frustrated as that high schooler who wanted to protest the canon of dead white male writers, but wanted a perfect GPA more. The assignment this time: a love letter to my country.
It’s not even a real assignment, rather a prompt from a new intergenerational writing group I co-lead. The group’s founder, a friend I deeply admire, chose the prompt in anticipation of the upcoming holiday. I want to honor his idea, especially since I know his feelings about patriotism and all things American are as complicated as my own. But its less about respecting my friend and the tenets of the group than it is about challenging myself to write through something difficult.
Crafting a love letter to my divided, flawed country feels phony, until I remember love isn’t a feeling, as bell hooks put it, but a practice. An ability. A capacity we all possess. A work we choose to do, even when it isn’t perfect. Like writing.
Dear America, I’m going to keep doing the work of loving. Maybe if we all keep practicing, one day we’ll make a country worthy of that love.
I like to read a broad swath of writers. Gender, sexuality, and skin color don’t matter at all. There are many great books written by all categories in which humans choose to put themselves. Talent and creativity do not have such boundaries.