Dec 8, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes, Reading, Writing, Thinking

Why Should I Write? A Conversation
©By Vijaya Sundaram
December 8th, 2013

The child at the table, brow furrowed, writes about her day with her best friend.

Why should I write? she moans. 

If only things didn’t need to be written down! she exclaims, plaintively.  I have them in my head, she adds.

The mother says, Keep writing.  Describe what you saw today, when you and your friend went to see The Nutcracker ballet.  Describe what you liked, how you felt, what you both did after the ballet, where her parents took you and her afterwards.

Why should I write? moans the child, again.

The mother, sympathetic but strict, says, Because it’s good to remember it.  It’s good to describe it all.  It’s good to reinvent it.  Don’t you enjoy reading?  Writing is the same thing, except you’re making it happen.  Write what happened today.  That’s all.  Write about your fun day.  That’s how you’ll remember it.

I do remember it.  I don’t need to write it down, says the child, stubborn, but still obedient, pencil poised reluctantly in hand.

Well, you describe everything so vividly when you tell me, so just write it all down, and then we’ll both be able to remember it, says her mother, kind, but firm, unyielding.

I do remember it.  I don’t need to write it down, repeats the child.

But not seven or ten years from now, says her mother.

The girl pouts, But I will.  How do you know I won’t?

The mother sighs.

Just write, darling, she says. It’s the doing and the practice that makes us get better at it, and we will look back on it, and enjoy it … later, when we’re older,

And she bends over her students’ papers.  Several years of grading practice haven’t made her any faster, she thinks.  Then, she thinks of the book she hasn’t finished writing.

A vast sigh fills the room.

Silence reigns.

~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: #Mother and Daughter, practice, why should I write?, Writing, writing rationales