In times past I wrote bureaucratic reports, funding proposals, and research papers. I felt comfortable doing that kind of writing because I wrote at a distance, objectively reporting, analyzing, or info-gathering.
Then I began to write a book, a highly personal story. Events of change in my life had been so dramatic and had brought such joy and peace that I wanted to describe going from relationship pain to healing, and to tell some of what I learned along the way. My story walked a path of biographical, emotional, and spiritual discoveries.
Writing a personal narrative book required letting go of certain habits, including perspective. Writing from a distance had to change to writing close at hand. I needed reporting and analyzing skills in a different way, and I had to let my guard down and use "I" and "we." The transition was and still is one of the most difficult of my life as a developing writer.
I came to writing late, being 40 years old before I realized that I had been writing all of my life. It was a bit like breathing, a feeling many writers have. A few of my articles had been published, but I was not serious about reaching publication. I kept that part of my life private, for whatever reasons.
Only in recent years have I realized that I do have writing ambitions, for myself. I have mentored other writers, and increasingly I know that I want to pay more attention to my writing. I want to get it right, better, and yes, more popular: more than ever I want to connect well with readers, and I have to work hard to move out from my distanced mode. I long to show the meanings I find and to connect with others' desires for change. There are ways to write about relationships while guarding others' privacy.
One of my blog posts that gets recent reading was posted in 2011. I reread it today and saw the same sort of reporting I enjoy doing, yet I had let my guard down a bit to share from biblical resources. I have dreaded being labeled a "religious writer." There is nothing wrong or odd, I tell myself, about having read from Genesis to Malachi as much as from Matthew to Revelation. I thought of Habakuk and Jeremiah for the nuclear story about a storm that damaged a Japanese reactor, threatened a population, and inspired strangers to rush to their aid.
I have always admired the essays of C.S. Lewis. Yet, as much as I admire and reread his works, I need to keep developing my form of probing expression. That has become very important to me, although I do not entirely understand this longing.
I also want to write a novel, a coming of age story about a girl in the South, where I grew up. Traditional wisdom says every first novel is largely personal. Lyly's (pronounced
Lily's) story involves a Ku Klux Klan incident, being in the middle, grandparents, old ways, mistaken assumptions close to home, target practice, and discoveries to push a young girl forward in her less-certain life. I had none of Lyly's exact experiences, yet the themes of her story affected me while I was growing up in North Carolina.
How do you or I transition our writing to fit what change will require? The same old answer, I guess, which is to read really good writers, to know our chosen genres, to keep working hard at it, alone and with help. I still struggle with the idea of making writing more personal, yet I want to do that. And I want to find ways that will somehow be distinctively my own.
If you have made a big writing transition, if you are making one, or if you want to make such a transition, I hope you will not give up on it, and I hope you will share with other writers what you learn.
