I, Hannah Stiff, believe that what I write is important. -My fading mantra of the semester.
Naeem Inayatullah, a teacher and author says:
“While writing is certainly a skill that requires a certain mastery of technique, I see it also as an engagement with the very fabric of life. Indeed, I have come to believe that developing a rich and meaningful life can be facilitated by an engagement with writing.”
“Learning to write can be as difficult and as rewarding as life itself,” he says.
Amen. I am suffering this self pity disease that wonders why I can’t create brilliant cops and courts stories that flow seamlessly, evoke the proverbial lump in the throat and rally a cause around a theme of injustice. My ideas of exposing a riveting story are played out in a dull 500-count Word exposé.
The Pulitzer Prize mocks my cliché writing. ‘The Greats’ laugh down their seasoned noses at me, the lackluster journalist whose competitive edge is buried deep (if it exists at all).
Worst, perhaps, is the former belief that has been sufficiently beat out of my mind: the belief that I was actually a competent writer (before I began journalism school). Truly, I believed journalism school would merely build on my existing talent. Now I’m hoping for a talent transplant from someone who has given up on the mutating journalism industry.
When I think about ever getting a job in journalism I get indescribably depressed. I feel that no matter what I write it will never be good enough. Good enough to change the world for those who desperately need change. Good enough to give hope to the hopeless. Good enough to make myself believe that a “meaningful life has actually been facilitated by an engagement with writing.”
I’ve never truly considered an alternative to journalism. (Ok, I’ve toyed with marrying rich and spending my husband’s wealth on humanitarian projects, and the occasional pair of Christian Louboutins. But then I’d have to be a trophy wife, which would mean giving my look a little more gusto, read: gym time.)
As exam week of my first semester in the professional journalism program has descended I want to sit and cry while listening to David Gray songs. I want to give in to my fantasies about returning to Africa and playing soccer in a brilliant green field with my children from the Maranatha Orphanage. I want to admit that I have no idea whether my heart still yearns for journalism. I want to admit that I may be incapable.
Then I remember, in the abyss of my soul, that writing is balm for days like today. After winter’s wind has whipped away my last reserve of confidence about my future, I remember- I can write for pleasure. I can write without an editor haunting my sentence structure or lecturing about run-ons. I can write with Pandora in the background, an office cluttered with homework I’m neglecting and a roommate who interrupts my thoughts with Spanish questions. I can write while weeping on my keyboard, knowing JTech has no dominion in my living room.
“Engaging with the very fabric of life” through writing is lackluster today. But the soothing clack, clack, clack of relaxed fingers on my old keyboard is something more, something vaguely spiritual.
