Writing is the huge movie screen of your life.

Note to all--this journal entry was written in the classroom along with my English 1101 students.

I like writing when I can share with someone else how special it is, when I can let them know that reading their writing is like touching the smooth skin on their face.

I don't like what I'm writing here. Who am I trying to be? What am I trying to say?

I want people to know that words, written words, can do so much. They can heal us when we're trying to understand the devastating breakup. They can help us see how things didn't go so well while teaching English 1101 today, how sounding like a fool sometimes is okay.

Writing is like open arms of acceptance on paper. It never says--you are too dumb, you need to clean your room, you're too fat or too skinny, no one will ever love you.

Writing allows us to love ourselves even when it seems like no one else does--on the bad days when the dog dies or we have the horrific accident and our world tumbles over and over. Writing lets us have a space, a place for how that feels and how life can suck, how life can be beautiful, how sex last night was great or how I never want to talk to that guy/girl again.

Writing is the one place where we can look inside and whatever is showing on the screen is fine--if it is a horror movie of the times our parents screamed at us, then let it be that. If it is a musical of our favorite songs flitting across the page, then let them.

The words come to us for a reason.

Don't push them. Allow them a place. Allow them a voice. We need to tell ourselves that we are important enough to know how we felt throughout the day--not just give a reporting of what we ate or drank at Starbucks--whether we had venti or grande--but how we felt when our best friend lied to us, how we felt being in the classroom.

The page is the beginning of our stories. Aren't our stories worth the telling--the telling in written word? I think so.
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Copyright Shelnutt 2005