The Writing Life - Jessica Morrell

Introduction

I began writing when I was a girl; poems, songs, stories and was first published at fifteen. In my twenties I began a career in the food business as a chef and caterer. Like many would-be writers,life exacted its usual toll of pain and pitfalls, and I was sometimes blown off course. But there came a time in my mid-thirties when I decided to make writing my priority, and I finally settled in front of my computer and produced a steady stream of words.

I began teaching writing classes, became an editor and book doctor, then started teaching writing in corporations and taught more writing classes and workshops. The more I taught, the more I learned about writing and the more involved I became in my own work. I discovered that when I surrendered to it and put myself in the same chair, at the same time, day after day, my creativity entered like an invited guest.

In 1998 Writing Out the Storm was published, a tool to exhort wanna-be writers to write anyway, ignoring their doubts, fears and ghosts. Along the way, I've shared most of what I've learned with my students. I've taught thousands of them now and this is my eleventh year as a teacher, editor, and writing coach. In these past years I've watched students transform their fears into accomplishment, their awkward drafts into polished masterpieces.

For nearly three years I coached and taught writers at iVillage.com which in a sense became my most successful laboratory. Every month I assigned my on-line students a specific writing exercise, then commented on what they wrote. Some months there were more than two hundred writers posting their exercises to the site. I watched this group--as eclectic as any group of writers anywhere--grow, flourish, leap tall buildings. Their openings became more inviting, their sentences more precise, their ideas more fully developed, their writing altogether more lovely and vivid.

In many ways it was exhilarating, in many ways exhausting. I usually read their exercises early in the morning and some mornings, I'd read work that would make me want to dance, shout, sing. Some of their exercises were just plain glorious. Some were so original, so funny I would be giggling helplessly, alone in my office, my desk under an east-facing skylight and the gray, quiet mornings alive with my students' stories. In fact, their work invaded my mornings, penetrated the glowering skies beyond the cherry tree that frames the skylight. Some mornings left me with a kind of quiet dread that stayed with me throughout the day. How in the world could I nurture the raw beginner when she wasn't in the room with me? How could I find just the right note of encouragement to keep her at it, yet show her where she needed to pay more attention to verbs, sentence structure, and transitions? And I felt such wonder that I could reach out through this medium, the Internet.

I've learned that no matter where and how I teach, once the students start practicing, their writing improves. In a way it's simple, like slipping cake batter into an oven, then half an hour laterthe house is filled with the wafting aroma of chocolate and the batter has been reordered into a feathery confection.

I wish there were a way that I could zap you into one of my classrooms for a few hours, after I've assigned an exercise. After I've sat in the quiet and magic of a group of writers bent at a task, inspired by an idea. I wish you could sit next to me and listen with me as they read aloud their efforts-as diverse as China is from Africa, as exciting as the Academy Awards. Really.

I am creating this web site and working on a new book, Inspiration Notebook, both based on ideas and exercises I've been using with my many students over the years. I'm constantly creating resources to address issues and problems that we all face: how to make writing a daily habit, how to keep experimenting and practicing no matter what level you achieve as a writer, and how to feel supported as you pursue your dreams.

Transforming reluctance to routine is no easy task. As a teacher and coach, I encourage my students to start writing and keep writing. I never realized that I'd grow up to be a professional nag. I've discovered that all writers need tools to explore their passions, interests and ideas, but mostly they need confidence and permission to play.

This Web site will help you hone in on specific tools, areas, or techniques that need strengthening. Are your characters flat or your dialogue stilted? Are your sentences cluttered or uninspired? Do your stories meander or fizzle? There are techniques here to directly address these issues.

But I want to remind you that first comes practice, in the middle comes practice, in fact, writing is a lifetime of practice. Because playing with words, dabbling on the page, jotting down thoughts, tackling new approaches--practice--is the midwife to creativity. And because we all need an incubation process.