From the Archives: When is it the right time to write?

Yvette digs up her newspaper column from her college days to help answer that question.

I have been struggling lately to be creative with words. All the things are floating in my head. I’m easily distracted, anxious, and trying to find my footing. This wouldn’t be a problem if I hadn’t committed to showing up bi-monthly on the page.

In struggling with a lack of inspiration, I remembered another time, in another world when my love for writing and publishing started taking shape. And that one time when the words would not come.

I started writing for Xavier University’s newspaper as soon as I landed on campus in 1996. A transfer student only two months into this new campus’ life, I was assigned an article about student’s disappointment with the yearbooks. Even though I didn’t have the experience of the upperclassmen for this specific piece, I loved asking questions and listening to others. And at nineteen years old, I also loved seeing my name and my words in print.

I started as a staff reporter, even though journalism was never my major. And when I changed my major and then changed it again, I continued writing. Later, I proposed writing my own column. As such, my cute little face would appear next to my name and words.

One semester during my newspaper writing stint, I was also taking an advanced writing class for the major I finally chose to graduate with. My professor had us study the classic authors as he taught us how to refine our own writing. It was in this class that I met Joan Didion and really considered why I loved writing. For an assignment (and later the column) I wrote:

Joan Didion explains that a writer spends his or her most important hours doing what he or she loves: writing. …

Didion’s essay is telling me I do not have to be good or an “intellectual” because writing in its truest form is not about anyone else but me. She and I both like the title “Why I Write” because those three words share the sound “I, I, I” which embody most of what we write about.

There is always the threat of navel gazing with writing. And sometimes one’s navel is just hard to gaze at. It is the same as it was yesterday. Or in the midst of pulling up one’s shirt, one gets sidetracked by the H.O.A. request to prune the trees. Or a new school year is on the horizon and I thought I stopped teaching. All the floating thoughts get in the way of writing.

Twenty-seven years ago, I ended “Write When The Time is Write” by gazing at my navel and discussing one of the first times I struggled to write.

Follow Yvette on Instagram at @yvettemuses.