100 Day Creative Challenge Day 51: The Right to Write
Quite a few years ago I taught a transition to study course for adults. Most of the students were people who left school at 15 years of age to work. They had all signed up to do a Diploma in Theology and had a few hundred years of adult life experience between them, but little education. In other words, they had all graduated from the University of Life and the School of Hard Knocks.
In the first lesson I divided them into pairs. ‘Tell your partner about your work, family, hobbies and why you’re here in this class,’ I said and gave them some time to chat.
Then I asked them to share something interesting about their partner’s life with the group.
Some had married young and had several children or even grandchildren. Some had their own business. Some had travelled the world and some had never left the state. All had a desire to study and all felt inadequate.
People feel intimidated by education, especially if they didn’t have a great experience of it or were denied the opportunity to complete their schooling.
We all have a voice and we all have the right to write and speak—to express our thoughts, ideas, stories, emotions in these forms.
People get hung up on spelling and grammar and feel inadequate, so they say they can’t write. All of the people in my adult transition class wanted to do a Diploma and they needed to write in order to pass. They were all afraid of writing. Afraid their writing wouldn’t be good enough. Afraid they weren’t good enough.
I asked them to write about their life experiences and share any wisdom they had acquired and told them not to worry about spelling etc. I started with what they knew and then expanded into the ‘how to’.
Over the next few months we discussed the ins and outs of essay writing, bibliographies, research techniques and vocabulary. But the biggest lessonI tried to teach was that we all have the right to write. We all have a voice.
Getting past our fear of writing and feeling like our work is valid is a journey. This year I’m working with several people who want to write a book. They are first-timers who have expressed the desire to write. It’s not an exclusive club. Anyone can do it. You just might need to get a little help to find your voice.
I think we have a great deal of mythology around writing.
We believe that only a few people can really do it.
I wrote a book called ‘The Right to Write.’
In it, I argued that all of us have the capacity to write.
That it’s as normal to write as it is to speak.
Julia Cameron
