#WhyIWrite

In celebration of NCTE’s National Day on Writing, I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on why I — despite a (self-inflicted) heavy teaching & service load — write.

I find myself asking this question every once in a while, especially in the moments when the semester feels so chaotic that it feels almost unbearable (how are we already at the midpoint of the semester, again?). Why do I write, given everything else I have going on? Why do I write pieces that don’t count toward my promotion case as NTT faculty? I know I’m not the only teaching faculty member who asks these questions, much less struggles to make time for a routine writing practice. I know I’m not the only one with good intentions who blocks time for writing in my calendar, only to have it overridden by a last-minute meeting. Or a desperate need to sleep in (who really needs to get up at 4 or 5 am to write, I ask as I hit snooze for the umpteenth time?) And I know I’m not the only one who occasionally asks what all this writing is even good for, anyway?

I spent some time this morning jotting down a list of all the reasons why I write. Some reasons suggest the need for a personal form of intellectual self-care that is divorced entirely from my teaching. Others indicate that writing is the core of my creative practice or that writing, especially my humanities-focused writing, is my way of giving back to the artists who have meant so much to me. And if I had to highlight one of my most important whys, you’ll find that it does, in fact, circle back to teaching and one of my core values. This is true even when the writing itself has nothing to do with pedagogy or the content of my courses. At the end of the day, writing is a crucial part of my teaching philosophy. If I am going to be a writing teacher who asks my students to blog, author book reviews, and write and remediate inquiry-driven research papers, I need to be a writer. No question about it. It’s all about walking the walk.

But if I had to sum all of this up?

Writing is the act through which I piece together the parts of an interdisciplinary self. In other words, writing is the glue that holds me together, personally and professionally. That is precisely #WhyIWrite.