Since I began teaching at Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing, I’ve found a place to put a number of my more serious interests in literature to good use. Constructing seminars, guiding, commenting, teaching, are fulfilling a host of yearnings I have had for years, and I am so grateful for the opportunity this grandly late in my career to share some of what I’ve learned in three decades of writing.

One of the more inspired bits of email I received recently was a note to the faculty to, if they wanted to, write up a brief statement on the order of “Why I Write,” a deep-dish request if there ever was one. These statements would be read aloud during graduation in lieu of a more formal speech. Many members of the faculty have jumped on the idea, one noting (how true) that while it’s easy to say yes to the request, it’s not so easy to come up with a personal mission statement.

I’ve been trying to tackle this over the last week and have come up with 76 words describing Why I Write. But you know these 76 words could so easily have been a different set of 76 words, and as soon as you say, “This says it all,” you realize it doesn’t explain a fraction of something so huge as why you write. That would take, well, the last three decades. And knowing I could massage and tinker for twice that long and still not get it right, I carved this out of the air, polished it up, sent it off, and that’s that.

WHY I WRITE
Tony Abbott, Writing For Young People

Writing is like primitive worship. It’s my attempt to understand the world by naming what I see and feel around me. But there’s a contradiction in articulating reality this way. If words are the fundamental human act, the breath that begins a conversation with the world, they are also artificial. I enjoy working inside this tension and finally believe that fashioning a person out of words can be both insupportably hubristic and an act of reverence.

I was thinking of saying something like:

And because it is silent, written language seems capable of the lightest touch; it can approach the mystery closely without destroying it.

None of which says anything specific about writing for young people, which, I suppose, is also a big part of my mission, and about which I might be tempted to say:

Youth is a powerful and fragile mystery. Seldom in our later years, if we are graced to live them happily, are experiences as defining or memorable as in our youths. I find myself looking back to those years because I want to explore the fragility and power and mystery of the young self.

A couple of other thoughts I had were:

Everyone shares language in a practical way that we do not share art or music; we all use it, and we all own it.

and:

I suppose I believe that written language is purer than spoken language and clearer than thought. The spectrum of written language is huge; it can be as precise as nanosurgery or as vague as fog.

But while I might have I didn’t go any further with these because they didn’t take me anywhere immediately and I don’t have sixty years or thirty years but simply must get back to work. Which is also one of the reasons I write.