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These Simple Questions Spark My Desire to Write More
After agonizing writer’s block, this award-winning writer reminded me that our work allows us and our readers to be free
I have a script in hand at all times. From my speech to become class rep in the first grade to the last presentation I gave in college, I’ve always followed my script. My off-beat details, spontaneity, jokes, and all the other features of great oratory skills are planned out, rehearsed and delivered with a script I’ve written with care. Improv isn’t my thing; I stammer halfway through a 30-second explanation of any topic I hold dear to my heart. It’s like I’m playing a game of tag with the dictionary and every word is ‘It’, a game so fast-paced I have to stall for time — using brilliant techniques such as stumbling over my words — for the next, best word to come to me.
When I couldn’t script pretty much anything for half of 2020, it felt like someone had clipped my wings and burned them, but then I heard these words: “In every other story you need to explain, like, ‘what are we doing here?’” New Yorker staff writer Kathryn Schulz says on the Longform podcast, a weekly conversation with a non-fiction writer on how they tell stories. “You have to do the very hard work of stepping back and thinking, ‘what is it about? What am I arguing…
