It happened again today. Actually, it happened twice. Maybe that's why I'm still thinking about it. Every year one of my students asks some variation of "When are you going to write a book?" They are innocent enough to believe that knowing how to recognize and discuss great writing is equal to being able to do it oneself. Ah, to be eighteen and on the cusp of the world! I think of what I do as a kin to being the curator of a museum: I collect the words of those I admire around me and I lovingly share them with the masses of students who pass through my classroom each year. Depending on the year, and the book, the student response vacillates from outright rejection to polite tolerance to lifechanging exuberance. I do what I do for all categories of students, but to be honest it's the few in that last category that deliver the difference between my paycheck and that of my friends earning six figures. As I collected old post-its from copies of Beloved I placed in students' hands today, I saved one from the trash that reads:
The whole accept your past thing; Ms. Mayo was talking straight to me with what I'm going through right now! Ahhhh! and she didn't even know it!
I've stuck in it my notebook as a reminder that the right words at the right time can change lives. Which gets me back to class today. Today's question was, "If you were going to write a book, what would you write about?" A subtle difference really in intent from the usual question, yet in reflection makes all the difference in the response. The easy answer is "I don't know." But the question was sincerely asked and deserves a more thoughtful answer. So the answer is this: I'd write about the words. And why we need them. And you.
