Insights Gained From Reading Enticing Hard-To-Reach-Writers

Join Ruth Ayres and celebrate this week! 

"Writing is creating, and creation is messy. 

It's not a lockstep process. 

It's not a guarantee. 

Most of our best work is completely unexpected. 

This is why we must be faithful writer's: 

Showing up day after day is the best way to ensure success." 

By Ruth Ayres 

from Enticing Hard-To-Reach Writers 

(Stenhouse, 2017)

I bought Ruth Ayres' Enticing Hard-To-Reach Writers soon after it came out. I started it, then had to set it aside because of intense school and family commitments, and unfortunately, it got buried at school. But once I got into this book, I found myself so immersed in Ruth's voice that I stole whatever moments I could to read it. 

As you can see by my use of sticky notes,
Enticing Hard-To-Reach Writers is already a well-loved resource for me. 

While there is not a chapter from Enticing Hard-To-Reach Writers that I could not relate to or that is not all marked up from my annotations where I am basically having my own little private, pretend conversation with Ruth Ayres, I particularly appreciated Chapter 8: "Writing Always Gives More Than It Takes." Ruth Ayres highlights (in her exquisite writing voice with such thoughtful examples) what writing has given her:

• Writing Helps Me Grow My Thinking and My Teaching
• Writing Lets Me See the Importance of My Work
• Writing Energizes Me for the Day
• Writing Makes Me See More Accurately
• Writing Lets Me take Hold of the Small Moments

While I agree with every single point Ruth Ayres highlighted, I would also add that writing helps me know myself better. You would think that in 41 years that I would be an expert at knowing who I am, but I'm always discovering how my insights change, how my curiosity shifts, and what I had not noticed before. Often it isn't until I write that I realize what I am feeling. Recently, as I paged through some of my older writer's notebooks, I realized that how I am changing and evolving as a person/parent/wife/teacher is documented again and again through my various lists, written prayers, poetry, Heart Maps, questions, and lines I want to remember.  

I've been writing off and on since I was in fourth grade, but I really started showing up leading a more consistently writerly life a little over two years ago, filling notebooks, and gifting myself with time to write each day. 

Like Ruth Ayres so honestly writes about, I too, often feel like I have nothing to say or that I have nothing worth writing about. (In fact, it still scares me to publish anything I write, even a blog post when barely even anyone reads my writing!) Yet Ruth Ayres gently reminds me that so many writers feel insecure at some point, even her, a published author. As Ruth Ayres wrote in Chapter 8, "...I realized that writing, for me, is essential" (Stenhouse, 51). Although I don't always feel confident about what I share publicly as a writer, but I am always grateful for how writing fills me as a person, teacher, parent, and human.

Even when I am stuck, I am reminded that it is worth it to keep going and continue to lead a writerly life. So, this week I am celebrating all that writing gives me, even when I don't feel like I have anything to say! 

Writing does give more than it takes.