On Writing: How I Got Started and Why I Do It
Part 3 of 4 in the series: My Three Commitments
[photo: a few entries from my Commonplace Book]
I've been writing since I was a kid. As a teenager, I used to buy an "At-A-Glance" Desk Diary every year and keep track of what I did, and to some extent, what was going on inside my head. In high school, my 10th grade English teacher was also sponsor of the school newspaper. Although I never took a formal journalism class, I learned a lot about newspaper writing in his English class by osmosis, and loved it so much that I ended up serving as the Editor-in-Chief during my senior year. The writing was fun, but so was the camaraderie among the staff. Every 2 weeks we met at someone's house to go over the typeset pages and lay out the next edition (by hand, literally cutting and pasting, yes - back in the dark ages.)
In college, I started keeping a Commonplace Book, which I am still adding to. I was inspired by W.H. Auden's commonplace book, "A Certain World" (Viking Press, 1970 - published 3 years before his death). His is alphabetically organized by topics; mine is chronological. Like Auden's, mine feels like "a sort of autobiography," as the passages I have selected as being meaningful to me at the time reveal my values, commitments, doubts, and struggles.
I've kept more traditional journals on and off over the years, mostly on the themes of travel, music, crisis, or spirituality. I have always found writing to be beneficial; even therapeutic.
For more on the therapeutic value of journaling, see this summary of James Pennebaker's fascinating research:
https://www.apa.org/monitor/jun02/writing
I happened upon Ira Progoff's book "At a Journal Workshop: The Basic Text and Guide for Using the Intensive Journal Process" during graduate school, and its ideas percolated in the background while I was preoccupied with school writing.
In this passage, Progoff offers an evocative metaphor, describing the writing process as a way of breaking up the soil of our hardened thoughts and lives:
"As we work in our Journal, however, we gradually break into the hardness. The soil of our lives is loosened and softened. The solid clumps of past experience are broken up so that air and sunlight can enter. New awarenesses come in and have a fertilizing effect. Soon the soil becomes soft enough for new shoots to grow in. That softness inside of us is a new feeling, and it opens new possibilities. It can be the beginning of a new period of Life/Time, the birth of a new self, and a new unit of existence." (p. 100)
While I was on faculty at the University of Minnesota, the school was an early adopter of blog technology, launching the site, "UThink," which was available to all faculty, staff, and students for both personal and academic writing. I jumped in with both feet, blogging actively at "Inner Geek: Out and About" from June 2005 - November 2009. During those early days of the blogosphere, a vibrant community of bloggers flourished, and the topics under discussion ranged widely. Lots of people (including me) added "Friday Cat Blogging" posts to boast about the beauty and cleverness of our feline friends.
My blog included updates on travel and family events, but also commentary about current affairs. I found it to be a wonderful outlet, but by 2009, many people began migrating to Facebook. As a social media platform with an international reach, it was better suited to casual interaction. By that time, I had also moved to UMass Amherst and was on to other things. (UThink has since been discontinued and taken down, but I do have a pdf of my blog entries that I could share with anyone who is interested.)
One of my motivations for writing "Inner Geek" was to help my kids and grandkids know me more as a 3D person than simply as a role, like Dad or Grampa. I wished I had known my parents and grandparents more as people than simply as their roles. I especially wish I had known my maternal grandfather Leo better. I was very close to him, but he died unexpectedly in his sleep when I was 8 years old. I certainly knew him as a loving grandfather, but I know there was much more to him that I will never know. (I will be writing more about him in a later post.)
For me, writing is not simply the act of recording what is already fully formed in my mind. It is a process during which kernels of ideas become explored, clarified, honed, revisited, and even repurposed. These writings also provide a record of thoughts and events specific to times and places. Toward the end of Susan's journey, I started journaling more actively, and I continue it today. During that time, I came to realize that some of the thoughts and reflections I never shared with others might actually be of interest to others.
And then Substack and I found each other.
My first encounter with Substack was via Hanif Kureishi's site, "The Kureishi Chronicles."
I think I was led there by a Facebook post. The first post I read grabbed my attention. On Boxing Day (December 26) 2023, he and his wife were minding their own business, on a leisurely post-Christmas walk on holiday in Rome, when he fell and could not get up. It was unclear what had happened, but he wound up in a hospital, with arms and legs paralyzed. To this day, he still has little or no use of his arms and legs, but he has since moved back to his home in London after horrifying experiences in several hospitals. His writing about it (spoken to his son, who transcribes and posts his entries) was blunt, even shocking. It was painful to read, but I couldn't turn away. I think it resonated with me because I too (as a spouse, rather than a patient) was experiencing the horrors of a loved one's hospitalizations for a devastating and ambiguous illness. Once I realized he was writing on Substack, I started following him there. (His early posts have since been compiled into a book, Shattered: A Memoir, to be published on February 4, 2025.)
Algorithms then led me to another Substack writer who was telling it like it was, holding nothing back. Michael Mohr ("The Incompatibility of Being Alive") was experiencing the decline and death of his father, and his blunt honesty resonated with me during my own days of experiencing a loved one's end of life.
Their brutally authentic writing stirred something in me. I had so much to say, but no one to say it to.
As an aside, I should say that I've been writing --- a lot --- for my entire professional career: articles in scientific journals, chapters in edited volumes, research-based books, research manuals, and talks for a zillion professional conferences. (For details, visit my Google Scholar page here.)
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NtP1e-cAAAAJ&hl=en
And then as an academic administrator, I wrote another zillion memos and emails. Even though all of this writing was meaningful at the time (well, most of it, anyway), it was not personal.
But now, as I was experiencing several major simultaneous transitions (retirement, death of a lifelong partner, living on my own, facing mortality, embracing new life possibilities), I felt I had much more to say before closing my book. I started reading more people on Substack and quickly got drawn in. Although I had posted some thought pieces on Facebook, I never felt they got serious attention. Substack promised something different and has delivered.
But this new kind of writing felt very novel - and even risky. Could I be as honest and as blunt as Hanif and Michael? Should I be? Would anyone read what I wrote, or care?
I started writing for myself first. Before launching on Substack, I decided I needed to draft at least 10 pieces that had potential. If I could do that, then it felt like my site might have some momentum that could continue.
Did it need to have a singular theme? What would I call it? Would I call it a blog or a newsletter or a dispatch, or what? I had many discussions about those topics with myself and a few others and made some decisions. "Blog" seemed too casual and a bit dated. "Newsletter" ... well, it wasn't really a newsletter or a dispatch. After writing my first ten drafts, I realized that I was producing essays.
David Whyte, a favorite poet of mine, writes essays as well as poems. In a recent webinar in which I participated, he mentioned that his essays were written in the spirit of Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), the first essayist, whose pieces presented an opportunity for him to "try something" - to explore some ideas with freedom. Whyte's recent book, Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, presents 52 essays, exploring topics such as "blessing," "death," "freedom," "love," "relationship," "sex," "unknown," and "zen." Each presents a succinct meditation on the word, its various meanings, and its potential implications for the author and reader.
"Essay" seems to describe my project best. The title of my corner of Substack, "A Seeker's Journey," expresses my realization that, even after all these decades of living, I still have so many questions -- and am exploring them with great enthusiasm, in hopes that those explorations will be useful for me and for readers.
I launched "A Seeker's Journey" on June 13, 2024. The essay you are reading at this moment is my 29th contribution on Substack. Some pieces had their beginnings in journal entries; others were inspired by things I observed or things that happened to me or others. Ideas can come from anywhere, even the grocery store check-out line.
https://halgrotevant.substack.com/p/everybody-has-a-story
My subscribership is growing slowly but surely, and I've been heartened by the "likes" and comments I have received. I endeavor to respond to every comment. In addition to the interactions with readers that I expected, I have entered into the community of other Substack writers and have been greatly enriched by reading and discussing their work. Some of those discussions have led to new friendships with fellow writers all over the country.
But, you might ask, isn't it hard? Don't you want to give up sometimes? Does it get boring? How do you maintain motivation and momentum?
As a (mostly) retired person, I am in the fortunate position of writing without the pressure to publish anything or make a living through my writing. This activity is totally voluntary. If I don't have anything new to say about a topic, I can move on. If I want to explore an old idea from a new vantage point, I can do that. If I find that a draft is not shaping up well, I can put it aside for the moment. And if I want to take a break, I can. But so far, I have kept a steady pace and enjoyed every minute of it.
I am thoroughly loving this renewed and enhanced commitment to writing. It’s now one of my three primary commitments for this segment of my life: singing, writing, and deepening friendships. I always told my students that the thing I loved the most about being a professor was that I could always be a student. In that spirit, through writing, I can continue to expand my knowledge of myself, actively engage in exploring the broader world, and expand my circle of friends. Pretty ideal.
What's your story about writing? I'd be interested to hear. Really!
I loved reading this—an exquisite peek into your inner life and the part that writing has played in it. I have almost always processed my life by writing, but in my case, it has primarily been by letters. However, I, too, discovered blogging around 2007 and have published thousands of posts since then, as well as writing a weekly religion opinion column for many years. Nearly zero remuneration; colossal satisfaction.
Good morning Hal! How are you friend? Very much enjoyed this piece today. Kicked off my morning reading. Is that a picture of your actual notebook and specs? If so, very cool. I hardly ever write longhand any more, when I scribble notes for poems as I go through the day, it is almost always on my phone with frenetic thumbs. Something about motion for me. I heard (have not verified this) that Paul Simon likes to write songs by getting in the car and driving and he had a walkman recorder that he would riff ideas into and beats and melodies.
At any rate, motion is a key to my writing story. As you know, I tend toward a shorter form. I don't have a solid philosophy about this other than that I tend to see life as a sequence of constantly changing frames, and it is all I can do to capture the details of one passing frame as I drift from frame to frame. I have a hunch, that if I am paying attention, I could write as good a poem about one frame as I do another.
Lisa and I are taking a philosophy class together, largely 19th and early 20th century stuff. Text of Existentialism. I am mulling over ideas for a book and am gonna use the term paper in this class as a stepstone to it. This week it was Dostoyevsky and Notes from Underground. I wrote a poem in response to it, as the book idea is based on the notion of polydimensional understanding of a work or a thing, meaning you have to understand a condition from many angles to get a more integrated picture of it. So, for me, that includes poetry about Dostoyevsky.
This occurred to me as I read your piece especially as I got to the tragic middle about the person's fall and paralysis and dreadful hospital experiences. FD (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) writes a pretty dreary analysis of the human experience in Notes from Underground. I don't have a criticism of that per se. He lived in hard times. It is a hard context. As we can see from the tough writing section of your piece and the fall and the aftermath, the fact that there is this brutal element of life is a simple fact.
As I move through this process, I am beginning to think that writing and philosophy and poetry need to be done while we can do them. There are basically two phases of life: Suffering and normal day to day. We have to write and think and orient ourselves as best we can during the normal day to day phase, because the suffering will come and there will be no reason, no cure, no solution, there will only be the mandatory participation in that suffering which cannot be avoided.
The story of the Buddha comes to mind as early in his development, he aligned himself with ascetics who recognized this reality of life, so they prepared for suffering by self-mortification, basically embracing suffering early like jumping into a cold pool on purpose.
He recognized in the midst of his emaciation that this didn't make sense (I think it also helped that as he was fasting, he was brought milk and honey in a bowl and fed by a beautiful girl). Plenty of metaphor there huh?
Anyway, What I am trying to accomplish through a lyric lens is the constant alignment and realignment of my mind, so that I can both live fully in the beauty of the day to day world, and also, as best possible, line myself for the ride through the rapids ahead when, once in the rapids, I will have little to no control of the boat.
I don't really know how else to approach it. All of us who continue to live and don't choose to jump off a bridge, we are all making that choice moment to moment. By are action of continuing to choose living and writing about it, we betray our own position. Life is worth it.
FD also does this, simply by living and writing as he does. Even in Underground, as he depicts the condition of living as misery, he is an unreliable narrator, because he does in fact choose to write, and we all benefit from the read.
Thank you for your thought provoking piece. I have enjoyed responding to it, tangential as my response may be. Cheers. Your friend, Jed