Why I'm Still Writing

Whenever I tell the origin story of why I write, it always starts with Judy Blume and Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret. I share how the book made me feel seen and how I longed to help others feel that way. But after almost fifty years, why I continue to write feels like a more relevant question.

Writing isn’t the easiest path. Facing down a blank page is daunting, regardless of what you believe about whether writer’s block really exists. And once you overcome the terror of the blank page, you soon discover that it is easier to wrangle a herd of cats than to get your words and thoughts to flow nicely on the page. Then there’s the invisible mob of critics congregating over your shoulder, challenging the correctness of your thoughts and grammar, as well as the entire belief that you could have the audacity to actually write something. If you have the courage and stamina to continue, you are rewarded with a series of revisions. Once the revisions are done and you believe there isn’t anything else you can do to your manuscript, your writer’s group asks questions you hadn’t thought of, your editor gives you her edits, or worse, you receive the dreaded rejection.

Been there. Survived that, sort of.

In fact, Minerva Rising was born in 2012 after I received a string of rejection letters following the completion of my MFA. No one was interested in the stories I wrote about women. One male editor commented — not directly to me — that women’s stories were small. I decided that if no one would publish my stories, I would start my own literary publication. I believed then — and still believe — that women’s stories are important. They belong at the center, not the margins, but that’s another post.

What I didn’t realize was that as publisher and editor of a literary publication, there is little to no time for your own writing. The work is relentless — reading submissions, editing contributors’ work, planning editorial calendars, and finding and managing staff.

I’ll admit something I’ve never quite said out loud: I was jealous. Other women got to write while I shepherded their writing into the world. Meaningful work, but not the same as writing. Sure, I got to write the editor’s letter and staff blog, but they felt performative — written for the press, not for my own edification. I had become a custodian of other women’s voices while my own sat waiting.

And yet, writing still insisted upon itself in my life even when I was no longer trying.

It mostly showed up as a need to write in my journal — to unapologetically unload my thoughts, worries, annoyances, and musings without an audience or an agenda.

I remember one entry in particular, written about Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” and my youngest daughter, who had just graduated from high school. The song always reminded me of this time when she was a baby. I was in the car outside Einstein Bagel, eating an asiago cheese bagel with salmon while she slept. I’d just dropped my sons off at school, and in that small, ordinary moment, I felt pure happiness. But with college move-in day weeks away, the song felt different. I wrote about grieving the changing shape of my motherhood, and the self I wasn’t sure what to do with now that I was needed differently.

I didn’t know then that a month later, I would need the journal for a grief that would dwarf everything that came before it. My son died.

There are no words. And yet, words were all I had. The journal became something I had never needed it to be before — not a place for craft or reflection or even clarity, but for survival. For witness. Putting words on the page was the only thing I could do. I wrote through the darkness of it, not because writing healed it — grief like that doesn’t heal; it changes shape — but because the page was the one place I could tell the whole truth without worrying about anyone else’s comfort. Writing held me when I didn’t know how to hold myself.

Slowly, over time, writing found its way back to something other than my personal grief, though it will always be a part of who I am. Short story and essay ideas surfaced. Many languished unfinished — there is a mother and daughter, frozen in the tension of their first moments together at a restaurant after years of estrangement, who I have never been able to get up from the table.

But others I couldn’t leave alone. One essay that grew out of a journal entry about a neighbor who had never spoken to me for four years. I wondered about her silence, imagined her life, and questioned my own assumptions about why. Then one day, about six months after my son died, she waved at me. I found myself wondering if she, too, had known loss. When a submission call asked for stories and essays about neighbors, I knew the piece was ready. I cleaned it up and sent it in. It was published. It felt earned. True.

Other journal pieces were published, too. It often felt more like luck than anything else. Sure, I persisted, but only in fits and starts. At the core, I doubted myself as a writer. I believed publication was the golden ticket. And once I had been published a few times, it became about not being published enough, or not being published in the right place.

But when I think about the work that was published, it all seems to have come from a place of personal truth, without performance or censorship. And as a result, I have come to understand that publication doesn’t validate your worth as a writer. What matters is the writing itself.

Writing gives me life. It feeds my soul regardless of whether anyone else ever reads it.

I continue to write because when I sit down to write, I get to spend time with the truest version of myself. It helps me see myself more clearly.

Fifty years in, I’ve stopped asking whether I’m a real writer and started asking a better question: what does this work require of me today? And I think that’s true for any of us who create — whether we write or paint or photograph or sing or dance or build things with our hands. The question was never really whether I should be doing this. The question is what is your creativity asking of you right now — what does it need you to see, or say, or surrender? What is it trying to work out through you?

I’d love to know what your creativity is working out through you. Drop a comment. I’d love to hear your answer.

Until next time,

Kim