UMass Magazine Online

Spring 2005

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The Courage of Young Writers

—Mel Allen




	illustration by Gil Martinez

THE STUDENTS FILTER INTO THE small room hesitantly, looking for a face they know. The class is Magazine Writing, a workshop where each student writes three stories, hoping to send one or two into the mysterious world of publishing.

We start by reading the syllabus—part recipe, part menu. The ingredients that I have learned over 28 years of writing for magazines are laid out: finding ideas, observation, interviewing, research, organization. I suggest that if you do the readings, if you follow the syllabus and work hard, you will be on your way.

There is some truth in this, but only some.

Because the most essential ingredients are ones I cannot graft onto any of them. One is curiosity, because without it the writer’s well quickly dries. The second is courage, which makes everything I can teach come together.
Courage. The bravery to write, the bravery to put themselves in tough spots, the bravery to ask questions. In my own journalism school days, I do not remember anyone writing with the fearlessness of these students. I know I did not when I was 21 or 22.

They read the stories aloud in class. A test of courage in itself for some. The voices of the shy ones are soft and timid, as if hoping their quietness might make the moment blow away like a puffball. Jennifer was one of two African-American students in my first class. When she was 16 her family moved from Boston to a small central Massachusetts town. She wrote about that transition in a story she called “Real Eyes.” When Jennifer read, the class fell silent. She showed them a slice of rural New England many did not know.

“The front passenger seat was pushed back into place and a girl I recognized settled in. Then, as I looked away, I heard it— ‘Nigger’…. I didn’t turn around at first. It had to register I guess. I turned just as she bent into the car. Staring, I said nothing and no one looked back. I watched them pull out onto a side street and the blue car disappeared out of sight. I was 16 years old; for the first time I had been called a nigger.”

Kathryn wrote about the murder of her beloved aunt Donna, a social worker, by a mental patient she had been treating. Donna was 36, had a 22-month-old son. Kathryn dreaded having to recreate that time five years earlier. But she pulled it off.

“I was at work,” my aunt’s husband tells me. A co-worker came to get me; told me the director of the physical plant wanted to see me. I thought I was in trouble. I walked into this room, and there was a whole group of people there—head of campus safety, police, vice president of the college, my boss and two other men I didn’t know. One of them told me, ‘John, your wife is dead.’ The breath went out of me. I asked if it was a car accident. ‘No, she was murdered,’ he said.”

Kate wrote about a struggle faced by many young women. Her voice was steady as she read about being 16 and an anorexic.

“I got through my classes by smothering my lips with vanilla frosting flavored lip gloss, licking off a little at a time to stay satiated. Every time I felt the need to eat I reminded myself of the guilt and shame I would feel after indulging. I allowed myself to smell what I couldn’t touch: cake, cookies, cinnamon toast.”

All semester long, we talk about the tight job market, the fierce competition. I hear the worry in their voices. But I don’t worry for them. I won’t worry because in their writing, I have seen the bravery it takes to write honestly about oneself, and to also sit down with strangers and fill notebooks. When they leave this university they will often find themselves in uncomfortable spots. They’ll be expected to ask hard questions. I know they will do fine; I’ve already seen them in those places where what they needed most came from inside their hearts, the courage and openness to dare.

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The Courage of Young Writers

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