Your Voice

This weekend I talked to a kid who told me that he likes to write. He likes to read, too. He went to a Great Books camp once and found himself falling into snippets of Vonnegut and Thoreau. The way he talked it sounded as if he'd indulged himself. Gorged himself on books, binged on words. Two of us listened. The other was a writer - the real kind - journalist, published, known. He said, "you know the most important thing about writing?"

I took a sharp breath. Thought: um, no. Thought: please don't swivel on that kitchen stool and ask me this question you are directing to a twelve year old kid. The kid said, "I don't know. The story?"

Bless him. He tried. First he seized up. I could see the crink in his shoulders when the question first hit the counter. Um. One thing? The thing? That matters? In writing? In all of writing - the one thing that it has to have?

"Words."

oh. right. words. "So read," the journalist said. And the kid echoed the word quietly, to read, yes, he reads, he likes to read, he reads all kinds of things... he.

"And write down or circle the words you don't know..." and the kid nodded, his soft phalanx of hair falling in front of his eyes, providing inadequate shade, but something... it was something of a sheild.

I wanted to pipe in: "Not just the words you don't know... write down the words that feel rounded on your tongue, that jab you in the cheek, that wake you out of your sleepy story, that make you want to shout with glee, "I KNEW! I just KNEW that's what that word would mean! Cool." But I didn't. I was silenced. Because I hadn't known the answer in the first place. I was back in school. There was one answer, right?

I smiled. The kid smiled back. Words? I had a lot of them. All in my throat. "You're already a writer," I wish I'd said. "The words... you have enough. It's your voice we need to hear.