A year ago, I submitted a book proposal to Bloomsbury Academic called “How to Write the Hard Stuff.” Because it is the academic arm of the press, based in London, the proposal was sent to leaders in the field. British field leaders, who I find daunting and foreign. The leaders in their field had concerns that I was not an expert in trauma, so where did my authority lie? I revised the proposal clarifying that I wasn’t writing a book about how writing is cathartic or therapeutic, but that writing is important and empowering because it allows you to take control of your narrative. I wasn’t planning on being the authority. I am just one writer who has chosen various and sundry techniques of telling my story that might help others shape their own. My authority is usually only in the personal narrative, which is why I write creative nonfiction and why I’m not a politician. I resubmitted the proposal, promising that I was no authority indeed.
The second version passed muster. Unfortunately, I learned this in May. The book would be due in September. My editor, Lucy, was sorry it took so long to get the contract together. She gave me a little extra time—September 30th instead of September 1st.
I had been writing all winter and spring anyway. I had been on sabbatical and worked on a few books—How to Plant a Billion Trees, which is the story upon which Writing the Hard Stuff is based. Also, I revised a novel which I’m revising again as we speak. Perhaps with the 15th revision, I’ll get this where it needs to be! But that is beside the point because I did indeed have to put the novel aside to work on this Writing the Hard Stuff book. I thought I just needed to revise some older essays, but as I dug in, I realized I had to write a whole new book.
So I typed. And revised. And read the book aloud. I was almost done when the semester started. I had the big thread and the tiny threads woven throughout. I had calls forward and responses back. I had little jokes littered throughout. But I also had to start teaching my nonfiction class. Do you know what a group of nonfiction students needs? They need to know how to write the hard stuff. They also need to know how to analyze a text critically. So I asked them to bring something from the text for class discussion. If I was the kind of teacher that lorded authority over my students’ heads, this might be an imposing request. But because my main mode of teaching is beginning each day with the foibles of Nicole—from telling them stories about how I got the heel of my boot in caught in the hem of my pants, making me slip down the stairs, to how, right before I was to speak at an event, I spilled wine down my shirt, the fact that in each of my novels, at least one character is named Zach, or the time I had a typo in my Essay Daily essay, my students don’t have a problem telling me what they really think.
The students read with devotion and care. I had never met these particular students before, but I have been teaching at NAU for 15 years. I know NAU students to be intelligent, kind, and wise. I don’t know exactly why I’m so lucky to have such students, but it has never been not true. I’ve had different kinds of studiers—all nighters, right before classers, never studiers—but the attitude they bring is one of openness and generosity. I do teach creative writing, which might explain it. Creative writing is a class students elect to take. It counts as a general education course and, if they follow the track, the classes count as an emphasis toward an English Major. But even if the course is generally made of folks who definitely want to be there, I’m not sure why they are so collectively smart and thoughtful. They didn’t have to exert themselves. The only graded part of this assignment was to offer a discussion question for the class. But exert themselves they did.
Some responded a lot. Some, a little. But as we spent the semester studying what I meant by hard stuff (everything) and what I meant by writing (so much), we had a document from which to work in which everyone had a little invested. From there, the students wrote 5 essays over the next 5 weeks. To these essays I gave extensive feedback, as did their fellow students. We responded to essays about eyeglasses and seashells, bike riding and growing up near the ocean, the green bottles of Rolling Rock and stories about what a pain in the ass other people are and our own bodies can be.
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I’m not allowed to talk about politics in the classroom although I am allowed to encourage students to register and vote. But they know the personal is political. I can nod with them when they feel disaffected or nihilistic. I can receive commiserating glances when the end of the world seems to be knocking at our door. Perhaps that is what makes these students so great—it’s not that they’re all the same or that they all care about politics or that they all trust me to be their teacher. It’s that they’re willing, to read each other’s work, and mine. They know everyone has a story and it is often a hard one. They’re here to listen to that story and help shape it and to listen to it again. There is as much reading and listening in the class as there is writing and talking. It’s a trust circle. A partnership. A committee. A collective. A community. Every semester I go in expecting it. I’m surprised I’ve never been disappointed. And I am grateful to each of my students every single day. Also. They read Essay Daily. Which is another generosity and another way to build on what we’ve begun.
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NICOLE WALKER is the author of several books, plus one forthcoming, Writing the Hard Stuff, from Bloomsbury Books. She has written several essays for The New York Times and is a noted author in several editions of Best American Essays. She edits the Crux series of nonfiction at the University of Georgia press. She teaches creative writing and serves as Writer-in-Residence for the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at Northern Arizona University.
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