THE WRITE MOTIVATION
Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte
Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte
The path of the writer can be a lonely one. Few become best selling authors or have their
stories turned into screenplays that become blockbuster movies.
You write and you write.
Other authors sign their books that you purchased at the signing with
the words ‘keep on writing” even if they have never read a word of your work,
and it makes you feel warm and connected anyway.
Acknowledgment for the writer can be sparse and at times,
completely absent. The love of words and
the spinning of the tale keeps many of us going.
In his 1970’s piece, “Why I Write”, my college creative
writing teacher and mentor, John Eckels, shared one of his reasons for writing
through the lens of the times:
“I am writing under obligation. Although I feel that I owe a debt of
love to each person in the world---partially because of my extreme awareness
that we share a common beginning and ending---I do not believe that such brutal
agony which now my heart knows and utters would be demanded by any human being
alive. I then, am writing under
obligation…to the hope of all things as they converge and form, what I in my
impetuous humility about “I”, and what I with deliberate pride whisper “I.”
Inspired (or bedeviled?) by the obligation, I continue… I write on, for
when obligation has a man, it has him for life.”
It was through this lens of obligation and hope that I began
my writing career. Along the way, I have grown and changed and my writing has
done the same. Some forty years after my
graduation from college, I was given the opportunity to look back on those
years and write an article for the alumni magazine. The piece, about my experiences as a woman of
color at a prestigious women’s college in the 1970’s, met with mixed
reviews. Those who loved it were touched
by it. Those who hated it seemed to hate
me as well for writing it. Except for one email from an alumna who said she was
moved by it, the article seemed to have been largely ignored. Or so I thought
until today, when this arrived via email (names removed for privacy):
“Hi Sheryl,
I wanted to
take a moment to pass along some compliments paid to you by another alumna…She
wrote the M Center about getting a copy of her transcript and sent them the following:
"I will
be requesting my transcripts because I received a job offer from the University
of Wisconsin.
For my in
person interview, I was asked to make a speech on "engaging alumni/alumnae
to recruit international students." I was given the theme ahead of time,
and I had no idea how to approach the subject. One day I happened to start
reading my Mills Quarterly from back in the Fall of 2015. (I keep them all!)
There was an article on "Pride and Pain; Coming of age as a black woman at
Mills" by Sheryl Bize-Boutte. It was about her experiences at Mills,
as a member of the entering class of black women in 1969. She wrote a
newspaper column, "Sheryl Raps," and the title of one of her columns
was "Mills Thrusts White Values on Black Students." She was writing
about "what she saw wrong at Mills, and...was given absolute freedom to do
so."
Reading this
article touched me very deeply. I started thinking about the theme of my speech
for the UW interview, and decided to use the "approach" of how/why alumni/alumnae are
inspired to recruit students. In other words, alumni/alumnae must
be truly inspired by
their alma maters, obviously, if they are to help recruit. I took Sheryl's
article with me to Wisconsin, and read to my audience from her
article. I am not a black woman, but I grew up in the South in the '60s and
'70s and had friends who had to deal with similar struggles as she. It was so
beautifully written.
To
summarize: I wanted to thank
Mills College as a place that has always encouraged absolute
freedom of expression---even when the expression is controversial. I can't
tell you how proud I am to be a Mills graduate. And, by the way, I think
sharing Sheryl's article with the University of Wisconsin folks contributed to
my being selected for the position."
She added in
a later message that you are an incredible writer and have touched so many
alumnae with your words.
Thank you!”
Back in 1970, Professor Eckels helped me to tune my
voice. He helped me to understand and
embrace my obligation. An obligation that
feeds my motivation to keep writing.
And on a day like
today, an obligation that answers the “why” and brings me immeasurable joy.
Sheryl
J. Bize-Boutte is the author of “A Dollar Five: Stories From a Baby Boomer’s
Ongoing Journey” and “All That and More’s Wedding” both available at amazon.com and other major booksellers. Her article
“Pride and Pain; Coming of Age as a Black Woman at Mills” can be read at:
https://issuu.com/millsquarterly/docs/2015fall?e=4786048/30514428
copyright © 2016 by Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte
copyright © 2016 by Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte
