I came across an article on Substack the other day, and the title hit a nerve.
It was provocative, in a clickbait sort of way, and written by a writing professor who seemed to be questioning whether much of what is published here qualifies as writing.
So, naturally, I read it, and it pissed me off.
Pardon the F-bomb in the title. The nerve is apparently still a little raw.
And no, I am not going to share the article here because there is no sense in hijacking your nervous system too.
It’s not that I disagreed with everything the professor had to say. In fact, buried underneath the provocation was a question I think every writer should consider:
What are you giving the reader?
Fair question.
I just don’t buy the suggestion that sharing what we’ve learned from living somehow isn’t enough.
There’s a difference between simply telling someone what happened to you and reflecting on what happened to you. If I’m writing a personal essay about someone I loved and lost, I’m probably not just telling you that I loved and lost.
I’m telling you what loving taught me, what losing taught me, and what I know now that I didn’t know before.
And that might matter to you.
It also might not.
And maybe my experience doesn’t interest everyone.
So what?
I think about art and an analogy that seems to apply to many things in life.
There are so many different genres. Folk art. Traditional art. Modern art. Contemporary art, which I happen to lean into. The list goes on and on. The shops, museums, art fairs and books on the subject are equally endless.
The bottom line is, there’s a buyer for every kind of art.
I’m probably not buying the folk art. My girlfriend isn’t buying the contemporary piece I’d happily hang on my wall. We each lean in and love what we love.
That doesn’t make one of them art and the other one not art.
Writing isn’t so different.
Your people are out there, and your perspective is your own.
There is something about the suggestion that only certain experiences, told in certain ways, by people who have somehow earned the right to call themselves writers, that really gets under my skin.
I didn’t arrive on this platform as a learned writer with a degree in literary prose. And I suspect many other people didn’t either.
Does the craft make the writer, or does the writer make the craft?
Honestly, I don’t care.
In my simple mind’s eye, good writing is just that. Good writing.
I don’t need to grade the composition of an article or know the pedigree of the author to determine whether I found value or relatability in the piece.
There seems to be a culture where expertise requires credentials and, worse yet, sharing requires authority. That little orange check and subscriber count have created a subculture of that here as well. I am ashamed to admit that I have looked at those things as though they somehow provide extra value. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t.
What I do know is that I am not a professor, and I certainly don’t have a degree in writing. But from my kitchen table, I see another kind of credibility that comes simply from having lived through something.
You don’t have to be the expert to have something worth saying. I am definitely not. But I have a growing library of more than 100 articles I call writing, and I am building something not just for myself. If something I write resonates with even one person, that matters to me.
What I do have, like you, is experience.
I ran ten marathons in less than four years. I learned a lot about training, endurance, recovery and good running shoes along the way.
I built more than one business from the ground up and learned plenty about ambition, including what it can cost you, but also the value of community and the importance of organization and hiring smart people.
I lost my husband unexpectedly. I know grief in a way I never wanted to and would never wish on another.
I also remarried at 52. I know something about beginning again and how some people welcome it and others don’t.
I raised a daughter who is now finding her own way in the world, which has taught me more about the heartbreak of letting go than I ever imagined.
None of those experiences makes me the definitive authority on running, business, grief, marriage or motherhood. They certainly didn’t come with a degree.
But they do make me an authority on what those experiences taught me. Through grit, determination, pain, loss and joy, I earned my stripes. And I am here to share it.
Experience doesn’t qualify you to tell someone else how to live. It qualifies you to tell them what living taught you.
My curiosity is what drove me here.
I want to read about the thing you did that scared you.
The place you went that changed you.
How grief changed you and how you navigated through it.
I am genuinely interested in knowing about the mistake you made twice before you finally learned from it because perhaps I won’t make it too.
I want to know what product you’re putting on your face at 50 that somehow makes you look 35. If you have that, please do share.
I want a little piece of each and every one of you that gives me an added perspective I can’t get sitting in my kitchen in Naples, Florida.
Tell me what you believed at 25 that you wouldn’t dream of believing at 52.
Tell me what, at 52, you never thought was possible and yet you’re doing it and kicking ass in the process.
Tell me what worked.
Tell me what didn’t.
Tell me what you wish someone had told you sooner.
I truly want to know.
While I could go back to the college classroom and learn at the expense of both my pocketbook and my time, the truth of the matter is, I don’t need to.
Because somewhere out there, someone is writing about the very thing I might be craving or didn’t even know I needed to know.
And when I do read about it, wow, am I glad I now know.
Your perspective, your experience, your life and your words matter. Put into writing, they just may make me stop for a second and think, I never thought about it that way.
That’s something.
And no, everyone isn’t going to care.
They don’t have to.
I don’t stop in front of every painting in a museum either.
In fact, I may skip an entire floor.
But I stop in front of the ones that speak to me.
That’s what personal writing can do.
Maybe your life isn’t interesting to everyone.
Neither is mine.
But what you’ve learned from living yours might be exactly what someone else needs to read.
You don’t need to be an expert on life to share what life has taught you.
A life lived is a life worth sharing.
Don’t let anyone else suggest otherwise.
Always EDITing,
Leslie
If this resonates with you at all, I would love your thoughts. Your comments create community, and I love meeting you all here.
P.S. In the spirit and desire to continue leaving my readers with something worth arriving here for, I’m sharing my list of rituals and resources I lean into to support my nervous system. Trust me, after reading that article, I doubled down on a few things here.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you may know that my goal is to become the person who lowers everyone’s cortisol. I’m also a huge believer in the science behind longevity and spend a considerable amount of time and resources traveling to clinics around the world in support of my own wellbeing.
If you’re a paid subscriber, what follows is for you, with gratitude for your support and readership.
A few of my recent pieces that I am proud to share:
I just came across this….
..but I just know it's gonna be sooooo good.
I drafted this article a week ago with the subtitle as the title. Over the weekend I came across the other article, and I ended up rewriting the entire piece. It became fuel for something more. I am grateful to read other people’s work. It often becomes the source of inspiration for my thoughts and words. This article is certainly proof of that.