Longevity, Anxiety, and Not Exactly Writing Advice From a Teen Driver

My teen daughter is a new driver, and she spends too much of her free time scoping out fun bumper stickers and deciding which ones she’ll purchase once she gets her own car. Mostly, she’s focused on good-naturedly warning off tailgaters with phrases such as “Back Off, Bumper Humper” and “Do you follow Jesus this closely?”. These playful yet serious missives all carry the same message: slow down. 

We live in a world obsessed with technology and media and instant gratification. Writers are creating content of little real value, just to create content and keep pace with the 24-hour news cycle and our endless, everpresent need to be entertained or “educated” via a two-minute read. Like my daughter, I feel the need to slow down, to refuse to be pushed forward by someone in a hurry behind me, to proceed at my own pace, on my own time.

Longevity

Like many parents I know, I worry for my teens, especially in the current climate of cell phone videos and social media. When I was young (back in the 1900s, my daughter would say), it was possible to make a mistake, even to do something supremely stupid, as teenagers are likely to do, without a record of our missteps. Now, one wrong move, or even something taken out of context, can follow a person forever.

Words on a page live forever, too, whether that page is print or digital. Once your work has landed in a reader’s hands, your words are immortal. Does this feel exhilarating? Or terrifying? For me it’s a little of both. Once something is posted on the internet, it is out there forever. You can’t take it back. Someone somewhere may have downloaded and printed your words. Someone may have taken a screenshot. Even if you try to remove it, you won’t know how far it has traveled in the meantime. The same is true for books and print periodicals. Once your work is printed and distributed, you can’t take it back. You’ve written for a specific audience, but you never know who will pick up that dog-eared copy from the little free library down the street.

Many writers are introverted. Not all, but some. It’s kind of why we become writers. We have something to say, and we often enjoy that perceived distance between us and our audience. The page seems like a buffer for us. 

Like the feeling of exposure, the permanence of published writing can be a psychological barrier to writing success. We may not even realize we are hesitant to finalize our writing and put it out there. We may not be able to name our anxiety about sending our work out into the world with a type-o, or, worse, with a turn of phrase or description that might be misinterpreted. Or what if we change our worldview and this piece no longer reflects the public identity we want to claim? 

I have published pieces from more than 20 years ago that might not be appreciated now the way I would like them to be, not because I have changed but because the culture has changed. I’m still proud of my work, and these pieces are still part of my professional identity, even though the work I am doing now is very different. This is where Maya Angelou comes in: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Here she is referencing growth, which we can’t accomplish until we begin.

The fact is, if we’re in any sort of public-facing position, we’re going to have a presence, whether we like it or not. Do we want to leave that to chance? Or do we want to own our own narrative?

The Scenic Route

In this case, I suggest taking my daughter’s advice: slow down. The act of writing is a process, and by definition, slow. When we take the time to write a piece that has meaning for us, we brainstorm, we research, we draft, we revise, we revise again. We solicit feedback from trusted readers. And then we revise again. We slow down so we can get it just right. Unlike social media or the flow of a 24-hour news cycle, we can control what we say and how we represent ourselves in a piece of slow writing. 

Slow doesn’t mean lazy. Slow means precise, measured, thoughtful. We can still hustle and produce well-considered work. Moving slowly, intentionally, is graceful and true. What does fast get us anyhow, really?

For a new driver, fast might mean a fender bender. For a writer, it might mean bypassing the process by which we learn and grow and make sense of the world around us, the process that connects us to other people through ideas, conversation, and debate. 

When I was a kid, my parents would say they were “taking the scenic route” when they missed a turn or got a little off track during our travels. This was before the time of GPS, so they were relying on paper maps and memory. They were (mostly joyfully, sometimes sarcastically) celebrating the circuitous route, the experience they wouldn’t have had and the sights they wouldn’t have seen if they had followed the economical route and been bent on a quick point A to point B trip. This was a conscious choice on their part, to enjoy the moment even though they had been waylaid, and this is a lesson for which I am grateful.

We may lament the phrase “spending time” as referring to time in the language of currency, but isn’t time, and the experience of living our lives, one of the most valuable currencies there is? In both traveling and writing, it is just as important to enjoy the trip as it is to reach the destination.

Intention

Regardless of how careful and precise our writing is, we have no control over how someone will respond to our words or how we will be received. And this, without a doubt, can be intimidating. But what are our options? To remain silent? No. When we have something to say, let’s take the time to get it right. That slowness, that intentionality, is a big part of being alive, of being who we are, of living our lives through experience. If we rush past it all, what is the point. Writing brings us understanding, clarity, and, often, joy, especially when we are intentional with our purpose and our process.

So, take the scenic route. Don’t worry about that tense guy behind you. Or turn off at the next stop sign and leave him to his rushing. Embrace the discovery and enjoy the process. Welcome the feedback from your community. Control what you can control and do the best you can with the information you have at the time. Once your words are out there, they have a life of their own. Your journey may be unpredictable, but it will be uniquely yours.