Letters to Inmates?
What Kind of Writing is That?
Is it capital-W writing?
I used to wonder if writing to inmates is capital-W writing -- you know, the kind you can put on your vitae. Definitely the brochures and flyers I write for Mother Earth Ministries-ATC are capital-W writing: they may not be in books you can put on your shelf, but they're printed and distributed (and copyrighted), and considered authoritative by a number of government institutions. Works for me!
But letters?
Well, yes. After much thought, I concluded that they do count as Writing.
For one thing, in composing them I face several challenges common to all writers.
I have to figure out how to convey ideas that my readers may be unfamiliar with, and in terms they can understand, no matter how unusual the effective metaphors may be for me.
I have to find a balance between enough straightforward explaining and
enough examples from which readers can figure it out for themselves.
I have to find the right vocabulary level -- and it varies among the inmates I write to.
I have to get to the point, no matter how exuberant I may feel about the background material.
However, because I write this non-fiction in response to letters from
people with questions, I face some unusual challenges, too.
Sometimes I have to read an inmate's letter aloud before I understand
what s/he's saying -- because the spelling is not just phonetic, but
sometimes phonetic to an accent!
I have to find the right balance between making it clear that I'm not taking any, ah, "stuff
from the more manipulative writers, and not accusing anyone of giving me "stuff" when they might be writing just from ignorance.
And, I find that many of the same "administrative" rules of Writing apply.
For instance, no matter what you write, you need to keep track of what
you send to whom, and when. If I enter a contest or submit a story or
a novel to an agent or a publisher, I keep a copy, and a record of when
I sent it, and then a record of when and how I followed up on the
submission. I make a note of the responses I get, too, of course.
Same with the inmate letters. I record the postmark date on every
letter I answer, the date I answer it, and what, if any, literature I
enclose. I keep a (soft) copy of every letter I write, and I quite
frequently refer back to those copies, too, so that I don't repeat
myself too often.
(I keep inmates' letters for six months, and then burn them ... unless
they're red-flaggy in some way. Then I put them in a separate file,
and keep them for pretty much ever, just in case. Kind of like tax
records. Then again, I keep some rejections slips longer than others,
too.)
Inspiration/Perspiration
There's a school of thought that holds that you have to be inspired to
make any kind of art, writing included. I started out relying on
inspiration, and produced some seriously dreadful, ah, "stuff" during
that phase of my aspiration. I have since come to believe that if
you're a writer, you can -- should, do, must -- write, even, and maybe
especially, when you're uninspired.
Nothing's welling up from my soul right now? No timeless words of
profound import and poetic phrasing? Well, there's always those two
dozen inmate letters waiting for answers, hmm? And if I can't answer
most of them without waiting for my muse to drop in, well, then I've
got no business here! Shoulder to the keyboard, girl! Writer up!
This is not to say, however, that I never need to be inspired, and not to say that I never am.
Reading some inmates' letters leaves me shaking my head, wondering how
I can presume to counsel them. My experience is nothing like what
they've been through. Their trust that I can help them humbles me. I
sit down to answer these letters without a clue what I'm going to say,
and yet ... my fingers move over the keyboard and I see words reach
across the page, across the miles, beyond mundane experience and
through the bars.
My analysis
is that I'm drawing on my higher self, and on all the psych courses
I've taken and books I've read and workshops I've attended. What it feels like is that Goddess is writing through me.
I am occasionally moved to tears when those inmates write back to say
that I must've been reading their minds, that what they read in my
letter was exactly to the point and just what they needed to hear (even
if it wasn't what they thought they wanted to hear). Again, it's
humbling; it's ... exultational, too. And it's exhausting, like a good
work out. Sometimes it's inspiration and perspiration!
How great is that?
With all the doubt there is in the world, with all the angst people
suffer, and all the trials and crises of faith people go through, I am
stunned at the magnitude of the blessings this work brings me.
Yes, I put up with some mundane annoyances when one inmate tries to
save my soul or another excoriates me for not being a Satanist or a
skinhead, but ... pfff! Not only do I get to experience my Goddess
working through me, but I also absolutely, unshakably know and trust
that she will be there when I need her -- when the inmates need her.
I never meet most of the inmates I write to. Now and again, someone
who's been released in the Tucson area shows up at a TAWN event and
introduces him- or herself, but that's unusual. But the thing is, even
though we never meet face-to-face, we share something that more people
want than get: we feel the Goddess working in our lives ... and how
great is that?
So. Even if I didn't learn a lot about self-editing from writing to
inmates, even if I didn't come up with lots of original magic to answer
their needs, even if I didn't expand my horizons as a priestess and my
stock of raw material as a writer .... Even if I didn't think of my
letters to inmates as capital-W writing -- and I do -- it's sure as heck
capital-Something work.
