Writing is a lonely pursuit. You’re trapped inside the confines of your own mind by design, and the job is to get an idea that you’ve thought about into language the universal reader can appreciate. But you don’t know who that universal reader is, and there are moments of doubt where you’re not even sure that the thoughts you’ve put into the world are being read by anyone.
Dear reader, if you’ve gotten this far, I have a confession to make.
I read every single word in the nonfiction category of The Pasatiempo Writing Contest. We’re talking more than 65 entries in this category, and with an average length of around 1,000 words. I’ve read enough pieces from our readers in the last month to publish an entire tome of nonfiction. Some entries, in fact, I read multiple times, just to make sure I liked them as much as I thought I did after the first reading.
I was there with you, riding the wave of your lives, digesting your most cherished family memories, and the most painful remembrances. I exulted at your triumphs and grieved along with your losses, and I admired your artistry and your courage along the way.
Now Spencer, you might be asking, what qualifies you to judge my writing in a contest?
I’m glad you asked. Admittedly, I am not a professor of literature or creative writing. But I am someone who has worked in the field of journalism for two decades, and I appreciate a story well told.
When I became a journalist, I signed a contract that I didn’t understand at the time. My day job is to learn as much as I can about my interview subject, to cache enough information to have an interesting conversation, and to tell readers about the artist’s perspective. When that’s done, I have to move on to the next story, which doesn’t always leave time to read for pleasure.
But in the course of narrowing down finalists in this writing contest, I’ve read more than I’ve read in quite some time.
There was very little that separated many of the finalist selections. They were artfully written, punctuated cleanly and crisply, and brought the reader on a journey with a defined arc to it. We had readers from different kinds of life experiences sharing stories from all over the world; Santa Fe was a recurring character in our submissions, but it didn’t limit the writers’ imaginations.
I also read pieces with a variety of writing structures. Some were direct and to the point, while others artfully took on the form of a letter to a relative or the feeling of a literary short story. And I read all the entries in a short span of time — and had my own writing and deadlines to meet at the same time. Writers were on the honor system to tell stories that were in fact nonfiction, and from what I can tell, nothing was out of bounds.
I’m breaking my own rules about writerly economy in this column, but what I want to impart to readers is that I came to this position merely a year ago, not really knowing much about my audience.
I’ve spent much of my working life in baseball stadium press boxes and clubhouses where the daily conversation, as you might imagine, is not about the output of Kurt Vonnegut. But now, after 11 months on the job and reading the work of a thoroughly invested community, I realize this: Pasa’s readers are really good writers. And that’s a sentence that feels really good to type.
