When I was fifteen, studying at a private high school, I wanted to write an author report on Sandra Cisneros, the most important writer of my young but committed reading life (I was the sort of kid who skipped class to read). I was told by my English teacher that if I was interested in immigrants I could write about Willa Cather. What the actual fuck. Nothing against Willa Cather, but her experience was very distant for me.

The year I turned thirty I met Cisneros at a writing conference. I stood in the line of people waiting to meet her and when I got to the front she hugged me (oh, she hugged everyone, but I don’t care about that. She hugged me). A few months later, my father died suddenly (unrelated, I’m certain). At the time I was working with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg at Goddard College, beginning to find the conviction I needed to say what I needed to say, to say what I knew, and to honor the particulars of my experiences. When my father died, I emailed her and she gently walked me to poetry and held my hand as I sunk into the work.

A few weekends ago I was sitting in the library at a fancy girls’ school, where my son was participating in a science competition (he’s a different sort of kid than I was, knock wood), and saw the spine of a book that interested me. It had two familiar, important names on it. It was a biography of Sandra Cisneros, written by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg!!! I mean, come on. I took a picture (20 years ago, I’d have taken it as a sign and stolen the book. People change), and then the other day I came across this essay on writing by Sandra Cisneros:

What has writing taught me? That I am on a sacred path, and so is everyone and everything in the universe. That writing is a sitting meditation; I can start wherever I am, with whatever small emotion, and the writing will take me to a more enlightened place. That I must transform my demons, or they will transform me. That humility is necessary in order to be of service. These truths I know more or less.

I love this question: What has writing taught me? I didn’t quite do a New Year’s post, so this will have to be it. Here’s the poem “Burning the Old Year” Naomi Shihab Nye, from Poetry Magazine. There is the writing and then there is the act of writing. The writing itself can burn away, can be inconsequential, can be mundane, or not meant for any great audience. But the act of writing, that’s where the action is. Keep writing.