Is Writing Cathartic? — Shelby Hinte On Why We Write
This spring, I graduated from San Francisco State University with an MFA in Fiction. It is one of those graduate level degrees that cause people to smile and nod and look past you for the wine bar wishing they hadn’t asked what it was you had gone to school for. The kind of degree that stands in for a lifestyle that makes normal dinner conversation around what people do for a living, as though a person’s occupation is their sole defining characteristic, a little out of most people’s comfort zone. Their voices often go sing-songy as the ask, “So, how’s the book coming along?” the last part of the question so high-pitched it can be swallowed by the room’s background noise.
For me, making the decision to go to earn an MFA meant making the decision to take writing seriously. It meant deciding to follow a fire that burned for looking to the page as a place of infinite inquiry and discovery. It also meant telling my parents. This was a terrifying decision as the offspring of two adults who came from working-class and blue-collar America and regarded work ethic as the most sacred of all human characteristics. Explaining to my parents that I wanted to be an artist was like saying I think I am a unicorn (to my mother), or, I am going to be a bum that eventually begs you to let me steal the dog’s couch and sleep in your garage (to my father). They both had imagined entirely different pictures of what my life as a writer would look like.
One of the great things about MFA programs is that they are one of the few places where you can find groups of people who take their passions, and yours, as seriously as you do. It is a place full of writers and artists that support and encourage the kind of reckless behavior that is nurturing an artistic lifestyle while simultaneously existing in a capitalist society in which a person’s value is, in large part, decided upon by the monetary value of their labor and how much they can afford to spend. As a woman writing in the bay area since 2009, I can tell you that these groups, and emphasis on the nurturing part, are rare gems that should be cared for with the most delicate of hands.
By my second year of grad school I ran into a dilemma not uncommon to many writers, particularly female writers. I was struggling to justify my own writing time to myself. I found it difficult to substantiate writing 12 plus hours a week. Though many of these hours were done while my family slept, plenty of them required that I quarantine myself downstairs, away from them, on weekends. How could I justify that time spent? What did I have to show for it?
Not unlike my parents, I had a full-time job by the time I was sixteen and since, have never not worked at least one full-time job. My work has always earned something. Has always been the thing that carves a place for me in the world. Being an independent, capable, working woman is basically engrained in my DNA. This part of myself does not make being a young, aspiring writer easy. In fact, it makes it damn near impossible.
While I have chosen to lead a life that takes my writing seriously, I do not think of writing as something I have had much choice in. It is something I need to exist. On days I don’t do it I can feel my limbs grow heavy from the words it hasn’t released to the page. After two or more days of not writing I often find myself clutching blank pages like a lifejacket in the open ocean. I ask myself if this feeling, the one of desperate need and then relief upon finally writing, is enough to make the work matter.
As I questioned the worth of my time writing, I sought the guidance of a professor who often talked of writing and everything else balance. She made an analogy that went something like this: writing is just like any other job. You have to show up to the shop and clock in and work the whole shift. You don’t turn the open sign off just because your kid sees you working in your pajamas or no one comes in to buy anything. There are still things that get done in the shop even when no one comes in. You cannot clock-out until your shift has ended and if you miss a shift you must make up those hours.
It was an analogy I could get behind. It disenchanted me, in many ways, to the mystery of writing. My whole life, my whole bloodline, had prepared me for this kind of thinking. Writing is as simple as showing up to work, clocking in, and not leaving until your shift has ended.
As of yet, my writing has paid in the following: six packs of beer, paperbacks, copies of literary journals, friendship, and once, $35. The story that earned me $35 was written over a three-year period and I once did the math on what I made hourly only to discover that it was less than a penny per hour. I vowed never to do that again.
So far, writing isn’t the kind of work that can sustain me and my family, but I have chosen not to treat it any different that my work that does sustain us. It is a labor of love and as I near the final edits on my novel, I try not to think of what the hourly rate of this labor will amount to by the time it is finally a published object someone can hold in their hands. I know the worth of those hours to me. On a good writing day, I can feel the pressure of the world, of my own rigidity, lighten their grip around my muscles. My head fills with light and air and my vision blurs just enough to soften the jagged edges of the world. It is akin to a runner’s high or glass of wine after a long day. Whatever self-loathing or anxiety I may have carried into the writing session, even if it is kind of shitty writing, evaporates by the time I leave my desk. This is catharsis. The purification or purgation of the emotions (such as pity & fear) primarily through art.[1]
While catharsis does not pay the bills, hard work does. I think art is always a hybrid of the two.
[1] “Catharsis.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2019.
Web. 8 November 2019.
About Shelby Hinte
Shelby Hinte is a writer and educator living in the Bay Area. She received her MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University where she was the recipient of the 2019 Distinguished Graduate award. She has been a contributing food and beverage writer for Edible Santa Fe. Her fiction has appeared in Vagabond Lit, Witness Magazine, Hobart, Quiet Lightning's Sparkle + Blink, decomP magazinE, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel about women and vortexes in the desert.
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