Why I Write

Early-summer ponderings on letter writing, newspaper columns, and what it's all about

As a professional musician, raised by musician parents, who has played music for most of my life, some of my readers may be wondering how I became a writer, or what got me interested in spending time pursuing a totally different creative act. As I’ve thought back through the years, I think it all started for me with letter writing. I grew up in a time before computers were wide-spread, and when letter writing was one of the main ways people stayed in touch with friends and family in other places. We paid for each long-distance call (on our landline), by the minute, so those were a special treat, reserved for important occasions or people.

If I wanted to talk with the friends I’d made at summer camp, we wrote letters. When I wanted (or was implored) to share with my grandparents who lived far away, I wrote letters. But of course, writing was also something everyone did every day. We all hand-wrote things like grocery lists, memos to ourselves, short notes to colleagues, long missives to good friends – all things that most of us now do with keyboards, over screens.
I’m not a total Luddite – I love voice typing texts to friends and colleagues, grocery lists my husband and I can share over our phones, the ease of communication with folks near and far. But sometimes the easier something is, the more we take it for granted. (This sounds like something old folks say, when admonishing younger folks, but we know it’s true!) Just because I could probably fairly easily over Google or Facebook find the beloved college roommate who I have lost touch with, and write her an email to catch up on 20ish years, if there’s no urgency, then it gets put off another year. And sometimes I’ll stumble across an old email in my inbox from someone I was delighted to hear from out of the blue, and then inexplicably never replied to.

I’m not sure if I wrote more letters when I was a teenagers than others my age or not. I wrote to friends who’d left for college. I wrote to friends I’d made at camp. Summers home from college, I wrote to college friends who were back in their hometowns, as well as home friends who were elsewhere. My parents and my grandparents and I traded letters when I was in college and grad school. I still have many of those letters. I like to think that my letter writing not only honed my love of the written word, but what I’ve been told is my unique and identifiable voice. People often tell me that my writing sounds like me. I would think everyone could do this, but evidently not!

At any rate, it was probably about ten years ago that a friend of mine popped into my inbox, offering what sounded like a very non-intimidating writing circle, and I was compelled to sign up. I don’t remember anymore exactly why, except it must have sounded like fun. A few years later, I audited an upper-level poetry class a professor friend of mine was teaching, and that really jump-started my poetry writing practice. Somewhere in there, I began writing long, newsy blog posts on my website, about the trips I took to play concerts and visit notable pipe organs.

Then about a year ago, I did something I’d been pondering for years, and reached out to the Holland Sentinel, to ask if they’d be interested in having me write as one of their community columnists. In my “pitch” to then-editor Sarah Leach, I said I was not going to write about politics, as we are all already surrounded by so much politics, and I wanted to write about music. I’ve written about concerts I’ve played, concerts I’ve attended, my life as an organist, creativity, musician friends and whatever else comes into my mind. But it’s been very rewarding to write for my local newspaper, and hear feedback from friends, acquaintances, and even folks I don’t know. I’ve been writing these columns since the fall of 2022 - a pretty decent run so far.

This Substack newsletter is an extension of that writing, where I more recently began connecting with non-Holland readers, especially since the current trajectory of our local paper after the recent and very unfortunate firing of the brilliant-Leach is uncertain. And since I’m posting this after my Sentinel deadline, I can allow myself one more point, that I didn’t think of in time for my original article! Writing allows me to express myself creatively and connect with others, in some of the same ways I enjoy in my music, but through another medium. I see it as arising from the same impulses and motivation, but coming into the world in a different way. Like learning to speak a different language, it’s been a midlife adventure that has helped me grow and stretch.

So, thanks for reading. While I would probably keep writing, whether anyone was reading or not, as with letter writing, it’s fun writing to someone outside my own head, and I’m glad you are listening!