Journalist, Author Roger Rosenblatt Outlines His 4 Reasons to Write

Journalist, Author Roger Rosenblatt Outlines His 4 Reasons to Write | PBS NewsHour | Jan. 31, 2011 | PBS

I stumbled across a memoir written by this guy, Roger Rosenblatt, when I was looking for a good memoir to read in order to inspire (and teach) myself to write a memoir of my own.

I liked the snippet of his memoir that I read, which spurred me to google him, which led me to mentioning him to my writing partners (an informal group of five women, counting me, who share writing via email), which led to one of those writing partners sending me the link to this interview with Roger  (one of the benefits of cultivating relationships with other writers, btw).

One thing I particularly like about this interview was when Roger said of his students, "I can help them write better. I can't make them into professional writers . . . but I can help them be better writers than they are. . . . (and gain) an appreciation of the world they're entering..."

It's a simple statement. He makes no grandiose promises. But what he has to offer, even within this one short, plain statement, is to my mind a great deal: 1) writing better than before, and 2) appreciating the world of writing.

One of my own biggest hopes, as a teacher, is to be able to show my students that writing can be so much more than some arbitrary set of pre-conceived "writing goals." I want, instead, to help them open their minds to a much broader and deeper way of seeing what this "world of writing" has to offer them.

I know that they may well be surprised, as time goes on, by how little the goals matter in comparison to the process. The process is the world. The goals are merely one small part of that world.