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The following essay is from the new anthology IT'S WORTH THE STRUGGLE: INSPIRATION FOR CONTEMPORARY WRITERS (2008) published by Aquarius Press and Amazon.com.

Career Days
By Desiree Cooper

Career Days. Those are the days I dread most, standing in front of a classroom explaining what I do for a living. To avoid the blank stares of middle schoolers, or the bored yawns of high schoolers, I've learned to arrive armed with a poster to explain what it takes to be a journalist.
   
In the middle of the poster, there's a cartoonish girl carrying a notebook with a sleuth-like concentration on her face. Arrows point out her critical assets: Eyes for seeing what others take for granted, ears for deep listening, a mind for remembering details accurately and for making interesting connections. An arrow points out her fingers that must do the writing and her feet that never tire of searching for the truth.

My favorite, I always save for last - the arrow to the heart, where every story begins long before it is written.

The poster is labeled "Tools of a Good Writer." It's the gimmick that gets me through the hardest part of any story - the beginning. From there, I explain the difference between fact and opinion; I invite the students to explore the subjects of rap music or life on Mars or the talents of Beyoncé. As they argue, they begin to see the difference between fact and opinion for themselves.

And then I tell them that I'm a newspaper columnist, a person who gets to have it both ways. I look at the facts, weigh them, understand them, consider them. Then I weave them into a point of view.

That usually takes about forty-five minutes. Soon, the students will be streaming out of the classroom. I fear my presentation is already fading for all but one of them who, God willing, will grow up to win a Pulitzer Prize.

But then, a palm rises in the air, pale and smooth.

"Mrs. Cooper?" comes the voice. "How do you get to be a columnist?"

I wither in front of the question, weighing the answer that springs from my heart, and choosing instead the one that I've rehearsed in my head.

"I went to journalism school, then to law school," I respond, starting first on the foundation of fact. "While I was practicing law, I started freelancing. Eventually, I applied for an opening as a columnist and the rest is history."

Implicit in the answer is this: Get your education, work hard, and ace a job interview and you, too, can be a columnist. But I know that this isn't the whole story.

My life as a writer has been much more mystical than that---in fact, it has felt divinely ordered. How do I say to them that I wrote to save my life? And that it was years later that I realized that maybe my life had been saved in order that I may write?

I bought my first computer in 1992. I was the married mother of a two children. I loved my children, but had underestimated the toll parenting and a career would take upon my spirit. Too many nights, I fell into sleeplessness like a hooked fish, flopping and struggling to breathe.

Somehow I found the wherewithal to start writing it all down. I did it because I could find no other way to hold on to myself. I wrote through fatigue, anger, resentment. I wrote into hope, possibility, imagination. Through the keyboard, I gave my soul CPR.

It would be nearly a decade and several careers before my words formed themselves into poems, stories, manuscripts, columns. It would be longer still before my livelihood and my love for writing began to merge. But it didn't matter. I wasn't writing for fame or outside recognition. I was writing so that I would always be able to recognize myself, even when life was swallowing me whole.

Here's what I wish I'd told those doe-eyed preteens in the classroom. Writing isn't about inspiration or money, but about self-discovery. You write to say something and you write to listen to what others have to say.

One of the scariest moments in my life was when I found I couldn't write. In that desert I learned that a true writer is always writing, even when she's not. When you are in a drought, it's time to step back, adjust your life and then live it. Let the writing sit--just maintain the intention and the discipline. When the soul is ready to unleash, you'll find a reservoir of experiences to infuse your stories. The words will come.

My favorite Bible verse is Joel 2:25 "And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten." You're never too old, too poor, too uneducated, too sheltered or too insignificant to write.

Decide that today's the day. Let the precious unfolding begin.


Desiree Cooper has been an award-winning columnist with the Detroit Free Press for more than a decade. She is also the co-host of American Public's Media's "Weekend America" aired nationally on public radio. She has won several prizes for her fiction and poetry, and has been anthologized in DETROIT NOIR and OTHER PEOPLE'S SKIN. Her novella, BREAKIN' IT DOWN, will be published in 2009.

"Career Days" is from a new anthology, IT'S WORTH THE STRUGGLE: INSPIRATION FOR CONTEMPORARY WRITERS (2008), published by Aquarius Press and Amazon.com.