Recently, I was invited to give a kind of brief testimony connected to the mission statement at my Unitarian church during one of the services. I am relatively new to church going but not to writing. And I was, at once, flattered to be asked and doubtful that I could come up with anything decent to say. Before I could say yes, I had to sit down to see if I could draft something, anything. I started with an observation I had shared before: that I come from a family of non-joiners. I feared I was tramping familiar, possibly stale, territory. But this opening still held truth for me and helped me generate an acceptable draft that allowed me to say yes to the invitation to speak. I then left the draft alone. But my mind did not leave the subject alone. And though I had limited page space in which to investigate my topic, I had more I wanted to express. The challenge became how to wedge more meaning into an already tight piece. It became work in miniature— an additional line here, a different word there, small shifts and deletions. Through increments, I worked toward more accuracy—”I was reaffirmed”, not “reaffirmed and strengthened”; specificity—”my recalcitrant mood shifted” not just “my mood”; honesty—”I got out of the habit of going to church” and “didn’t seem to mind”; and complexity—”joining in” felt more invitational than “joining,” by which I meant becoming a member.

In the process, what began as simply fulfilling a request, meeting a challenge, and not embarrassing myself became something more meaningful. It became a genuine exercise in self-inquiry that caught ahold of me. Why was I encouraging my family to start attending church when I was an uncomfortable joiner? What made me say yes to getting involved, well aware of my resistance? What made me so recalcitrant? A word my 14-year-old recognized as descriptive of me.

Writing was doing its work. It was facilitating a process of discovery. Trusting writing to do this was something I frequently advocated to my writing students. Why was I surprised that what I espoused was working once again for me?

Revision—that process of re-seeing, so vital to effective writing—was also doing its work. The second, third, and fourth returns to my piece, aided by the composting in between, were helping me get closer to what I really thought, helping me say something more substantial. What highlighted this process was my intentional record keeping of my edits – the additions, deletions, and alternate choices. These mapped the footsteps of my thinking, the evolution of my understanding.

And then there was my audience—ostensibly the congregation at South Church, but really, I came to realize, my family, the ones who were non-joiners, who, I felt, would be skeptical about this church going of mine. I, of course, was also my own audience. The piece, after all, was a debate with myself.
But reading the piece aloud reminded me that I would not be the only audience for my writing. This kept me considering what needed to be explained and how to guide my audience with the focus and connective fabric of the piece. Reading aloud invited refinement—smoothing places where the piece stumbled. It made me work on timing and punch. It reminded me of the vital role of punctuation in emphasis, pacing and clarity of meaning.

The entire process was instructive. It elucidated not only my subject, but also the way meaning is made and communicated.