Message to Students

Why I Write:

An Invitation to Creatives

by

Mrs. Zueger

Ranger ELA teacher and writer

I do not remember a time that I did not write. Before I was in kindergarten, my grandma would bring home scratch paper from her job with the county, and I would create swirls that I thought looked like cursive writing.

“Is this writing?” I would ask her.

“Not yet, honey,” she would reply.

I couldn’t wait to write, couldn’t wait to share all the stories that filled my head. Without a knowledge of alphabetical symbols, I resorted to drawing. That scratch paper was covered in princesses and castles and rabbits.

I had a thing with rabbits. Ginger, my cat, left so many of them on our doorstep, all dead, of course. At the time, I would mourn them with a grief most people reserved for family members.

I was five. Death was a cottontail left bloody and splayed on the back porch. Drawing bunnies helped me deal with the inevitable loss of life that all of us unfortunately must confront.

Some of us are great verbal story tellers. Some of us can draw our truths. Some of us see stories in the logic of science or math. When I finally learned to put my thoughts into sentences, I used writing to tell my own truths, my own stories, even if they were only for my own eyes.

Regardless of the platform, we all have something in common: the need to share our own truths, the pull to tell our own stories.

My wish for you, Memorial students, is to use this platform, It’s A Muse Thing, to share yourselves and your truths, whatever form they may take.