Margaret Whitford

Answering the Call to a Writing Life

At age fifty, I returned to graduate school to pursue an MFA in writing. Desire to pursue something for the sheer pleasure of it rather than professional ambition led me there. At the time my goals were both predictable—to develop and refine my skills as a writer—and also less obvious and more complex.

I wanted to create a writing life, in the sense that I wanted to develop the behaviors and sensibilities I associated with writing. I am still working toward that goal, one that has more to do with a way of being in the world than it does with my productivity as a writer, at least when it comes to publishing my work.

In his 1884 essay “The Art of Fiction,” Henry James wrote, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.” His advice was directed at novelists in particular and writers of fiction generally, but it conveys beautifully what I have come to understand as central to a writing life.

Writing is a way of seeing, one that requires attentiveness and curiosity.

Writing as a Way of Seeing and Understanding

One of my graduate-school workshops helped me understand what it means to pay attention to my surroundings, especially when they are familiar. In a place we think we know well, we are less likely to notice details. Place becomes mere setting for other concerns. We move through the environment blind to its unique and changing character.

The workshop required that I spend thirty minutes outside once a week writing. I had to choose one place—in my case a spot on the built-in bench of our wooden deck—and return to it during each writing session. That it was winter in Pittsburgh and sometimes gray and frigid did not matter.

My task was to make myself fully present in the place I’d chosen.

My entries from that long-ago journal are full of evocative details that relied on my senses. I noticed how the voices of wind chimes varied from the low notes of the heaviest chimes to the tinkling of the lighter ones, a sound like children’s laughter. I recorded the ways in which the sky’s colors changed depending on weather and time of day. I noticed how my fingers felt stiff in the cold and the way the damp seeped through my jeans as I sat on the wooden bench.

And as if a door were opening, those sensory details often led me to memories.

 A Lifelong Apprenticeship to the Craft of Writing

Decades before I decided to pursue an MFA, a college professor of mine suggested that we do not understand something until we are able to write about it. This is another aspect of writing as seeing; it is a path toward understanding. Writing invites me to see things more fully and more truthfully.

I write to make sense of the world around me and my own experience within that world. I write to honor life and to evoke and sustain memory. I write to create something of value, even if only for myself.

One of the things I admire about the writers I know, virtually all of whom are far more accomplished than I, is their humility. When it comes to the craft of writing, they each reach for mastery while accepting that it will remain beyond their grasp. On the surface, this could be discouraging. Yet, I have found it to be one of the things I appreciate about writing, especially as I age.

Unlike some other pursuits for which success depends on youth, I can still improve my craft. That aspiration motivates me to keep working toward what I may learn.

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My memoir, “The History We Carry: A Daughter’s Memoir,” will be released in June 2026 by SheWritesPress.

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