Everyone knows the basic concept: stand on the shoulder with a thumb in the air until a driver pulls over. But that alone will get you glares, pitying glances, and head shakes. Through online research and personal experience, I have discovered a few tricks to effective thumbing, so you, too, can hit the road.
Something about studying words at Calvin was special. The camaraderie and community among faculty, staff, and students in the department was tangible. I was taught, but I was also nurtured.
Fellow Calvinites, if you, like my unfortunate college roommate and Michigan native have never been farther west than—what did he say?—Iowa!, then you have never lived.
Imagination can lead further than empathy, though. If I act upon empathy, if I stop grumbling about that huge SUV or the car that just cut me off and instead consider my fellow drivers as people with legitimate fears or beginners somewhat shaky on the road, then I accord them some grace.
In order to reframe our writing, we need to see the world through a writer’s frame. What experiences, once put to words, will make compelling literature? Or start a discussion? Or, in their tedium, force readers to confront their boredom and test out what “counts” as art?
Those professors who warned us how hard it was to keep up post-college writing when no one is making you do it, possibly they made it quite clear that it was a choice. Even a responsibility.
