FM Weekly 4.12

16 April 2023

content notice for this issue: anti-trans legislation, anti-abortion legislation, Black maternal mortality, unconsented intersex surgery

This week, my feminism professor began class by asking us to do some creative free-writing. The prompt: “when do you do your best writing?” Here’s some of what I wrote.

i do my best writing when

all the laundry is done

the dogs are fed

there's an eight hour time block

i'm first awake in the morning, still laying in bed, before any other thought has occurred to me

i'm in the shower, with no way to write down what i thought, so i immediately forget it, but it was the best writing of my life

the paper is due in 4 hours

i'm getting married in 2 hours

i can picture someone i love reading it

there's no deadline

i don't know what i want to say yet

i say my thoughts out loud before getting tangled in sentence structure

with my best friend across the table or next to me on the cough

it’s raining, loudly

it’s snowing, softly

i can mix references to fiction, nonfiction, poetry, news, and social media

there’s no grade

my wife’s downstairs, bustling around making dinner

anonymized in airports, surrounded in noisy coffee shops, quiet corners at busy conferences

I’m quoting friends’ work, even better if in the epigraph

I’m uplifting others’ passionate pleas for liberation alongside my own

my framing isn’t solely focused on recent loss of rights, or recent harms, or ongoing violence with no known resolution

my family’s safety isn’t constantly at stake

patients’ ability to self-define health isn’t pre-foreclosed upon

the words that I might be illegal to read in some places

the books I am quoting aren’t being banned

I do not worry that my words will risk my personal or professional future

I can imagine already achieving everything that has been taken away so I can envision what might be next

I can just… write.