Tag: writing

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Writing Prompt: Write about something that scared you

This week’s writing prompt with my class makes me a little more vulnerable than I’d like, but I suppose that’s what I’ve challenged my students to do, so it follows I should shake in my boots a little, too. We’ve been discussing our goals and dreams, events that have challenged us or frightened us before delving into action. Adrenaline was at the forefront, warning us that something was going to happen quickly, honing our senses into a hyper-alert and hypersensitive state.

Write about something that scared you.

It took me forever to press the send button on an email to my editor at Ave Maria Press containing the manuscript for my first book. Sometime in the fourth grade I decided I wanted to be a writer, and it took all those decades for it to happen in a traditional medium.  Oh, I’ve flirted around with writing on this blog, and other places, even self-published a bunch of things, but this time, the stakes seemed a little higher for me. What if the publisher hates it? What if nobody wants to buy it?

What if the whole universe conspires against my book and deems it the worst thing ever! 

I was consoled with the knowledge that no matter how bad it could be, it’s not likely to generate an online contest for terrible opening lines, like the Bulwer-Lytton Prize, so I hit send. It was an action 42 years in the making, since that very first essay I wrote in the fourth grade.

Nothing exploded. Nobody fired me.

I got a little bit of indigestion later, when I found out what the title was. Oh, it’s sure to be a classic, at least in my family. Are you ready?

My Badass Book of Saints

There’s an awesome subtitle, but I want you to pay attention to it and you’re still obsessing over Badass in the title of a Catholic Saints book. That’s OK. Me, too. Let’s recover together.

My Badass Book of Saints: Courageous Women Who Showed Me How to Live.

I like it. It suits me. I mean, I’m writing about some really extraordinary women, some saints, some not quite saints, and a few that, well, might be saints in heaven, but weren’t exactly Saints on earth. I’m in there, too, telling my story, my mom’s story, my grandma’s story.

It’s a pretty good book. A badass book.

And I’m still scared.

My Badass Book of Saints: Courageous Women Who Showed Me How to Live
by Maria Morera Johnson
Ave Maria Press

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Writing Prompt: Crystal Moment

This week’s writing prompt with my class is simple yet complex. We often think of milestones in our lives, but can we isolate one moment that impacted us so profoundly that we can say it has defined who we’ve become? This crystal-clear moment shines in our timeline so brightly we can point to it and say That’s it. That’s when I became brave or successful or happy or bold.

What’s your crystal moment?

My crystal moment happened when I was in college. I studied abroad between my junior and senior year. It was an easy decision to make. I was majoring in English, with a great love of medieval French literature — a lot of the Arthurian romances came out of that time period. I couldn’t get enough of Chretien de Troyes’s poems and epic stories of Lancelot and the Grail, and the heroic virtues of chivalry. I guess I was a romantic.

I went into this adventure with an open mind, but I really lacked a lot of maturity when it came to being on my own. I’d always lived at home. I went to a commuter college, and while I was paying for my studies, everything else was comfortably taken care of by my parents. I had a roof over my head, meals, and even a car (plus gas money). My only responsibility was to do well in school and graduate.

I was well on the way to graduating when I got the wild hair to study in France. After all, I’d been reading  plenty of French literature, I might as well go visit.

It was actually the best thing I could have done. I learned a great deal on this adventure, not all of it about French literature. In fact, while I did read some Victor Hugo in French thanks to a wonderful library in my host home, I learned much more than just stories. I’ve always known that literature is the study of the human condition. I got to experience the human condition in a new way. Better than reading about it, I got to live it.

This adventure taught me about self-reliance since I had to figure everything out on my own: from budgeting, to travel, to essentially being on my own. I learned a great deal about different cultures, not just the French. My location in Aix-en-Provence placed me close to Marseilles, close to the French Riviera, and beyond. I saw quite a bit of Europe. But perhaps the most important lesson I learned was empathy. This daughter of immigrants got to experience first hand, at the same age, what my parents experienced when they came to the United States.

Wait. Let me qualify that. I wasn’t running away from oppression. I had money in my pocket, and a return ticket to my home.

But I did learn what it was like to immerse myself suddenly into a culture I didn’t quite understand. I found myself yearning for the familiar, isolated in unexpected moments. Voiceless as long I didn’t know the language. It may have only been a little piece of their experience, but it was enough for me to return home with a different attitude. A broader understanding of what their generation experienced.

If that had been all, it would have been quite a bit. But thirty years later, in my work, I teach many new immigrants to the United States. My experiences then continue to inform me today. It’s an extraordinary full circle.

my journal from the trip
my journal from the trip

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