What "Are You Writing?" Truly Means Among Writers

Laurel Radzieski on Sheltering in Writing

Photo by takahiro taguchi on Unsplash

---

Welcome to Writer In The World, the Wednesday section of Aimee Liu’s MFA Lore. This curated collection of free essays on the writing life is written by acclaimed MFA faculty and alumni.

Aimee’s MFA Core essays on the craft and business of creative writing will drop each Saturday. And her free Metaphortography Writing Prompts post every Monday.

As an MFA Lore subscriber you can join our community and elect to receive some or all of these sections each week.

Sheltering in Writing*

by Laurel Radzieski

Are you writing?

The question is warm and soft to the touch, but accompanied by a singed scent, as if it could be dangerous. On the phone, in cars, at coffee shops and restaurants, readings, parties and gatherings, the question hangs in the air, waiting for one writer to pose it to another.

A shared reckoning is expanding. The protests are steady. I am grappling with Are you writing. How to write during a collective fraying and how not to? And yet.

When a writer asks a fellow writer Are you writing? the inquiry implies additional questions:

Are you writing? (i.e. How are you doing?)

Are you writing? (i.e. How are you feeling?)

Are you writing? (i.e. Are you nurtured?)

Are you writing? (i.e. Do you have enough time for your creative work?)

Are you writing? (i.e. Is there space for this, let’s face it, WORK?)

Are you writing? (i.e. How are you doing balancing your job/kids/family/pet/history/ health/fears/passions with being a writer?)

Are you writing? (i.e. If you are writing new things, can I read them?)

Are you writing? (i.e. Are you okay?)

Are you writing? (i.e. Do you know that you’re a writer even if you aren’t writing?)

I try to focus on the Are you writing?s when they occur, popping up in conversation like fresh green sprouts, new and hopeful.

People who do not consider themselves writers do not ask Are you writing? but instead lead with What are you writing? Suggesting that an onlooker perceives the writer as always writing, as if the presence of writing in a writer’s life is a continuous action verb.

I like to think that when I am asked or when I ask Are you writing? it comes from a place of love and hope, of familiarity and community, from encouragement.

I keep an etymological dictionary on the floor under my desk. My feet rest on it when I sit. The dictionary is on the floor because I learned years ago that the back ache I experienced when sitting at my desk with this particular chair could be prevented by keeping a thick, old book under my feet.

According to my dictionary, the original sense of the act of writing was to score, as in “to cut slightly.” A marking in three dimensions, shallow slit dipping down but not through. Opening alters and communicates without obliterating. How purposeful and excitingly reckless, a comfort!

I put the book back under my feet and again feel a bit of remorse doing so. My ankles are once-again grateful. I return to the work.

If to write is to score, the writer becomes one who leaves a distinguishable notching – a slash with meaning. The act of writing contains an aggression, as all movement does. To write is to alter for purpose, play, or pleasure. To make such a mark is a short movement that can be performed over long stretches of time or in short bursts. Sometimes the cuts are too deep and the text is irreparable, yet also beautiful in its disaster. In this way, writing is a form of personal, active forgiveness.

---

Laurel Radzieski is a poet and the author of two books, Leaf Manifesto (Middle Creek Publishing & Audio, 2025), winner of the 2024 Halcyon Award for Poetry, and Red Mother (NYQ Books, 2018) which won the 2020 Whirling Prize in Poetry from Etchings Press. Laurel’s poems have appeared in Clockhouse, Rust + Moth, The New York Quarterly, Atlas and Alice, and elsewhere, including on a street sign in Wisconsin. She earned her MFA at Goddard College and has been a writer-in-residence at Wormfarm Institute. Laurel is the Director of Grants at Alvernia University and writes at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts. She enjoys writing poems for strangers and playing board games that take up the whole table. Laurel lives in Reading, PA and can be found online at eatmorepoems.com.

---

Would you like MFA-level feedback on your work?

Becoming a Premium Member of the Take 5 MFA Lore community will entitle you to:

• Aimee’s written feedback on both your query and up to 5 pages (1250 words) of creative work, plus an optional follow-up phone call. Your “Take 5 Packet Letter” will highlight both the Strengths and the Opportunities in your work, helping you determine whether it’s time to “press send” to agents or to reorient your revision.

• Monthly zoom writing workshops with Aimee, just for Premium Take 5 Loreates.

• Full access to paid posts and MFA Lore archives, and all other benefits of a paid subscription.

Subscribe at the Premium level or upgrade today. Details HERE.

*First published in The Writer In The World on June 29, 2020.