Rhetorical Responsiveness: Responding to Literacy Narratives as Teachers of Composition - by Cynthia L. Selfe and the DALN Consortium
As she reflects on her narrative, the young woman reveals the import of her story:
And now that I have about sixty days sober, I have found myself not being able to write at all. I'm still singing a little bit, but now I'm singing other people's music instead, and I'm just worried that my creativity only came out when I was using drugs and alcohol.
Concluding on a hopeful note, the speaker notes she is headed for an Artists in Recovery meeting to talk about her dilemma: "That's where we talk about the struggles that we have dealing with being artists and how we deal with that in sobriety and the struggles we go through." She also expresses her hope that her creativity will return,
A lot of people have told me to just give it time and focus on my sobriety and then, you know, when that creativity comes again....maybe once I'm feeling better mentally, then—and I start actually working on other issues—then I will be able to start writing again.
The young woman ends her narrative, however, on a note of both concern and hopefulness,
Being a songwriter and just being a writer in general and having all that pain—I'm really worried that the pain is what fuels really good writing. So I'm hoping that I can learn through sobriety that that's not true. And just because I'm happy now and I'm not suffering that I'll still be able to write and write to a quality that I think is worth something. Thank you so much.