Anna Quindlen's "Write for Your Life" hit the newstands and internet a couple of weeks back, but I just had a chance to read it.

I like the piece for the way it tries to resuscitate writing by pulling it away from professional contexts that have sucked out its life:

But as the letter fell out of favor and education became professionalized, with its goal less the expansion of the mind than the acquisition of a job, writing began to be seen largely as the purview of writers. Writing at work also became so stylistically removed from the story of our lives that the two seemed to have nothing in common. Corporate prose conformed to an equation: information x polysyllabic words + tortured syntax = aren't you impressed?

The essay might be interesting to me because it lays out one of the biggest problems writing teachers face--trying to engage students with what feels like a foreign language. But the essay matters more because it really steps one pace further, suggesting that writing works as a legacy of the self--more lasting than a phone call, it leaves behind traces that others can follow. "Write for Life" is careful also not to fall too hard toward print nostalgia: "The age of technology has both revived the use of writing and provided ever more reasons for its spiritual solace. E-mails are letters, after all, more lasting than phone calls, even if many of them r 2 cursory 4 u." The point is not about looking backwards toward parchment, but about using words to capture and share something about the self.

Great stuff, but not enough. The piece takes one more step, explaining that writing works not only because it helps people connect. Writing matters because it helps us make sense of the distractions and traumas of our lives, and, with any luck, writing helps people make it through these difficulties. Tired sentimentality? I don't think so. Wheeling writing back toward personal struggle and survival closes the loop. It's not just that we need a space for writing to be non-professional and alive. Instead we need a place where writing can help keep us alive.