“This isn’t the right word—it sounds a little negative—but it’s what I have right now: halting.”
I was sitting in the middle of a circle in my last Writing as Cultural Engagement class. All eyes were on me as my classmates, who had been reading and critiquing my writing this semester, thought about how they would describe my writing voice. My professor, a well-known cultural commentator herself, had taken the first swing and come up with halting.
This was... not what I expected. And yet the moment she said it, it sounded right.
I’ve described my own writing voice as Quiet. Calm. Reflective. I’m not trying to run the reader over with verbose vocabulary, or lose them in a flurry of subordinate clauses. Instead, I like to take it slowly, writing at the speed of my own thoughts, editing as I go. Hopefully, the reader feels like they’re taking a stroll inside my words, like they’re on a verbal path to an unknown destination.
Then my classmates began to describe my writing voice. Purposeful. Poetic. Breathtaking. Compassionate. These words were definitely positive, perhaps overly so. And while they all touched on aspects of my voice, they didn’t quite hit me in the way halting had.
Halting is slow. It’s short sentences. A pause before every phrase. A constructed thought before fingers hit keys.
And it perfectly describes the way I write.
So, first of all, props to my writing professor, because even though she hesitated, she nailed it. I’m a slow writer, which frustrates me endlessly as an English major. But that halting writing is precisely because I think carefully about every sentence I write.
Earlier in the class period, I talked about how my greatest struggle with the class had been deciding what to write my pieces on. In a cultural engagement class, the goal is to discuss what is happening in culture through blog posts, essays, and articles. We were free to pick any topic to write on, as long as it was related to the current moment.
But writing about the current moment means offering insights about the current moment. Which means having opinions about the current moment. And writing about those opinions means (if they’re published) having a public record of those opinions.
And that terrifies me.
It’s not because I don’t have opinions (I do). It’s not because I’m afraid of voicing my opinions (I’m not). It’s because I am young, and I haven’t learned much of anything.
Josh Harris, the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, has talked often about his regret of writing that book at such a young age. He was 23 years old, and he thought he had godly dating figured out. Jasmine Holmes, a Christian blogger, published a book at the age of 20; she doesn’t associate herself with it anymore, saying, “I still blush a little whenever anyone brings it up.”
I know that the opinions I have now are likely to change. I don’t have the world figured out as a 20-year-old. And writing, unlike talking, is a defining act. Your words don’t disappear into the æther, but are cemented permanently into the unforgiving annals of the worldwide web.
A little later in the class, after we had moved through a few more classmates, my professor turned to me suddenly and said:
“Circumspect! That’s what your voice is. Circumspect.”
Circumspect, like halting, can be taken in two ways. On one hand, it means “wary and unwilling to take risks.” But I prefer Merriam-Webster's definition: “careful to consider all circumstances and possible consequences; prudent.”
I want to wait before I permanently etch my thoughts into the internet. I want to live a little longer, to have more experiences, to meet more people, before I publicly define my life. I want to give myself room to be wrong. I want my learning experiences to be quiet and personal. I want time to grow and mature.
So, if you’ve been reading my articles, you may have noticed I have a quiet voice. A halting voice. A voice with a tinge of uncertainty and a hint of caution.
Those halting spaces are the places I’m leaving for growth. They’re the fuzzy tensions I’m sitting in right now. And they’re the thoughts I’m keeping close to my chest until they’re ready to see the sun.
