I graduated from college with an English degree, $4,000 in credit-card debt, and dreams of an MFA in fiction writing. I knew I didn’t want to go to graduate school right away so I decided to work for a few years to pay off my debt. To rationalize accepting a job as a paralegal and not holding out for my dream job as a magazine-editor-cum-freelance-writer-extraordinaire, I looked into writing classes that were offered at night. I decided that I should take one writing class a quarter as that would help me keep up my writing and maybe get some good material for that upcoming MFA application. I announced my writing-class plan to my family and friends, and they all thought it was a great idea.

A writing-professor friend of mine suggested classes at the Richard Hugo House on Capitol Hill. I looked into their class schedule and signed up for a class the following quarter called "Writing a Province of Your Own." The description said it would help me find my own distinct tone and authorial voice. I wrote a poem about soup, another poem that was an apology to my mother, and an essay about my father’s infidelity and how we love the same movies. Although (for better or worse) food and family remain prominent themes in my writing, I wasn’t sure I had found a consistent voice in these pieces.

For our final assignment, I wrote a story about Amelia Meyers, a young woman who worked at a law office. The story began with a vivid description of the lobby, the lobby furniture, the hallway leading to Amelia’s office. But once the story moved inside her office, I didn’t know where to go. I had nothing to say about Amelia. My description of her office was more interesting than my description of her. What were her passions? Her problems? Her peculiarities? I didn’t know. There was no direction and not much plot. My attempts to revise the story for the end of the quarter reading and potluck went nowhere and I felt stuck. Is writing really what I wanted to do? Was I any good at it? Was I suffering from lack of direction like my story? I didn’t have any answers that I wanted to hear, so the following quarter, after making a mental note to stop announcing life plans to family and friends before I’m sure that I’ll follow through, I signed up for an Italian cooking class.

I told my family and friends that I wanted a break from writing and that I really liked Italian food. Of course, the real reason was that I was afraid. I was afraid that if I took another writing class, it would confirm my worst fears: I’m not good enough and not cut out for writing. After nine months and too much garlic-laden homemade Caesar dressing, I was determined to not hide my fear in ethnic cooking. I looked up the Hugo House class schedule and signed up for "I Spy for Writers." We learned how to become excellent eavesdroppers and noisy neighbors and how to turn the details we collected into stories. One of our first assignments was to sit and make a list of everything around us. Since I usually wrote the assignments during lunch, my list comprised everything in my office: a noisy computer tower, dust-laden framed photographs, a half-dead plant by the window, a four-shelf bookshelf, a two-shelf bookshelf, an extra chair that no one used. Our final assignment was to write a piece to read at the end-of-the-quarter potluck. Determined not to chicken out and have to take a Thai cooking class the next quarter, I pulled my girl-in-office story from my laptop archives, added the details from my list, edited the hell out of it, gave the main character an attitude, and read it at the potluck. I was nervous, read too fast, and my voice shook a little (all right, a lot), but everyone laughed at the funny parts and that’s about all I could ask for. That January I made a New Year’s resolution to do whatever it took to keep writing in my life and signed up for another writing class at the Hugo House.

That class went even better than the first two–despite my jealousy that even our instructor’s five-year-old daughter has a book published. Through the class, I met a woman who was forming a writing group. I joined. Our group continues to meet every other Thursday. I also learned of Seattle Writergrrls and joined the Uncapped leadership committee. I accidentally left my lights on during an Uncapped meeting and drained my car’s battery. I had to borrow jumper cables from a family friend, who, when I went to return the cables, asked me to coauthor the nonfiction book he was about to start. I have also finished a few short stories and submitted one for publication for the first time in over three years. I don’t know if it will be published, but without my writing classes I wouldn’t have gained the courage to submit something again.

When I started to write this article, I sent e-mails to some of my writer friends and asked them why they take writing classes. I learned that my friend Tanya takes classes because she finds peer pressure to be an effective motivator. She also says that she is much more likely to attend class and do the assignments if she knows that she paid money for it. My friend Bruce took his first writing class to meet women after his divorce. Although all the women in his class were over 80, so the romance angle didn’t work out, he discovered that he loved to write plays and has since formed a playwriting group. I took classes because I don’t want to be only a paralegal. I want to be a paralegal who’s planning to get her MFA within five years. Well, I’m still a paralegal; I still don’t know whether I want to get an MFA, but now I take writing classes to keep writing in my life. When writing is a part of my life, I don’t feel the same urgency to apply for an MFA. I’m already a writer. Maybe some day I will get an MFA (who knows for sure? certainly not me), but for now I will continue taking classes and pursuing opportunities that come my way. So, regardless of why you take a class, my guess is that if you keep at them, you will get results. They might not be the results you expect, but sometimes those are the best kind.