Writing Life
When Words Really Matter
by Kelly James-Enger

I'm not ashamed to say I write for money. Forget the muse. Like most members of ASJA, I write for a living, and have done so for more than a decade. I've penned articles on topics ranging from animal dissection alternatives to angioplasty, toddler dental traumas to bridesmaid drama. It matters not whether I'm ghosting a sales coaching book or editing a medical course for emergency room docs. Make me an offer, promise a decent amount of money, and I'm your girl.

No, it's not as simple as brewing coffee or digging ditches, but as a service journalist, most of my work isn't brain-taxing stuff. Sure, I cover subjects that are new to me occasionally, and I stretch myself to come up with new approaches to evergreen subjects (unlike the ditch-digging analogy above). On the plus side, I rarely experience writer's block. Sure, some days I don't particularly feel like writing, but that's not writer's block. That's writer's apathy.

So why was I so blocked when I came to writing a simple, two-page pitch? It didn't matter that I've written more than 1,000 sales letters in more than a decade. They've ranged from queries to letters of introduction, to cover letters that accompanied essays. This was a different kind of pitch. In the adoption world, we call them "Dear Birth Mother letters." It's the document you create to introduce yourself to a woman who's expecting a baby and considering adoption (Although technically the nomenclature isn't accurate; a woman only becomes a "birth mother" after she places her child for adoption) .

Think about that. You're given a measly few paragraphs to catch this woman's attention, to explain why you want to be a parent, to showcase your strengths as a person, to demonstrate why you (and your husband) are deserving of her baby. How can you possibly encapsulate that in a few hundred words? And what if you don't pick precisely the right words? Yes, I write for a living. But now I was writing for my life—the life I hoped to have as a parent. I was, in all senses of the word, blocked. I thought I knew what I wanted to say. Several adoptive parents (including ASJA member Janine Latus) sent me templates. I had samples to model off of it. But I was still stuck. I would sit down at my computer, stare at the screen, and think, "This is the most important letter I will ever write."

Normally I'm a fan of "pretty good" when it comes to my work. Pretty good is almost always good enough. That wasn't the case here. I had some false starts, struggling with the right mix of information and style. I abandoned the writing process completely for a couple of weeks, instead digging through photo albums and looking for pictures where Erik and I looked young yet mature, carefree yet responsible, smart yet personable. I chose pictures that would reflect our personalities and our as-yet-unproven-but-hopefully-stellar parenting abilities. And yes, I included pictures of each of us with children (smiling, happy children) to create a subliminal message of "Hey, they look like great parents."

And finally I remembered the No. 1 rule of writing—consider your reader. I stopped worrying about what I should include or what I thought I wanted to say, and focused on what I thought my child's birth mother would want to know. Sure, I wrote a little bit about our history together, our hobbies, our families. But the heart of the letter was about her baby—and what her baby's life would be like if she chose us to become parents. I wrote, edited, and rewrote. I sent it to my adoption attorney, who suggested I make some changes. (You know the drill—when an editor says, "You've got a great start, but…") I made the changes, and my lawyer said she liked the new version. My husband liked it. My mom liked it. My best friend liked it.

Most importantly, a young woman named Jodi liked it. She'd learned about us through our attorney, and asked for my (painstakingly crafted) letter. She thought we sounded down-to-earth, laid-back, and fun—and she called us after reading it. We met her two weeks later, and she chose us to adopt her baby. Just six weeks after that, Ryan was born and became our son.

Now I know that it wasn't that I was immune to writer's block. It was that none of my assignments up until then had mattered to me all that much. Even the big features for glossies I'd tried to crack for years all came down to a byline, a clip, a check. It wasn't until I had the chance at my dream assignment—the one I truly wanted—that the words got stuck. Eventually though, they came to me—maybe not the perfect words, but the right words. The ones that created a connection between writer and reader—between Jodi and me—and so much more.

Kelly James-Enger's book, The Belated Baby: a Guide to Parenting after Infertility, co-authored with Jill S. Browning, was published by Cumberland House in May.