Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

As we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr., I'd like to introduce a very special writer who helped encourage a new generation of storytellers. 

Web journalist and editor Kimberlee Morrison is the air-traffic controller for the Know More Media family of business blogs. She promotes the work of forty different writers, maintains the company's main blog, and serves as editorial assistant to a sprawling network of blogs--including this one. 

I've enjoyed her work over the last year, but I recently discovered that she was a freedom writer--part of a group of 150 teenagers who kept diaries about their lives in one of the country's roughest high schools in Long Beach, California. 

You can read about their famous work here or see the new Freedom Writers movie that tells their story. Morrison will be our special guest this week, sharing her story and writing advice.

Welcome to a very special edition of my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing...

Jason Boog:
The Freedom Writers project depends on diary-writing. How did diary writing affect your life? Any advice for a young writer looking to start a productive diary?

Kimberlee Morrison:
At first the Freedom Writers Diary was just a random collection of our thoughts and experiences, much like a typical diary or journal. Since many of us had no one to confide in, our journals became our confidante into which we poured our pain. Continue reading...

When the publishing houses called our essays a collection of horror stories, we realized that if we were going to get our diaries published, we would have to compile them in some sort of organized fashion and decide on a theme with a message of hope.

My mother was the first person to give me a journal. As someone who has often repressed my feelings, having a journal really helped me through some emotionally difficult times. The Freedom Writers Diary was much more than a diary though. It was for me part of the process of coming into who I am. I became pregnant with my first child in my senior year in high school and felt largely disappointed in myself, so much so that I wanted to give up on everything.

But how could I write about hope if I had none myself? If I wanted to live up to what I said I was all about, I had to learn from my mistakes and be that much more motivated if I was going to accomplish the things I wanted to do.

So my writing for the book became more like giving a testimony. You see in a church setting, a testimony is often about some change or revelation you have had that you tell others about because you want your story to encourage them. A testimony also reminds you of where you came from; you remind yourself that you are who and what you are because of the things you had to go through. Once Erin Gruwell (our teacher) told me that I could become the one to inspire many young girls because I am an example of what you can do when you put your heart into it.

Honestly, I didn’t know how it would happen and to this day I still feel the sting of shame thinking about some of the things that I have gone through. I remember the first time I saw what it looked for someone to feel as though we had the same story. I was a college aide in her class and the Freedom Writers were guest speakers.

After it was all said and done, the students all wanted to know which one was my story because I worked in their class and they knew me. She asked how old my son was and as soon as I told her, I saw her mentally do the math and knew she knew which one was mine.

We never discussed it after that but from that day on, though I saw a marked difference in her attitude and behavior. That is not to say she was a disciplinary problem but she was tired and acted as if she didn’t care about school; she had bigger things to worry about, mainly taking care of her child. I was like a ray of hope for herself and her future. To me this was a huge responsibility, one I accepted before I had ever met this student.

When you write a diary, it should not necessarily be with the goal to publish in mind. Its about the story, not you. If you do decide to publish your story however, you have to do so with the understanding that it could change lives. I have heard about people being on the verge of killing themselves before reading the Freedom Writer’s Diary; that is true power and responsibility. If you want to write a “productive diary” you have to be prepared for both.