I spent last weekend in a state of delighted excitement. That Friday I had gotten word that a short story collection I had submitted to a book publication contest had been chosen as a semi-finalist. Only the winning book will be published, but it was inexplicably exhilarating to have come so close. This semi-finalist ranking came fairly close on the heels of my finding out that I had been nominated for a Pushcart this year, and I spent the weekend feeling like I had broken through to some new plane as a writer. I still hadn’t published a book, but I felt like it wasn’t unrealistic to think that book publication might not be too far off in my future.
Somehow I managed to pull myself back down from the clouds and get my grading done for the weekend. At the start of the new week, during the drive to work, something very interesting hit me: it didn’t really matter in any significant way. Not the pushcart nomination nor the semi-finalist ranking nor even the feeling that I had moved up a bit in my career as a writer. Even if I had actually won the contest, if I had successfully landed my first book contract, I would still have been in the car at that moment, on my way to teach. The basic facts of my life would have remained the same.
In fact, one of the finalists in the contest is a full time professor at Ohio University, in my husband Damien’s creative writing graduate program. She’s had several books published already and won several awards and contests, but she teaches to make a living. Most writers do, or they do something else to make money. Not many writers can actually live off of writing alone.
It’s not like this was news to me. I’ve long known that writing will never be my full time career. I’ve known I will always have to have a day job. But as I sat in the car on my way to teach that day, it really registered with me how little success as a writer actually means in the big picture.
While some writers might find that idea depressing, I find it oddly reassuring. There’s something both humbling and comforting about the thought that acceptances – and that means rejections, also – aren’t really that important in the grand scheme of things. Writing can add meaning to your life, but I think it’s important to stay grounded, too, in the fact that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t get something published, nor is it world changing if and when you do.
Showing posts with label the Real World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the Real World. Show all posts
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
What Other Options Are There?
I want to talk a little about writers’ conferences and non-graduate school writing programs this week. One thing that I kept thinking about as I was at the Writing Works Conference a few weeks ago was how a lot of the ideas that you’re made to explicitly think about at a writing conference are pretty much the same ideas that you study and discuss in formal graduate workshops. Many conferences also offer manuscript critiques with agents, editors, and successful writers.
And if these conference critiques aren’t quite enough for you, there are also a number of intensive workshop programs, which can span anywhere between a single weekend to a couple of months, during which time you participate in workshops and are also given ample time to write. You also are likely to become a part of a community of writers, as enrollment in these programs is usually kept quite small and you have nobody to interact with during the duration of the conference but the other writers.
In other words, these conferences and workshop programs offer many of the same benefits that MFA programs do, but for less of a time commitment (and for some people, less of a financial commitment, although most MFA programs offer teaching assistantships so that students do not have to pay tuition).
There are, however, a few key differences between MFA programs and these other routes. One is that, while an MFA program might be quite a time commitment, spending a lot of time in a program might be precisely what you need to bring you from aspiring to full fledged writer. I know I’m glad for having had three full years to devote to writing, and I don’t think it would be the same to devote a month, say, or a couple of weeks.
On the other hand, while most MFA students do not have to pay tuition, the three (or sometimes two) years that you spend in an MFA program are usually spent well below the poverty line. You get a stipend as a teaching assistant, but it really isn’t much. It’s enough to live by, if you can learn to live frugally, but for many aspiring writers it might be unreasonable to even consider living in poverty for two or three years. What if you have children to take care of, or perhaps massive credit card debt that you will need enough income to pay down, school or no school?
Another consideration is whether the degree itself will open any doors for you, personally. One of the big things you get from an MFA program is experience teaching, and teaching is really the only thing that I can think of that an MFA degree definitively qualifies you to do. If you want to be a college English teacher, then you should go to a formal program. Writers’ conferences and workshops can be useful in a lot of ways, but they will not prepare you for a career in academia. If you’re not interested in teaching, however, then it’s possible that an MFA program isn’t the right path for you. Teaching can be stressful and it can distract you from writing, but if you want to go to school for free, most programs expect you to teach. You may end up finding (as so many creative writing grads do) that your writing ends up taking a backburner to the time and energy you must spend learning to become a decent teacher.
There’s also, of course, the question of life experience. If you devote yourself to writing for three years and are mostly surrounded by other writers, you may not come out of the program with as much interesting stuff to write about as you would have had you been working a regular job and hanging out with regular people during that time.
I guess what it all comes down to is that I think MFA programs can be great, and I also think these intensive workshops seem great, and I also think writers’ conferences are great. Simply put, there are many ways to study and hone your craft. The real question is what will be right for you?
And if these conference critiques aren’t quite enough for you, there are also a number of intensive workshop programs, which can span anywhere between a single weekend to a couple of months, during which time you participate in workshops and are also given ample time to write. You also are likely to become a part of a community of writers, as enrollment in these programs is usually kept quite small and you have nobody to interact with during the duration of the conference but the other writers.
In other words, these conferences and workshop programs offer many of the same benefits that MFA programs do, but for less of a time commitment (and for some people, less of a financial commitment, although most MFA programs offer teaching assistantships so that students do not have to pay tuition).
There are, however, a few key differences between MFA programs and these other routes. One is that, while an MFA program might be quite a time commitment, spending a lot of time in a program might be precisely what you need to bring you from aspiring to full fledged writer. I know I’m glad for having had three full years to devote to writing, and I don’t think it would be the same to devote a month, say, or a couple of weeks.
On the other hand, while most MFA students do not have to pay tuition, the three (or sometimes two) years that you spend in an MFA program are usually spent well below the poverty line. You get a stipend as a teaching assistant, but it really isn’t much. It’s enough to live by, if you can learn to live frugally, but for many aspiring writers it might be unreasonable to even consider living in poverty for two or three years. What if you have children to take care of, or perhaps massive credit card debt that you will need enough income to pay down, school or no school?
Another consideration is whether the degree itself will open any doors for you, personally. One of the big things you get from an MFA program is experience teaching, and teaching is really the only thing that I can think of that an MFA degree definitively qualifies you to do. If you want to be a college English teacher, then you should go to a formal program. Writers’ conferences and workshops can be useful in a lot of ways, but they will not prepare you for a career in academia. If you’re not interested in teaching, however, then it’s possible that an MFA program isn’t the right path for you. Teaching can be stressful and it can distract you from writing, but if you want to go to school for free, most programs expect you to teach. You may end up finding (as so many creative writing grads do) that your writing ends up taking a backburner to the time and energy you must spend learning to become a decent teacher.
There’s also, of course, the question of life experience. If you devote yourself to writing for three years and are mostly surrounded by other writers, you may not come out of the program with as much interesting stuff to write about as you would have had you been working a regular job and hanging out with regular people during that time.
I guess what it all comes down to is that I think MFA programs can be great, and I also think these intensive workshops seem great, and I also think writers’ conferences are great. Simply put, there are many ways to study and hone your craft. The real question is what will be right for you?
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Writing Schedules
I just got back from a conference in Columbus: the Seventh Annual Writing Works Conference, sponsored by Columbus State Community College (which, by the way, has an extremely impressive creative writing program for a community college). The keynote speaker at this truly magnificent conference was David Rakoff (who I was fairly ambivalent to prior to this weekend but who I am definitely a fan of now. He read us some really excellent stuff from his new book forthcoming in a few months). In addition to Rakoff’s keynote address and humor writing workshop, there were a range of extremely interesting lectures and workshops run by a variety of writers. I feel genuinely surprised by how useful this conference was (which is not to say that these sorts of things are rarely useful, but I’ve been to so many panel discussions, lectures, and workshops that I supposed there wasn’t much that I hadn’t heard before), and in the next few weeks I will definitely be addressing a few of the key topics the conference brought up in my mind.
One point in particular that kept coming up in the various lectures and workshops as well as during Rakoff’s Q&A was the idea that many successful writers don’t adhere to any kind of strict writing schedule. Many of the writers at the conference talked about how they don’t worry about scheduling time in their lives to write or habitually writing for X amount of hours at X o’clock every day. Some of them even pointed out that you absolutely cannot expect yourself to write every day; sometimes there are simply other things that you need to do.
One writer said that if she tries to set aside time to write, then she never feels like writing during that time, but she often feels like writing at other times, when she should be doing something else. So she writes at those times. Screw it, right? Another writer said she writes whenever she feels like writing, and she doesn’t when she doesn’t. Sometimes she’ll wake up in the middle of the night and write and then go back to sleep. Rakoff said that he doubts he’s ever spent more than ten straight minutes writing (surely an exaggeration but you get the point).
Almost all the writers who I saw speak seemed to agree that, while the idea of writing at seven o’clock every morning sounds lovely, that just isn’t the way it works for any of them (and they seem to be doing just fine regardless, thank you very much). It was an intriguing variation from the advice successful writers so often give amateurs: you should create a schedule, develop a habit, set aside an hour or two that will be your time to write every day. It seems successful writers often give that advice – perhaps to help the otherwise helpless because perhaps, they figure, if you have to ask you aren’t going to be able to work it out organically – but many of them don’t need to follow it themselves.
Now in fairness, this might partially be due to the fact that most of them make a living off of their writing and so have an unlimited amount of time in which to write every day. If you have no other pressing needs, it might be easier to write when you feel like it and not when you don’t, while it can be a bit more difficult for those of us who have to work full time and must write in the few spare hours that are left.
Even so, it’s useful to keep in mind that many of the writers who do make a living off of writing do not force their brains into submission according to a set writing schedule. Take that for what you will: an interesting tidbit, or perhaps encouragement that it’s okay to keep on doing whatever works for you. Write by a schedule or write when you want. Write every day or in frenzied bursts when you have a few days in a row off. Don’t, though, get down on yourself because you think the “real” writers are clocking in for eight hour shifts, are writing until their fingers bleed. Because they aren’t, and you don’t have to, either.
One point in particular that kept coming up in the various lectures and workshops as well as during Rakoff’s Q&A was the idea that many successful writers don’t adhere to any kind of strict writing schedule. Many of the writers at the conference talked about how they don’t worry about scheduling time in their lives to write or habitually writing for X amount of hours at X o’clock every day. Some of them even pointed out that you absolutely cannot expect yourself to write every day; sometimes there are simply other things that you need to do.
One writer said that if she tries to set aside time to write, then she never feels like writing during that time, but she often feels like writing at other times, when she should be doing something else. So she writes at those times. Screw it, right? Another writer said she writes whenever she feels like writing, and she doesn’t when she doesn’t. Sometimes she’ll wake up in the middle of the night and write and then go back to sleep. Rakoff said that he doubts he’s ever spent more than ten straight minutes writing (surely an exaggeration but you get the point).
Almost all the writers who I saw speak seemed to agree that, while the idea of writing at seven o’clock every morning sounds lovely, that just isn’t the way it works for any of them (and they seem to be doing just fine regardless, thank you very much). It was an intriguing variation from the advice successful writers so often give amateurs: you should create a schedule, develop a habit, set aside an hour or two that will be your time to write every day. It seems successful writers often give that advice – perhaps to help the otherwise helpless because perhaps, they figure, if you have to ask you aren’t going to be able to work it out organically – but many of them don’t need to follow it themselves.
Now in fairness, this might partially be due to the fact that most of them make a living off of their writing and so have an unlimited amount of time in which to write every day. If you have no other pressing needs, it might be easier to write when you feel like it and not when you don’t, while it can be a bit more difficult for those of us who have to work full time and must write in the few spare hours that are left.
Even so, it’s useful to keep in mind that many of the writers who do make a living off of writing do not force their brains into submission according to a set writing schedule. Take that for what you will: an interesting tidbit, or perhaps encouragement that it’s okay to keep on doing whatever works for you. Write by a schedule or write when you want. Write every day or in frenzied bursts when you have a few days in a row off. Don’t, though, get down on yourself because you think the “real” writers are clocking in for eight hour shifts, are writing until their fingers bleed. Because they aren’t, and you don’t have to, either.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Divvying up those Character Points
David Sedaris published an essay in the New Yorker a few months ago that really stuck with me. He talked about the idea that success really comes down to whether you’re willing to shift your priorities in life. You spend more time and effort on whatever it is that you want to be successful at and less on things like hobbies or family and friends. Sedaris, of course, in his lovably self-deprecating way, used this topic as a springboard to talk about his relationship with his family, but this idea of shifting priorities, of allowing yourself to be a failure at parts of your life so that you can be a success at others, really resonated with me.
This is something Malcolm Gladwell talks about, too, something that many people would agree with: success involves sacrifice. This idea has been on my mind a lot recently because I’ve been so busy at work (I have – no joke – seventy five to a hundred papers to grade every week) and have also been working under deadline to address editorial comments on a couple of scholarly essays (essays which, by the way, I spent a lot of time last summer on, too). I also would like to keep my marriage a happy one, and I’ve been trying to be a more social person (which takes a lot of effort for someone with social anxiety, let me tell you).
And, of course, there is my creative writing.
I write, but I don’t write as much as I’d like to. Realistically, I don’t know that it’s possible to write as much as I want. I don’t write genre fiction and so will surely never make a living off of writing, which means I have to devote time to developing myself as a career gal. I also would like to have a baby some day (and yes, my husband and I are both aware that the clock is ticking on that one) and know that being a mother will take a lot of time.
The question I have is am I spreading myself too thin? You have to be a multifaceted person, I believe, to be a good writer, but you also have to be willing to spend a lot of time actually writing. This might mean sacrificing other things that you might also have wanted to spend a lot of time on. We all know that our writing should come before things like video games or TV, but what about things like publishing critical essays or furthering the great academic discussion on X book or Y field? These things would generally be considered a productive use of your time, but if it takes away from your creative writing time, is it really worth it?
I think real life is more similar than you might think to one of those games where you have a certain number of points to divvy up however you see fit. Do you want your character to be stronger or smarter? Do you want him to have better magic or battle skills? You might ask yourself similar questions when it comes to your own priorities. Do I want to be a writer or do I want to be fluent in French? Do I want to publish scholarly essays or short stories and novels? Maybe we all really do have a finite number of effort points, and we have to choose carefully what we want to use them on. We can’t pour them all into writing, but we can decide which parts of our lives we really care enough about to spend the points on. Do you want to be the sort of person who dabbles in a lot of things but isn’t very good at any of them, or the sort of person who can only do a few things but can do those few things very, very well?
This is something Malcolm Gladwell talks about, too, something that many people would agree with: success involves sacrifice. This idea has been on my mind a lot recently because I’ve been so busy at work (I have – no joke – seventy five to a hundred papers to grade every week) and have also been working under deadline to address editorial comments on a couple of scholarly essays (essays which, by the way, I spent a lot of time last summer on, too). I also would like to keep my marriage a happy one, and I’ve been trying to be a more social person (which takes a lot of effort for someone with social anxiety, let me tell you).
And, of course, there is my creative writing.
I write, but I don’t write as much as I’d like to. Realistically, I don’t know that it’s possible to write as much as I want. I don’t write genre fiction and so will surely never make a living off of writing, which means I have to devote time to developing myself as a career gal. I also would like to have a baby some day (and yes, my husband and I are both aware that the clock is ticking on that one) and know that being a mother will take a lot of time.
The question I have is am I spreading myself too thin? You have to be a multifaceted person, I believe, to be a good writer, but you also have to be willing to spend a lot of time actually writing. This might mean sacrificing other things that you might also have wanted to spend a lot of time on. We all know that our writing should come before things like video games or TV, but what about things like publishing critical essays or furthering the great academic discussion on X book or Y field? These things would generally be considered a productive use of your time, but if it takes away from your creative writing time, is it really worth it?
I think real life is more similar than you might think to one of those games where you have a certain number of points to divvy up however you see fit. Do you want your character to be stronger or smarter? Do you want him to have better magic or battle skills? You might ask yourself similar questions when it comes to your own priorities. Do I want to be a writer or do I want to be fluent in French? Do I want to publish scholarly essays or short stories and novels? Maybe we all really do have a finite number of effort points, and we have to choose carefully what we want to use them on. We can’t pour them all into writing, but we can decide which parts of our lives we really care enough about to spend the points on. Do you want to be the sort of person who dabbles in a lot of things but isn’t very good at any of them, or the sort of person who can only do a few things but can do those few things very, very well?
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Time Management: What Grad School Won’t Teach You
When I was an MFA student, I used to complain like a little baby that I didn’t have enough time to write. “I swear I had more time to write when I was just working full time,” I could often be heard saying. “Isn’t the point of grad school to give you time to write?”
The older, ever-so-slightly wiser me now looks back at that whiny me and shakes her head. “Please,” I would tell that younger Ashley if I could. “You have plenty of time to write. You’re just spending it complaining about not having enough time. On top of that, the point of grad school is not to give you time to write. The point of grad school, if we lived in such a simplistic world where there could possibly be one universal point to grad school, is to help you become a better writer. Nobody ever really promised you time.”
In fact, now that I’m teaching what most colleges consider a full-timer’s load of classes (though at my school I’m still technically considered part-time, ah semantics!), I’m realizing that the best way to prepare a budding writer for the harsh realities of the non-grad student writing life is to force you to scrounge writing time whenever you can. When you’re working full time and trying to be a good spouse and raising children and whatever else you do, you’ll be much better off if you’re used to never having time to write. You’ll come at it with the experience and tools necessary to find that time, wherever it might be hiding.
But in spite of my old, young self’s complaints, I do think you have a lot more time to write as a grad student than you do working full time, and so time management is actually something I don’t feel that grad school really teaches you. At least my program didn’t. When I was a grad student the only thing standing between me and my writing was my own invented excuses.
As a grad student I came up with the goal of writing an average of three hours a day for the rest of my life, but once I graduated the plan quickly became to just try to find time to write at all every day. I seem to have found a way to write for an average of about an hour a day, and that’s after something like nine months of shifting things around and experimenting with new ideas, desperately trying to figure out how to make it work.
I don’t mean to suggest that the fact that grad school gives you time to write should count as a strike against MFA programs. Time to write is always a good thing, as far as I’m concerned, and I think we should try harder to recognize it when we have it and value it for what it’s worth. But maybe we should reconsider the way we look at those times in our lives when we have very little time, or those times when we feel like we have very little time. Learning how to manage your time and squeeze those minutes or hours out of each day is just as important as studying your craft and reading until your eyes feel like they’ve been peeled and cooked. Time management is, let’s face it, an essential skill if you really want to make it as a writer.
The older, ever-so-slightly wiser me now looks back at that whiny me and shakes her head. “Please,” I would tell that younger Ashley if I could. “You have plenty of time to write. You’re just spending it complaining about not having enough time. On top of that, the point of grad school is not to give you time to write. The point of grad school, if we lived in such a simplistic world where there could possibly be one universal point to grad school, is to help you become a better writer. Nobody ever really promised you time.”
In fact, now that I’m teaching what most colleges consider a full-timer’s load of classes (though at my school I’m still technically considered part-time, ah semantics!), I’m realizing that the best way to prepare a budding writer for the harsh realities of the non-grad student writing life is to force you to scrounge writing time whenever you can. When you’re working full time and trying to be a good spouse and raising children and whatever else you do, you’ll be much better off if you’re used to never having time to write. You’ll come at it with the experience and tools necessary to find that time, wherever it might be hiding.
But in spite of my old, young self’s complaints, I do think you have a lot more time to write as a grad student than you do working full time, and so time management is actually something I don’t feel that grad school really teaches you. At least my program didn’t. When I was a grad student the only thing standing between me and my writing was my own invented excuses.
As a grad student I came up with the goal of writing an average of three hours a day for the rest of my life, but once I graduated the plan quickly became to just try to find time to write at all every day. I seem to have found a way to write for an average of about an hour a day, and that’s after something like nine months of shifting things around and experimenting with new ideas, desperately trying to figure out how to make it work.
I don’t mean to suggest that the fact that grad school gives you time to write should count as a strike against MFA programs. Time to write is always a good thing, as far as I’m concerned, and I think we should try harder to recognize it when we have it and value it for what it’s worth. But maybe we should reconsider the way we look at those times in our lives when we have very little time, or those times when we feel like we have very little time. Learning how to manage your time and squeeze those minutes or hours out of each day is just as important as studying your craft and reading until your eyes feel like they’ve been peeled and cooked. Time management is, let’s face it, an essential skill if you really want to make it as a writer.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
And Don’t Forget to Live Your Life
I’ve talked a bit before about the importance of writing and writing a lot, and I’ve talked, too, about the importance of not writing sometimes, of actually living your life to make sure you have something worth writing about. I hope you won’t mind if, this week, I touch on the latter idea again.
Something very emotionally painful happened to me a few days ago. I won’t get into it here, but I will say that this occurrence was totally unexpected and knocked me over with the force of a hurricane. I spent the past few days with family, which was a much needed reminder of the good things in life, and I ended up spending the second half of my Spring Break not writing.
But here’s the thing: I think this is exactly as it should be. I think sometimes some of us get so caught up in the writing life – in the importance of setting goals and writing regularly and submitting and on and on and on – that we forget that it’s also important to be a human being: to live and love and feel pain and feel regret, to not just live through our word processing programs but to open ourselves up and taste life, savor the bitter moments along with the sweet.
Writing is an essential part of being a writer, but it is not the only part, and even if it were, it wouldn’t be enough to comprise a full life. In order to be a good writer you have to practice your craft, yes, but you also have to read (a lot!), and you have to be alive. You have to really experience life, to get to know and understand a wide range of people, to appreciate and explore the strangeness of this vast universe we live in. Writers don’t lock themselves in their basements and write all the time. Writers live, and if sometimes that living gets in the way of your computer time, well I say so be it, no excuses required, because this is what it is to be alive.
Something very emotionally painful happened to me a few days ago. I won’t get into it here, but I will say that this occurrence was totally unexpected and knocked me over with the force of a hurricane. I spent the past few days with family, which was a much needed reminder of the good things in life, and I ended up spending the second half of my Spring Break not writing.
But here’s the thing: I think this is exactly as it should be. I think sometimes some of us get so caught up in the writing life – in the importance of setting goals and writing regularly and submitting and on and on and on – that we forget that it’s also important to be a human being: to live and love and feel pain and feel regret, to not just live through our word processing programs but to open ourselves up and taste life, savor the bitter moments along with the sweet.
Writing is an essential part of being a writer, but it is not the only part, and even if it were, it wouldn’t be enough to comprise a full life. In order to be a good writer you have to practice your craft, yes, but you also have to read (a lot!), and you have to be alive. You have to really experience life, to get to know and understand a wide range of people, to appreciate and explore the strangeness of this vast universe we live in. Writers don’t lock themselves in their basements and write all the time. Writers live, and if sometimes that living gets in the way of your computer time, well I say so be it, no excuses required, because this is what it is to be alive.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Some More Benefits of the MFA Life
I have to be honest, I’ve really been missing the grad student life lately. Part of it, I know, is that I’m surrounded by grad students from my husband’s program, and I get to see – but only from the fringes – these grad students doing the things that grad students do. I only get to take part in the non-school related parts of their lives, which is still enjoyable, of course, but it’s not the same.
One of the things I miss the most is the conversations. Talk about writing. Analyzing craft. Reading the same books and discussing them with each other. These sorts of conversations are the heart of any English graduate program and they tend to take place both in and outside of classroom. The problem – for me – is that they don’t tend to take place with outsiders. This isn’t an intentional slight; it’s not like grad students have a clique sort of mentality. But I’m not taking the same classes; I’m not reading the same books and having one-on-one workshop sessions with the same writers-in-residence.
This sort of unified writing experience is very difficult, I feel, to create outside of an academic setting. While it’s possible to perhaps find a small group of writers willing to read the same books and meet regularly to discuss them from a craft perspective, and it’s certainly possible to create the workshop environment – only far more productive, in my opinion – outside of academia, there are still many other things that don’t seem possible (for example, somehow managing to get a string of established writers to travel to your area, read the work of everybody in your writers’ group, and meet with each of you one-on-one to give feedback, after which the members of the group can discuss the experience and compare what you’ve gained).
And there’s the question of money, too. Grad students not only have ample time to write because they are being paid extremely well, compared to what college adjuncts make, to teach only one or two classes at a time, but they also, as a result, have ample time to exchange work with each other and do extended feedback sessions. (This statement, I can already tell, is going to have some readers shaking their heads in disagreement. I’m not saying you make as much as a TA as you would, say, in a full time office job. But you make way more per credit hour – WAY more – than the average adjunct instructor makes. Trust me. I’m an adjunct. I can barely make ends meet off of my salary.)
Grad students also get funding to travel to conferences. Many of the students here, for example, are taking a trip to Denver next month to go to AWP, on their graduate program’s dime. I desperately wanted to go to AWP this year. I almost had an excuse because I was invited to read with a journal that I was published in, but the reading ended up falling through, and I couldn’t justify the $1000 it would have cost between airfare and hotel stay and food.
Which is all, really, to say that I think there are some things that you can gain from a creative writing graduate program that you simply cannot reproduce in the real world. Of course it’s possible to get on the path to success on your own, but creative writing graduate programs give you a pretty forceful shove in the right direction, and they’re pretty enjoyable, too.
One of the things I miss the most is the conversations. Talk about writing. Analyzing craft. Reading the same books and discussing them with each other. These sorts of conversations are the heart of any English graduate program and they tend to take place both in and outside of classroom. The problem – for me – is that they don’t tend to take place with outsiders. This isn’t an intentional slight; it’s not like grad students have a clique sort of mentality. But I’m not taking the same classes; I’m not reading the same books and having one-on-one workshop sessions with the same writers-in-residence.
This sort of unified writing experience is very difficult, I feel, to create outside of an academic setting. While it’s possible to perhaps find a small group of writers willing to read the same books and meet regularly to discuss them from a craft perspective, and it’s certainly possible to create the workshop environment – only far more productive, in my opinion – outside of academia, there are still many other things that don’t seem possible (for example, somehow managing to get a string of established writers to travel to your area, read the work of everybody in your writers’ group, and meet with each of you one-on-one to give feedback, after which the members of the group can discuss the experience and compare what you’ve gained).
And there’s the question of money, too. Grad students not only have ample time to write because they are being paid extremely well, compared to what college adjuncts make, to teach only one or two classes at a time, but they also, as a result, have ample time to exchange work with each other and do extended feedback sessions. (This statement, I can already tell, is going to have some readers shaking their heads in disagreement. I’m not saying you make as much as a TA as you would, say, in a full time office job. But you make way more per credit hour – WAY more – than the average adjunct instructor makes. Trust me. I’m an adjunct. I can barely make ends meet off of my salary.)
Grad students also get funding to travel to conferences. Many of the students here, for example, are taking a trip to Denver next month to go to AWP, on their graduate program’s dime. I desperately wanted to go to AWP this year. I almost had an excuse because I was invited to read with a journal that I was published in, but the reading ended up falling through, and I couldn’t justify the $1000 it would have cost between airfare and hotel stay and food.
Which is all, really, to say that I think there are some things that you can gain from a creative writing graduate program that you simply cannot reproduce in the real world. Of course it’s possible to get on the path to success on your own, but creative writing graduate programs give you a pretty forceful shove in the right direction, and they’re pretty enjoyable, too.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
There’s a Time for Us
Ah, those timeless, fabulous, Stephen Sondheim lyrics. You all know the song, what the Dire Straits referred to as “the Movie Song.” The reason why the West Side Story song “Somewhere” is such a powerful piece of music is because we all know the story of Romeo and Juliet; we all know that Maria and Tony will never find that place, that time. There is no time for “us.”
The same could be said, if you really want to be realistic with yourself, of writing. We all probably have at one point in time entertained fantasies of landing a five book deal that ensures us six figures a year, plus obscene royalties since naturally our books will each land on the bestseller list. Right. But even as we all have allowed, at times, our minds to wander to these totally unrealistic dreams, we all (I hope) are well aware that such dreams will never come true. There will never come a day when we will make a cushy income off of writing and writing alone, when we wake up each morning with nothing else on the schedule but to write. There is not, as it were, a time for us.
What this means is that when we look at our busy lives, when we quantify our busy schedules and try to calculate out how much time we could reasonably spend writing, when we do all this and we see that the answer is very little, the solution to the problem is not to look forward to some indeterminate future in which we will have the time. You’ll write tomorrow, or when things slow down at work, or when your kids start school. You’ll write when you have time.
The truth is that you will never have time. What you’re really doing when you tell yourself you will write “someday” is lulling yourself into a sense of false security. Justifying the fact that you’re not willing to work it out. Denying the fact that you are not a writer, at least, you are not behaving like one right now.
Once you accept that there will never be time, you’re left with only two real options. You can give up and decide that you’re just not going to make it as a writer, or you can realize that most successful writers don’t really have time to write, yet they’ve all found a way to make it work; why can’t you?
I’ve been telling myself for the past few months that one day I’ll land a full time job as a college English instructor – hopefully even as a Creative Writing instructor – and when that day comes I’ll have summers and winters off and plenty of time to write. Oh, it gets me through the bad days, this is true, but there are a couple of problems with this line of thought.
For one thing, in order to really be competitive for such a job I first need to get a book or two published, and in order to do that I need to keep writing as much as I can. I can’t tell myself that it’s okay if I can’t find the time to write right now; if I don’t find the time now then that dream job will always remain out of reach. And then of course there’s the fact that even though I might tell myself now that if/when I get a full time instructor job, time to write will naturally follow, the truth is that I will probably always have other things I could and should be doing with my time. There will always be reasons not to write.
So step one: Accept that there will never be time. Step two: Figure out a way to make the time, already! I’ve been getting up a half hour early every day this month so that I can write a little bit before work. A half hour isn’t enough to get a lot of quality work done, but it’s enough to get me pumped about whatever project I’m working on, and then I’m more likely to figure out a way to squeeze time out later in the day, or to get up even earlier the next day to have more time. (It’s also, by the way, a nice antidepressant. I feel much happier when I’m writing every day, and it really sets the tone for the day if I get some writing done first thing.)
So no, there is no time for us, Tony and Maria, not unless we make the time, but we have to make it right now. Today. This minute. Now.
The same could be said, if you really want to be realistic with yourself, of writing. We all probably have at one point in time entertained fantasies of landing a five book deal that ensures us six figures a year, plus obscene royalties since naturally our books will each land on the bestseller list. Right. But even as we all have allowed, at times, our minds to wander to these totally unrealistic dreams, we all (I hope) are well aware that such dreams will never come true. There will never come a day when we will make a cushy income off of writing and writing alone, when we wake up each morning with nothing else on the schedule but to write. There is not, as it were, a time for us.
What this means is that when we look at our busy lives, when we quantify our busy schedules and try to calculate out how much time we could reasonably spend writing, when we do all this and we see that the answer is very little, the solution to the problem is not to look forward to some indeterminate future in which we will have the time. You’ll write tomorrow, or when things slow down at work, or when your kids start school. You’ll write when you have time.
The truth is that you will never have time. What you’re really doing when you tell yourself you will write “someday” is lulling yourself into a sense of false security. Justifying the fact that you’re not willing to work it out. Denying the fact that you are not a writer, at least, you are not behaving like one right now.
Once you accept that there will never be time, you’re left with only two real options. You can give up and decide that you’re just not going to make it as a writer, or you can realize that most successful writers don’t really have time to write, yet they’ve all found a way to make it work; why can’t you?
I’ve been telling myself for the past few months that one day I’ll land a full time job as a college English instructor – hopefully even as a Creative Writing instructor – and when that day comes I’ll have summers and winters off and plenty of time to write. Oh, it gets me through the bad days, this is true, but there are a couple of problems with this line of thought.
For one thing, in order to really be competitive for such a job I first need to get a book or two published, and in order to do that I need to keep writing as much as I can. I can’t tell myself that it’s okay if I can’t find the time to write right now; if I don’t find the time now then that dream job will always remain out of reach. And then of course there’s the fact that even though I might tell myself now that if/when I get a full time instructor job, time to write will naturally follow, the truth is that I will probably always have other things I could and should be doing with my time. There will always be reasons not to write.
So step one: Accept that there will never be time. Step two: Figure out a way to make the time, already! I’ve been getting up a half hour early every day this month so that I can write a little bit before work. A half hour isn’t enough to get a lot of quality work done, but it’s enough to get me pumped about whatever project I’m working on, and then I’m more likely to figure out a way to squeeze time out later in the day, or to get up even earlier the next day to have more time. (It’s also, by the way, a nice antidepressant. I feel much happier when I’m writing every day, and it really sets the tone for the day if I get some writing done first thing.)
So no, there is no time for us, Tony and Maria, not unless we make the time, but we have to make it right now. Today. This minute. Now.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The Up-Side of Teaching
To be fair (and to make myself feel better about my current situation in life) I want to talk a little bit about some of the reasons why teaching could be considered the perfect career for creative writers. Last week I went over some of the reasons why this might not be true after all, so let me give the other side of the issue a chance to defend itself.
First of all, and as I mentioned last week, once you work your way up into a full time position as a creative writing professor, you generally have a month or so off in the winter and about three months off in the summer. You still get paid a decent annual salary, but you have around four months completely off every year. You can (and should) spend that time writing. As was brought up by Justus in the comments from last week, you also get a sabbatical every seven years, during which time it’s just assumed that you will be writing. Keeping up with your creative writing is, actually, one of your job requirements as a creative writing professor.
In addition to that, as Justus pointed out last week, teaching is good practice as a writer. You are forced to look at writing problems; you are forced to think about what makes good writing and what makes bad writing; you are forced to think about how to improve. All of the things that you teach to your students, you think about again and again for yourself, and every semester you become a slightly better writer than you were the semester before.
But perhaps most appealing of all (to me) is the thought of being part of a literary/creative writing community. Forever. This is one of the main benefits, I think, of going to grad school: to immerse yourself in a community of writers. If you become a creative writing professor, you will always be part of such a community. While there are no guarantees that you’re going to get along with everybody in the department, I feel that there’s a much better chance of developing strong and productive relationships with your coworkers if you work in an English department versus, say, if you work at an office. This is important both for writing purposes, because you gain a lot from interacting with and sharing your work with other writers and literary types, and for general peace of mind, because, after all, you have to spend a lot of time around your coworkers, and how much you like them has a huge effect on how much you like your job. Sometimes, I believe, getting along with your coworkers is even more important than whether or not you enjoy the work itself.
There are other benefits, too, such as having access to a university library and being affiliated with a university who will promote your work, because it benefits them, too, if your books sell well. And perhaps I shouldn’t forget the importance of things like job security and benefits (the employment benefits of being a professor are pretty awesome, often including things like your children getting to go to that college for free).
The trouble, of course, is that most of us have to put up with teaching adjunct – year round and for a weak salary – before we can even hope to land a full time teaching position. And teaching adjunct is a bitch. You’re considered part time, even though you sometimes teach as many or more classes than the full timers, you get paid hardly anything compared to the full timers, and you have to teach the worst classes, the classes that the full timers don’t want. But as my husband Damien keeps reminding me, no matter what job you want and no matter what field, you have to start at the bottom and work your way to the top. Teaching is no different, and if we can put up with the bottom for a few years, and keep our writing wits about us so we actually have a good chance of competing for a full time position, then someday, in the not-too-distant future, it might all feel very, very worth it.
First of all, and as I mentioned last week, once you work your way up into a full time position as a creative writing professor, you generally have a month or so off in the winter and about three months off in the summer. You still get paid a decent annual salary, but you have around four months completely off every year. You can (and should) spend that time writing. As was brought up by Justus in the comments from last week, you also get a sabbatical every seven years, during which time it’s just assumed that you will be writing. Keeping up with your creative writing is, actually, one of your job requirements as a creative writing professor.
In addition to that, as Justus pointed out last week, teaching is good practice as a writer. You are forced to look at writing problems; you are forced to think about what makes good writing and what makes bad writing; you are forced to think about how to improve. All of the things that you teach to your students, you think about again and again for yourself, and every semester you become a slightly better writer than you were the semester before.
But perhaps most appealing of all (to me) is the thought of being part of a literary/creative writing community. Forever. This is one of the main benefits, I think, of going to grad school: to immerse yourself in a community of writers. If you become a creative writing professor, you will always be part of such a community. While there are no guarantees that you’re going to get along with everybody in the department, I feel that there’s a much better chance of developing strong and productive relationships with your coworkers if you work in an English department versus, say, if you work at an office. This is important both for writing purposes, because you gain a lot from interacting with and sharing your work with other writers and literary types, and for general peace of mind, because, after all, you have to spend a lot of time around your coworkers, and how much you like them has a huge effect on how much you like your job. Sometimes, I believe, getting along with your coworkers is even more important than whether or not you enjoy the work itself.
There are other benefits, too, such as having access to a university library and being affiliated with a university who will promote your work, because it benefits them, too, if your books sell well. And perhaps I shouldn’t forget the importance of things like job security and benefits (the employment benefits of being a professor are pretty awesome, often including things like your children getting to go to that college for free).
The trouble, of course, is that most of us have to put up with teaching adjunct – year round and for a weak salary – before we can even hope to land a full time teaching position. And teaching adjunct is a bitch. You’re considered part time, even though you sometimes teach as many or more classes than the full timers, you get paid hardly anything compared to the full timers, and you have to teach the worst classes, the classes that the full timers don’t want. But as my husband Damien keeps reminding me, no matter what job you want and no matter what field, you have to start at the bottom and work your way to the top. Teaching is no different, and if we can put up with the bottom for a few years, and keep our writing wits about us so we actually have a good chance of competing for a full time position, then someday, in the not-too-distant future, it might all feel very, very worth it.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
A Time to Write and a Time to Teach
With school back in full swing out here, I’ve been getting to that stage of hectic busyness that always leads me to wonder whether or not teaching is really the best job for creative writers. We often talk about teaching like it is, and I think there are a lot of pretty great benefits to being a teacher that work well with writing, not the least of which is that you usually get winters and summers off. If you really focus, you can get a lot done in that time. Summer break, for example, is sufficiently long for a person to buckle down and write a first draft of a complete book-length work. Then that person could spend the more limited time during the school year revising.
But setting that oh-so-appealing three to four months off aside: is teaching really conducive to a successful writing career? Well, I think there are a lot of strikes against it, and I can never quite seem to make up my mind on the issue. Let’s look at it a bit more closely, shall we?
I feel that there are really two main components to a job as a teacher: planning lessons and grading papers. Both involve a fair amount of mental focus, and both are comparable to the mental powers you use as a writer. Planning lessons uses the same brain functions that you use when you’re drafting, and grading papers uses the same mental muscles you exercise when you’re revising and editing. So if you spend all day doing the things you have to do to teach, you don’t always have the energy to keep using your brain in that same way for another hour or two to write.
In addition to that, I find that teaching takes up way more time than a regular nine to five job. Sure, a good deal of those extra hours can be spent at home in your jammies, or at the coffee shop or wherever you like to hang out, but regardless, you spend well over forty hours a week if you carry a typical full time college teaching load – at least I do, and I’m not even technically full time, although I do teach the same number of classes as the full timers at my school. See, besides planning lessons, grading papers, and the actual contact hours of regular class time, I spend a fair amount of time each week responding to student emails and reading and giving feedback on the additional drafts my students pass my way (because I figure if they’re willing to put the work in to revising more thoroughly, I better be willing to put the work into giving them feedback).
So once classes really get going, I inevitably start to wonder if this is really the right career. I like teaching, don’t get me wrong. It’s fun (most of the time, anyway) and rewarding. But it’s extremely difficult for me to spend fifty or sixty hours a week using these exact brain functions and then try to write as much as I want to at the end of each day. And if I don’t get to write as much as I want, I start to feel like I’ve lost my way because writing has always been the thing that keeps me going, it has always been the force that pushes me through life. If I don’t have the energy to write anymore, well, pushing ahead in a career, even a great career like teaching, doesn’t really feel worth the price.
This is not to say that I absolutely believe that teaching isn’t a good job for writers. It’s just something I’m thinking about, something I think about often. During the winter and summer you can write your ever-loving brains out, and maybe that really is enough to keep it in balance. Eight months out of the year you work work work, four months out of the year you get to be a full time writer. Those eight months, though. Those eight months can be pretty hard, let me tell you.
But setting that oh-so-appealing three to four months off aside: is teaching really conducive to a successful writing career? Well, I think there are a lot of strikes against it, and I can never quite seem to make up my mind on the issue. Let’s look at it a bit more closely, shall we?
I feel that there are really two main components to a job as a teacher: planning lessons and grading papers. Both involve a fair amount of mental focus, and both are comparable to the mental powers you use as a writer. Planning lessons uses the same brain functions that you use when you’re drafting, and grading papers uses the same mental muscles you exercise when you’re revising and editing. So if you spend all day doing the things you have to do to teach, you don’t always have the energy to keep using your brain in that same way for another hour or two to write.
In addition to that, I find that teaching takes up way more time than a regular nine to five job. Sure, a good deal of those extra hours can be spent at home in your jammies, or at the coffee shop or wherever you like to hang out, but regardless, you spend well over forty hours a week if you carry a typical full time college teaching load – at least I do, and I’m not even technically full time, although I do teach the same number of classes as the full timers at my school. See, besides planning lessons, grading papers, and the actual contact hours of regular class time, I spend a fair amount of time each week responding to student emails and reading and giving feedback on the additional drafts my students pass my way (because I figure if they’re willing to put the work in to revising more thoroughly, I better be willing to put the work into giving them feedback).
So once classes really get going, I inevitably start to wonder if this is really the right career. I like teaching, don’t get me wrong. It’s fun (most of the time, anyway) and rewarding. But it’s extremely difficult for me to spend fifty or sixty hours a week using these exact brain functions and then try to write as much as I want to at the end of each day. And if I don’t get to write as much as I want, I start to feel like I’ve lost my way because writing has always been the thing that keeps me going, it has always been the force that pushes me through life. If I don’t have the energy to write anymore, well, pushing ahead in a career, even a great career like teaching, doesn’t really feel worth the price.
This is not to say that I absolutely believe that teaching isn’t a good job for writers. It’s just something I’m thinking about, something I think about often. During the winter and summer you can write your ever-loving brains out, and maybe that really is enough to keep it in balance. Eight months out of the year you work work work, four months out of the year you get to be a full time writer. Those eight months, though. Those eight months can be pretty hard, let me tell you.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
The Spice of the Writing Life
I’ve been having a lot of trouble keeping up with my writing goals for the past several months. I still write, and I think I write a fair amount when I compare it to how much time many other starting-out writers spend writing, but I still can’t seem to meet my measly little one hour a day goal. Oh I come close, but I haven’t quite hit the mark in some time, and it’s frustrating because an average of one hour day doesn’t seem like much to ask of myself.
This has been throwing my whole world off balance, if you want to know the truth. My entire sense of identity, and my sense of what makes life worth living, they’re both entangled with my image of myself as somebody who writes often. Somebody who writes not just because she thinks she’s going to hit it big one day, or because she has this pretentious image of herself as “artiste,” but because she really genuinely loves to write. But if I haven’t been writing much, if I haven’t even been hitting an average of an hour a day, it makes me stop and wonder: is that really who I am? Have I been fooling myself this whole time?
To try to get to the bottom of this problem, I sat down and analyzed my life as a writer for the past few years. Before going to grad school, I wrote often – probably not every single day but on the days I did write, it would usually be for at least a couple of hours, and some days I would spend the better part of a full day writing. My guess is that I was clocking not much less than an hour a day if averaged over the course of each full year.
My first semester in grad school I pretty much stopped writing altogether. I wrote a few new stories . . . for workshop . . . because I had to, and that was it. That winter I got extremely depressed, asked myself what I was doing in grad school if I wasn’t even going to write, and made some hardcore resolutions that ended up sticking. From that point forward I wrote . . . a lot. When I actually did start logging my time spent writing, I found that I was spending a little less than an average of two hours a day writing.
Now, after grad school, I seem to be back where I started before I went to grad school. So what gives? Well, beside the fact that I certainly had more time to spend on writing when I was a student (the real world’s a bitch, you guys, I’m telling you!), there is one key factor that I think might be at the core of the problem. Variety.
I’m going to extend a metaphor to the breaking point here, so bear with me for a minute. When you’re trying to lose weight, you might go out and find a new diet plan that seems interesting and appealing and will give you the results you want. You start the diet plan and usually stick with it pretty well for the first little while. Encouraged by your results, you plow through for a few weeks, maybe even a few months. Somewhere along the line, though, you start slipping. You splurge. You tell yourself you’ve had a bad day and deserve this donut or that cookie. Eventually you realize you’re basically not on the diet at all anymore. Then what happens, at least to the true weight loss fanatic, is that you find another diet plan and start all over again.
Yo-yo dieting is a common and oft-made fun of phenomenon, but the thing is, what I believe is at the heart of this jumping from fad diet to fad diet is our need for variety in life. We get excited by new things. We feel encouraged when we’re starting some new program, embarking on a new resolution. But after we’ve been doing something for a while, even if we’re seeing positive results, it just starts to feel stale. We start to feel less motivated. I think that when I made up my mind to overhaul my writing life, it had much the same effect as being an overweight person who hits rock bottom with that one last piece of cake and makes the decision to start a new diet program.
That is to say, it worked. It worked wonders, at least for a little while. Then somewhere along the line, I added logging hours into the mix: a new addition to my “diet” program that kept it fresh for a while longer. But I think what’s happening now is that the freshness has gone out of it a bit. It isn’t that I don’t love writing – I do! – and it isn’t that I can’t somehow steal an hour to write each day - I can, I know I can – but I think what’s happening is that I need something new – a new sort of goal, a new type of resolution – to keep me motivated and keep me feeling like I’m working towards something, like I’m moving forward and not just spinning endlessly in a circle.
This has been throwing my whole world off balance, if you want to know the truth. My entire sense of identity, and my sense of what makes life worth living, they’re both entangled with my image of myself as somebody who writes often. Somebody who writes not just because she thinks she’s going to hit it big one day, or because she has this pretentious image of herself as “artiste,” but because she really genuinely loves to write. But if I haven’t been writing much, if I haven’t even been hitting an average of an hour a day, it makes me stop and wonder: is that really who I am? Have I been fooling myself this whole time?
To try to get to the bottom of this problem, I sat down and analyzed my life as a writer for the past few years. Before going to grad school, I wrote often – probably not every single day but on the days I did write, it would usually be for at least a couple of hours, and some days I would spend the better part of a full day writing. My guess is that I was clocking not much less than an hour a day if averaged over the course of each full year.
My first semester in grad school I pretty much stopped writing altogether. I wrote a few new stories . . . for workshop . . . because I had to, and that was it. That winter I got extremely depressed, asked myself what I was doing in grad school if I wasn’t even going to write, and made some hardcore resolutions that ended up sticking. From that point forward I wrote . . . a lot. When I actually did start logging my time spent writing, I found that I was spending a little less than an average of two hours a day writing.
Now, after grad school, I seem to be back where I started before I went to grad school. So what gives? Well, beside the fact that I certainly had more time to spend on writing when I was a student (the real world’s a bitch, you guys, I’m telling you!), there is one key factor that I think might be at the core of the problem. Variety.
I’m going to extend a metaphor to the breaking point here, so bear with me for a minute. When you’re trying to lose weight, you might go out and find a new diet plan that seems interesting and appealing and will give you the results you want. You start the diet plan and usually stick with it pretty well for the first little while. Encouraged by your results, you plow through for a few weeks, maybe even a few months. Somewhere along the line, though, you start slipping. You splurge. You tell yourself you’ve had a bad day and deserve this donut or that cookie. Eventually you realize you’re basically not on the diet at all anymore. Then what happens, at least to the true weight loss fanatic, is that you find another diet plan and start all over again.
Yo-yo dieting is a common and oft-made fun of phenomenon, but the thing is, what I believe is at the heart of this jumping from fad diet to fad diet is our need for variety in life. We get excited by new things. We feel encouraged when we’re starting some new program, embarking on a new resolution. But after we’ve been doing something for a while, even if we’re seeing positive results, it just starts to feel stale. We start to feel less motivated. I think that when I made up my mind to overhaul my writing life, it had much the same effect as being an overweight person who hits rock bottom with that one last piece of cake and makes the decision to start a new diet program.
That is to say, it worked. It worked wonders, at least for a little while. Then somewhere along the line, I added logging hours into the mix: a new addition to my “diet” program that kept it fresh for a while longer. But I think what’s happening now is that the freshness has gone out of it a bit. It isn’t that I don’t love writing – I do! – and it isn’t that I can’t somehow steal an hour to write each day - I can, I know I can – but I think what’s happening is that I need something new – a new sort of goal, a new type of resolution – to keep me motivated and keep me feeling like I’m working towards something, like I’m moving forward and not just spinning endlessly in a circle.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Reading Muse
I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting my writing momentum back up after moving over the summer. For the first couple of months here, I was preoccupied with finding a job, getting unpacked, and learning my way around a new town. Then I was preoccupied (and stressed) with getting adjusted to a new job. Then with adjusting to another new job. Then with quitting the second job. Then figuring out how we were going to scrape by on my income from only the one job. . . .
So for the past few months I’ve been trying different things to get myself engaged with writing. Some of them have worked – well, sort of – like jogging my brain with a writing prompt to get those creative juices flowing and then immediately shifting my attention to another, more important (to me) project. Some of them have failed miserably, like trying to draft in my head while I’m making the hour and a half commute to work, and then expecting that once I get to a computer I will be bursting with ideas that I just can’t wait to write down.
What I didn’t try, and I now realize may have been the most successful of all, was picking out a book that would match the sort of writing project I felt like working on, and then simply reading that book and letting it be my muse.
I’ve been struggling my way through reading a collection of short stories for something like a month and a half – has it really been that long? A month and a half spent reading one single book! It isn’t that the short stories in the collection are bad. In fact, I like the stories quite a lot; I like the writing style; I like this writer’s dry sense of humor, her poetic voice. But I haven’t been in a short story kind of mood. Well, it turns out that my reading mood matches my writing mood. I haven’t felt like writing short stories, and I haven’t felt like reading them, either. That’s why I spent so much time just trying to force myself through one book.
I’ve been trying to decide between working on the, oh I don’t know, let’s say one millionth draft of a children’s book of mine and a second draft of a novel. I’ll settle on one, open up the file and try to immerse myself in the story, and very quickly my mind will start to wander to one of the many other things I probably should be doing – I just don’t feel inspired. But any seasoned writer will tell you that it’s not a question of waiting for inspiration. If you wait for inspiration you might never write a thing, or you might write so sporadically that you’ll never really improve.
At any rate, I finished the story collection the other day and decided that I felt like reading a children’s book next. I picked up a book I’ve been dying to read for some time now and was almost instantly sucked into a whimsical adventure story. And you know what else? I started getting excited about my children’s book all over again. Delving, as a reader, into the sort of book that I want to write inspired me to get back to work on my own book.
It makes sense. I mean, isn’t that why we become writers to begin with? Because we are avid readers, and because the things we read inspire us? We don’t create in a sort of vacuum; everything that we read and have read informs each new piece that we write. And the things that we read that really engage us send our minds reeling with limitless possibilities, limitless new ideas just waiting to be written.
So for the past few months I’ve been trying different things to get myself engaged with writing. Some of them have worked – well, sort of – like jogging my brain with a writing prompt to get those creative juices flowing and then immediately shifting my attention to another, more important (to me) project. Some of them have failed miserably, like trying to draft in my head while I’m making the hour and a half commute to work, and then expecting that once I get to a computer I will be bursting with ideas that I just can’t wait to write down.
What I didn’t try, and I now realize may have been the most successful of all, was picking out a book that would match the sort of writing project I felt like working on, and then simply reading that book and letting it be my muse.
I’ve been struggling my way through reading a collection of short stories for something like a month and a half – has it really been that long? A month and a half spent reading one single book! It isn’t that the short stories in the collection are bad. In fact, I like the stories quite a lot; I like the writing style; I like this writer’s dry sense of humor, her poetic voice. But I haven’t been in a short story kind of mood. Well, it turns out that my reading mood matches my writing mood. I haven’t felt like writing short stories, and I haven’t felt like reading them, either. That’s why I spent so much time just trying to force myself through one book.
I’ve been trying to decide between working on the, oh I don’t know, let’s say one millionth draft of a children’s book of mine and a second draft of a novel. I’ll settle on one, open up the file and try to immerse myself in the story, and very quickly my mind will start to wander to one of the many other things I probably should be doing – I just don’t feel inspired. But any seasoned writer will tell you that it’s not a question of waiting for inspiration. If you wait for inspiration you might never write a thing, or you might write so sporadically that you’ll never really improve.
At any rate, I finished the story collection the other day and decided that I felt like reading a children’s book next. I picked up a book I’ve been dying to read for some time now and was almost instantly sucked into a whimsical adventure story. And you know what else? I started getting excited about my children’s book all over again. Delving, as a reader, into the sort of book that I want to write inspired me to get back to work on my own book.
It makes sense. I mean, isn’t that why we become writers to begin with? Because we are avid readers, and because the things we read inspire us? We don’t create in a sort of vacuum; everything that we read and have read informs each new piece that we write. And the things that we read that really engage us send our minds reeling with limitless possibilities, limitless new ideas just waiting to be written.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Another Post about Time
As the month of November rapidly approaches its end, bringing the year 2009 close on its heels, and as I accept the truth that I will not meet my writing goal for the month yet again, I’m finding myself wondering how people in the real world – ordinary, working class people, people without rich spouses or independent wealth – ever reach any level of success in the arts. I was so sheltered in my MFA program for the past three years that I honestly forgot how hard it really is to find time to write, when so much of your time is taken up with the drudgery of survival. The have to’s of life.
This is something I’ve been talking about a lot lately, I know, and the reason I’ve been talking about it so much is because I’m realizing more and more that it really is a ceaseless struggle for most of us. Most of us will never get a million dollar book deal. Many of us will never even get an agent. Some of us may never even get a book published at all. In other words, most of us will always have to find the time. Make the time. Carve it from stone, as seems to be most writers’ metaphor of choice.
I haven’t met a single writing goal (I’ve met submissions goals, but those are different) since I graduated with my MFA. In fact, for this entire year I’ve only completely met my writing goal once: for the month of January. My last few months as a student were spent busily filling out graduation paperwork and preparing for an epic move. A majority of my summer was spent in the midst of said move, as well as working on a couple of critical articles that are being published in literary magazines and finding a job – and otherwise getting my bearings – in a new state. Okay, but what about after that?
Maybe it’s partly that I lost my momentum. Maybe it’s partly that I still haven’t quite gotten used to this new life. But I think a lot of it really, truly is that I just don’t have the time anymore. I don’t. When I was a student I had heard stories about past graduates who absolutely stopped writing after they got their degrees. One guy told me, a year after he finished, that he had decided to take a month off from writing after he graduated and had just never gotten around to starting back up again. Another graduate – a friend of a friend – had graduated three years before me, and she hadn’t written a thing since she finished. I could go on. There are many more.
I am not exactly like those people. I haven’t stopped writing. No, I haven’t been meeting my goals, but I do still write. But I don’t write as much as I’d like to and I don’t write as much as I believe is necessary to really get to where I want to be. I’m beginning to realize that I will probably never be able to consistently meet my golden three hour a day goal (a goal that was difficult, only sometimes manageable, even when I was an MFA student). Lately, I haven’t even been able to meet a one hour a day goal. So what’s to be done?
Well, one interesting point that one of my husband Damien’s professors made recently is that maybe we’re wrong to think we should always be writing. Maybe we should completely reevaluate the way we look at how we spend our time. Of course you can’t never write and reasonably call yourself a writer. But what about the time you spend doing other things that then gives you inspiration in your work? What about the time you spend thinking about the world around you, an absolutely indispensable part of being a good writer? Or engaging in stimulating conversations with other people? Observing humanity in all of its brutal beauty?
While I think it’s important to keep carving away at that fabled time stone – we should still write and write often, if we can – maybe we shouldn’t get so down on ourselves when we don’t write as often as we feel we should. Maybe that just makes it worse. Maybe that just misses the point altogether. Because the point – isn’t it? – is that we do this because we have to. We do it because it’s how we make sense of this mysterious world around us. We don’t do it for the quantifiable final products. We do it for the experience. We do it because it makes all that time spent doing other things feel like it all means something, feel like it matters.
This is something I’ve been talking about a lot lately, I know, and the reason I’ve been talking about it so much is because I’m realizing more and more that it really is a ceaseless struggle for most of us. Most of us will never get a million dollar book deal. Many of us will never even get an agent. Some of us may never even get a book published at all. In other words, most of us will always have to find the time. Make the time. Carve it from stone, as seems to be most writers’ metaphor of choice.
I haven’t met a single writing goal (I’ve met submissions goals, but those are different) since I graduated with my MFA. In fact, for this entire year I’ve only completely met my writing goal once: for the month of January. My last few months as a student were spent busily filling out graduation paperwork and preparing for an epic move. A majority of my summer was spent in the midst of said move, as well as working on a couple of critical articles that are being published in literary magazines and finding a job – and otherwise getting my bearings – in a new state. Okay, but what about after that?
Maybe it’s partly that I lost my momentum. Maybe it’s partly that I still haven’t quite gotten used to this new life. But I think a lot of it really, truly is that I just don’t have the time anymore. I don’t. When I was a student I had heard stories about past graduates who absolutely stopped writing after they got their degrees. One guy told me, a year after he finished, that he had decided to take a month off from writing after he graduated and had just never gotten around to starting back up again. Another graduate – a friend of a friend – had graduated three years before me, and she hadn’t written a thing since she finished. I could go on. There are many more.
I am not exactly like those people. I haven’t stopped writing. No, I haven’t been meeting my goals, but I do still write. But I don’t write as much as I’d like to and I don’t write as much as I believe is necessary to really get to where I want to be. I’m beginning to realize that I will probably never be able to consistently meet my golden three hour a day goal (a goal that was difficult, only sometimes manageable, even when I was an MFA student). Lately, I haven’t even been able to meet a one hour a day goal. So what’s to be done?
Well, one interesting point that one of my husband Damien’s professors made recently is that maybe we’re wrong to think we should always be writing. Maybe we should completely reevaluate the way we look at how we spend our time. Of course you can’t never write and reasonably call yourself a writer. But what about the time you spend doing other things that then gives you inspiration in your work? What about the time you spend thinking about the world around you, an absolutely indispensable part of being a good writer? Or engaging in stimulating conversations with other people? Observing humanity in all of its brutal beauty?
While I think it’s important to keep carving away at that fabled time stone – we should still write and write often, if we can – maybe we shouldn’t get so down on ourselves when we don’t write as often as we feel we should. Maybe that just makes it worse. Maybe that just misses the point altogether. Because the point – isn’t it? – is that we do this because we have to. We do it because it’s how we make sense of this mysterious world around us. We don’t do it for the quantifiable final products. We do it for the experience. We do it because it makes all that time spent doing other things feel like it all means something, feel like it matters.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
A Larger Horizon
One topic that tends to come up in cover letters for submissions to MFA/MFYou is the idea that there is a lot to be gained as a writer from having real life experiences, completely unrelated to literature and creative writing. Many non-MFA writers suggest that the time they didn’t spend studying writing in an academic setting they instead spent having real experiences that they can now translate into their work. Having jobs that non-writers will be able to relate to. Visiting interesting places. Getting to know all kinds of interesting people (and not having a majority of their friends and colleagues be writers and literature scholars).
Lately I’ve been revising a novel. I wrote the first draft while I was a grad student, during a break between drafts of my graduate thesis. I had came up with what I still think is a great premise and a really fun character, and then I sat down and banged together a rough draft, just trying to feel the plot out as I went. But something was off. It was bad even for a first draft. The plot was dull and contrived and all the characters except for the main character seemed like caricatures of particular types f people
I still felt like the core idea had potential, but I had no idea how to tap that potential. I looked at the draft from every angle. I picked it apart for elements of craft and looked closely at how each component of the story functioned, ultimately trying to determine why the novel wasn’t working as well as how I could make it work. I realized that the problem was as fundamental as the plot. The problem wasn’t the perspective, or the structure, or the metaphors and analogies and symbols I used throughout. The problem was that the plot was completely boring and uninspired.
I decided that I wasn’t mature enough, as a writer and a human being, to write this novel. I needed to live several more years of life first and have varied experiences, meet strange and interesting people, and gain a broader perspective on the world around me, all of which I could then weave into the story to make it come to life. And so I set the novel aside and began work on another project in the meantime.
But I’ve recently gotten back to work on this novel. I had one of those flashes of inspiration that pointed me in the direction of where this novel needs to go, and it came from taking one foot out of the world of literature and creative writing. I’m still part of that world, certainly, but I took a couple of steps away after I graduated. I began teaching at what is primarily a technical college, took a second job in retail, and even more valuable, began spending more time exploring a totally unrelated-to-literature interest of mine. And suddenly, a few days ago, it hit me what I should do with the novel. I’ve been enthusiastically working on the next draft ever since.
I’m a huge proponent of the value of creative writing programs, but I do think it’s true, too, that an English education alone will not give you the tools to write interesting, engaging, worthwhile literature. Studying craft is important, but so is knowing about interesting things and having experiences that are completely separate from the world of books and artistry. It’s not enough to know how to write. You also need something to write about.
Lately I’ve been revising a novel. I wrote the first draft while I was a grad student, during a break between drafts of my graduate thesis. I had came up with what I still think is a great premise and a really fun character, and then I sat down and banged together a rough draft, just trying to feel the plot out as I went. But something was off. It was bad even for a first draft. The plot was dull and contrived and all the characters except for the main character seemed like caricatures of particular types f people
I still felt like the core idea had potential, but I had no idea how to tap that potential. I looked at the draft from every angle. I picked it apart for elements of craft and looked closely at how each component of the story functioned, ultimately trying to determine why the novel wasn’t working as well as how I could make it work. I realized that the problem was as fundamental as the plot. The problem wasn’t the perspective, or the structure, or the metaphors and analogies and symbols I used throughout. The problem was that the plot was completely boring and uninspired.
I decided that I wasn’t mature enough, as a writer and a human being, to write this novel. I needed to live several more years of life first and have varied experiences, meet strange and interesting people, and gain a broader perspective on the world around me, all of which I could then weave into the story to make it come to life. And so I set the novel aside and began work on another project in the meantime.
But I’ve recently gotten back to work on this novel. I had one of those flashes of inspiration that pointed me in the direction of where this novel needs to go, and it came from taking one foot out of the world of literature and creative writing. I’m still part of that world, certainly, but I took a couple of steps away after I graduated. I began teaching at what is primarily a technical college, took a second job in retail, and even more valuable, began spending more time exploring a totally unrelated-to-literature interest of mine. And suddenly, a few days ago, it hit me what I should do with the novel. I’ve been enthusiastically working on the next draft ever since.
I’m a huge proponent of the value of creative writing programs, but I do think it’s true, too, that an English education alone will not give you the tools to write interesting, engaging, worthwhile literature. Studying craft is important, but so is knowing about interesting things and having experiences that are completely separate from the world of books and artistry. It’s not enough to know how to write. You also need something to write about.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sacrifices
As the first full week of my new part time retail position draws to a close and the two stacks of papers that I have to grade for my classes remind me that they won’t grade themselves, I’m beginning to rethink my old idea that there is no such thing as no time to write. I haven’t been able to find a single second to write in the past week until right now, and even now I’m sort of choosing not to do what I should be doing so that I can spend a few minutes writing this. I’m already so drastically behind in my writing goal for the month that I don’t believe it’s possible to catch up, even if I quit the retail job right now . . . but I’ll come back to that later.
There’s this image that we have of the starving writer. The person so dedicated to writing that he or she behaves totally irresponsibly in all other aspects of life. Makes no real effort to hold down a job. Ignores family and friends in favor of writing. Ignores his or her own physical health, even, and hygiene, all in the name of art. We’ve all heard the stories. People who went on to great success and who will tell you that part of the reason they made it is because they made the conscious decision that writing was more important than, say, earning a steady income.
I always used to think that sort of behavior was utterly unacceptable. Artist or not, there are certain things we all have to do to survive. I thought that these success stories stand out only because these people got lucky. That for every one such success story there were probably hundreds of stories with similar beginnings but that ended with the person starving to death on the streets or at least eventually giving up the dream.
Well I’ve been realizing lately that what those stories are really about, I think, is sacrifice. That sometimes we have to make sacrifices so that we have time to write. It could be sleeping for an hour less, or not going out drinking with your friends on Saturday nights, or not watching TV, or, in my case, not working that extra job to bring in extra money.
This past week and a half, since I started the new job, I haven’t felt like a writer at all. I haven’t really been a writer, to tell you the truth. A writer is a person who writes, and I haven’t been meeting that one simple requirement. And the thing is there’s nothing that I could really sacrifice besides the job. I don’t watch TV. I haven’t been playing video games. I haven’t even been reading. I’ve been working the two jobs, and that’s it. I even had to schedule time to go on a date with my husband, Damien, the other day (and I fell behind on my grading as a result).
I see two possible choices that I can make here. I can choose to be a writer and quit this retail job so that I can have time to write, or I can choose not to be and keep the job so that we’ll have a more comfortable amount of money coming in. Between my meager income as a teacher and Damien’s as a TA, we make enough to scrape by. It’s a tight scrape and it will involve a lot of other sorts of sacrifices, but we’d have enough for all the basic stuff you have to pay for to get by.
And I’d rather be a poor writer than a financially comfortable nothing.
There’s this image that we have of the starving writer. The person so dedicated to writing that he or she behaves totally irresponsibly in all other aspects of life. Makes no real effort to hold down a job. Ignores family and friends in favor of writing. Ignores his or her own physical health, even, and hygiene, all in the name of art. We’ve all heard the stories. People who went on to great success and who will tell you that part of the reason they made it is because they made the conscious decision that writing was more important than, say, earning a steady income.
I always used to think that sort of behavior was utterly unacceptable. Artist or not, there are certain things we all have to do to survive. I thought that these success stories stand out only because these people got lucky. That for every one such success story there were probably hundreds of stories with similar beginnings but that ended with the person starving to death on the streets or at least eventually giving up the dream.
Well I’ve been realizing lately that what those stories are really about, I think, is sacrifice. That sometimes we have to make sacrifices so that we have time to write. It could be sleeping for an hour less, or not going out drinking with your friends on Saturday nights, or not watching TV, or, in my case, not working that extra job to bring in extra money.
This past week and a half, since I started the new job, I haven’t felt like a writer at all. I haven’t really been a writer, to tell you the truth. A writer is a person who writes, and I haven’t been meeting that one simple requirement. And the thing is there’s nothing that I could really sacrifice besides the job. I don’t watch TV. I haven’t been playing video games. I haven’t even been reading. I’ve been working the two jobs, and that’s it. I even had to schedule time to go on a date with my husband, Damien, the other day (and I fell behind on my grading as a result).
I see two possible choices that I can make here. I can choose to be a writer and quit this retail job so that I can have time to write, or I can choose not to be and keep the job so that we’ll have a more comfortable amount of money coming in. Between my meager income as a teacher and Damien’s as a TA, we make enough to scrape by. It’s a tight scrape and it will involve a lot of other sorts of sacrifices, but we’d have enough for all the basic stuff you have to pay for to get by.
And I’d rather be a poor writer than a financially comfortable nothing.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
The Real World and Other Nightmares
Perhaps it’s because I had a nightmare last night about work – one of those dreams where everything goes wrong and you lack the wisdom to deal with it the way you would in real life – but I’m feeling sort of cynical about life in the real world today.
This past week has been sort of a downer for me as a writer. I’ve had a phenomenally busy week – planning lessons, grading papers, getting things squared away with a new part time retail job I’ve taken to supplement my teaching income, and as always: errands, errands, errands. I haven’t written much this week, and what frustrates me is that it’s not because I’ve been sitting around watching TV or playing DS (my video game drug of choice). I haven’t written much this week because every second that I’m awake I have something else, something more pressing that I have to do.
I’ve talked before about how saying you don’t have time to write is something of a cop out. I do think this is true – after all, you could sleep for an hour less each night and spend that hour writing, if nothing else – but I also think there is something to be said for the lifestyle of a graduate creative writing student.
When I first started grad school I felt that my life suddenly revolved around teaching – and I wasn’t even sure at the time whether I wanted to be a teacher. I hated my new life, and I spent a lot of time ranting about how I had had a lot more time to write when I was working in an office than I did now that I was a creative writing MFA student. (This time I spent ranting, of course, could have been more wisely spent writing.)
After I got used to it, though, and especially after I got the hang of teaching, I found that I had waaaaaaaaay more time to write than I ever did out in the work world. When you work eight hours a day, yes, it’s possible to come home and write for an hour or two, but don’t forget you also have to make dinner, spend time with your spouse, run errands, and sleep. If you get home from work at five, and you should really try to be in bed by, say, ten so you can get a good eight hours before having to get up at six and get ready for work, you really don’t have a lot of time in which to carve an hour or two to write. And you can absolutely forget about the possibility of writing for three hours a day – which is always my ultimate goal.
As a graduate creative writing student your schedule is much more open. It’s stress, more than any real barriers, that keep you from writing. You teach one class (in most cases) and take two or three. Most of your homework is enjoyable – it is, after all, your field of interest – and even after doing all your homework and all the stuff you have to do to teach, after running all your errands and doing everything else you have to do to survive, you still have plenty of time leftover to write and write and write and write.
Not so, I’m learning, as a part time adjunct instructor and a part time retail sales girl. I haven’t even gotten into the thick of the retail job and I already can tell that finding an hour or two to write everyday is going to be a constant battle. Every single day I will have to search for time, figure out how I’ll do it this time, figure out what I need to sacrifice to squeeze it in.
But I know even as I write this that I will work it out. I’ll find some routine that works and I’ll get my writing time in. Maybe not as much as I would like – that three hour a day goal feels more unattainable than ever right now – but I’ll find some time. I’ll find enough to keep myself sane. And in the meantime, I’m thinking again about PhD programs. I’m scheming how I can get myself back into that cushy life where even though you don’t make a living off of writing, it’s just assumed that writing is important and that you simply must have time to do it. That writing is as essential as breathing, that it’s one of those basic functions that keeps us going, keeps us alive.
This past week has been sort of a downer for me as a writer. I’ve had a phenomenally busy week – planning lessons, grading papers, getting things squared away with a new part time retail job I’ve taken to supplement my teaching income, and as always: errands, errands, errands. I haven’t written much this week, and what frustrates me is that it’s not because I’ve been sitting around watching TV or playing DS (my video game drug of choice). I haven’t written much this week because every second that I’m awake I have something else, something more pressing that I have to do.
I’ve talked before about how saying you don’t have time to write is something of a cop out. I do think this is true – after all, you could sleep for an hour less each night and spend that hour writing, if nothing else – but I also think there is something to be said for the lifestyle of a graduate creative writing student.
When I first started grad school I felt that my life suddenly revolved around teaching – and I wasn’t even sure at the time whether I wanted to be a teacher. I hated my new life, and I spent a lot of time ranting about how I had had a lot more time to write when I was working in an office than I did now that I was a creative writing MFA student. (This time I spent ranting, of course, could have been more wisely spent writing.)
After I got used to it, though, and especially after I got the hang of teaching, I found that I had waaaaaaaaay more time to write than I ever did out in the work world. When you work eight hours a day, yes, it’s possible to come home and write for an hour or two, but don’t forget you also have to make dinner, spend time with your spouse, run errands, and sleep. If you get home from work at five, and you should really try to be in bed by, say, ten so you can get a good eight hours before having to get up at six and get ready for work, you really don’t have a lot of time in which to carve an hour or two to write. And you can absolutely forget about the possibility of writing for three hours a day – which is always my ultimate goal.
As a graduate creative writing student your schedule is much more open. It’s stress, more than any real barriers, that keep you from writing. You teach one class (in most cases) and take two or three. Most of your homework is enjoyable – it is, after all, your field of interest – and even after doing all your homework and all the stuff you have to do to teach, after running all your errands and doing everything else you have to do to survive, you still have plenty of time leftover to write and write and write and write.
Not so, I’m learning, as a part time adjunct instructor and a part time retail sales girl. I haven’t even gotten into the thick of the retail job and I already can tell that finding an hour or two to write everyday is going to be a constant battle. Every single day I will have to search for time, figure out how I’ll do it this time, figure out what I need to sacrifice to squeeze it in.
But I know even as I write this that I will work it out. I’ll find some routine that works and I’ll get my writing time in. Maybe not as much as I would like – that three hour a day goal feels more unattainable than ever right now – but I’ll find some time. I’ll find enough to keep myself sane. And in the meantime, I’m thinking again about PhD programs. I’m scheming how I can get myself back into that cushy life where even though you don’t make a living off of writing, it’s just assumed that writing is important and that you simply must have time to do it. That writing is as essential as breathing, that it’s one of those basic functions that keeps us going, keeps us alive.
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