Can Writing Be Taught?

Poetmom posted a link to this interesting New Yorker article on MFA program. It talks about the question of whether writing can be taught, and if not, then what is the point of MFA programs in the first place?

The piece is a reaction to a recent book called "The Program Era" by Mark McGurl, which talks about the huge rise in MFA programs in recent history (which, I learned through the article, was first due to the fact that WWI Vets could only get government money for degree programs, so MFA programs sprouted up as a way for vets to take creative writing classes for free).

Here is my reaction to the article. I'd love to hear yours, too!

First, the question of whether writing can be taught. I think writing takes three things:
1. Stick-to-it-iveness. Writing is hard and lonely, and often filled with rejections. You've got to have immense perseverance not to give up. Oh, and did I mention that writers are usually not paid for their work, or at least not up front, while they're actually doing it?

2. Talent/creativity.

3. Knowledge. Knowledge about literature, about the structure of a story/novel/poem, about what works and what doesn't.

Of these three, number 1 is most important, in my mind. I don't think you can make someone be more dedicated, or more "sticky". But talking about how much perseverance writing takes can help people realize every writer feels like writing is a tough, tough thing that they occasionally want to give up on. That can be an invaluable lesson.

Number 2, inspiration, can't be taught. It can be given room to blossom, but that's different than teaching someone how to have talent or be creative.

Number 3, knowledge about writing and literature, can certainly be taught. I came out of my MFA program with much more knowledge on these subjects that's one of the things I came out of my MFA program that I did not have going in.

What's also discussed in the article is the things outside of learning to write that one gets from an MFA program. From my MFA experience, the most important were:

**The ability to make my writing a priority. As the New Yorker writer, Louis Menand, put it, "to actually write stuff (as opposed to planning to write stuff very, very soon)."

**A sense of community, and some of the best friends I'll probably ever have. Again, to quote from the article, (this from a part where Menand talks about his own experience studying poetry): "I just thought that this stuff mattered more than anything else, and being around other people who felt the same way, in a setting where all we were required to do was to talk about each other's poems, seemed like a great place to be." Amen to that.

How're things in writer land?

It's a question Poet Mom asked on her blog, and one that I thought I'd answer on mine.

I'm at work on a new story, and for some reason first drafts are so much less painful for me than revising (which is what I did for my last MFA submission). I think it's because I've finally got it in my head that first drafts are shitty, that I'm allowed to make mistakes in them, that a lot of the work is done in just allowing yourself to write poorly.

So now I think that first drafts are fun. Second or third drafts though? That's when my Evil Editor sits on my shoulder second guessing every change I make, reminding me that even at the end of this draft the story will be no where near done, asking me why I'm doing this anyway?

Hopefully with time, that Evil Editor will shush down and allow me to revise in peace, knowing that even second drafts are allowed to be shitty, that I'm allowed to make mistakes in them, that a lot of the work is done in just allowing yourself to write poorly.

So that's how things are going in my Writer Land. How about you??

Retreat report, backwards schedule

The retreat was wonderful! I was really worried about being silent for a whole weekend (and silence included not reading, writing, knitting or basically anything other than walking, sitting, eating, and doing bathroom stuff).

But it was easy! And pleasant. It's amazing how much I/we talk and think above and beyond what's necessary. I can't tell you how many times I had the same thought, about the same mundane things like, I'd like to find a low-calorie recipe for chocolate chip cookies...

And eating mindfully is wonderful! Food is so much more satisfying when you're actually paying attention to it instead of concentrating on what you're going to say next, etc.

Now it's back to reality, but hopefully a more mindful one. I even got up 10 minutes early for a brief meditation this morning. And that's saying a lot since I had to leave the house at 6:45.

One part of being back to reality is getting back on track with my MFA work. Here's my newest backwards schedule:

October 8: Submission due. Write letter to Tony, mail packet.

Oct 1-7: Add in new sections/revisions to the electronic version of the story.
Write about the new Lorrie Moore stories in essay form.

September 24-30: Journal/free write about the areas I marked up in previous week.
Read second Lorrie Moore story, take detailed notes.

September 17-24: Read over story I'm revising, mark up hard copy as to major things to change/explore/expand. Close read one Lorrie Moore story, take detailed notes.

This month is going to be a little tight timewise... I think I gave myself too much of a break by not working last week or this weekend. Oh well. Pedal to the metal now!

New story

I sent out my first MFA package on Monday--god, what a good feeling it was to put that in the mail. This is my first mentor who is requiring mailed packets as opposed to emailed, and while it does add another layer to the process (printing and getting to the P.O.), I also got a more tangible sigh of relief when I dropped that sucker in the box, and can imagine it moving across the state.

But, as the saying goes, there's no rest for the weary, so I'm thinking about my next new story already. This one will be about a woman who's at the tail end of a divorce. She moves from Manhattan to Boston to escape memories and the possibility of running into her ex. She's been fairly exiled the first 2 months she's been there--it's cold and she's depressed so she doesn't try to go out and meet people.

The story will start on a spring day when she's finally going to the book club run by a friend of a friend of hers from Manhattan. The friend had been trying to get her to go since she moved--she thought the main character and the book club woman would hit it off. I'm not 100% sure where the story goes from here--I think what will happen is that these two women will become friends, and after the main character reveals a lot about her marriage and the reason for its failure (the main one being that her husband cheated), she then learns that this new friends of her had been "the other woman" in the not so recent past. The main character has to digest this info, and somehow get over the feeling of being betrayed all over again.

Any thoughts, directions, questions are most welcome!

No time!

I've had this song stuck in my head all week because, you guessed it, I have no time! (I love the part late in the song when they keep repeating "No time! No time!" with urgency in their voices.)

The odd thing is that I have much more time than I will in the fall, when I start TAing and my graduate assistantship. But I had meetings regarding both of those things--and my Harvard Extension School thesis--this week, so all sorts of thoughts, ideas, and worries about them are floating around in my head. Thank god for this sleep/meditation CD or I would've spent a third night as an insomniac last night.

So, what do I do when I feel stressed? Make a list, of course! Here goes:

Things not to worry about right now:
1. TAship (expiration date 8/15, when I should email professor some thoughts on which classes I want to lead)
2. Grad assistantship (expiration date 9/1, when I should email supervisors and touch base)

Things to do this weekend
1. Add baking scenes into my main story for my upcoming MFA submission
2. Revise the short short story that I will be submitting too
3. Expand the outline to my MFA essay
4. Brain dump about the stories I am adding to my final MLA thesis essay

Things that will get done sometime, and it's fine that they're not done right now (really, it is):
1. Fix up my garden (front)
2. Add elevated beds for my back veggie garden
3. Paint the floor/ceiling of my back porch
4. Put together a wedding album (yes, I've been married for 3 years and I haven't done this yet...)
5. Get down the many essays that are floating around in my head, especially one on dealing with a loved one's sickness and an essay on covering neighborhood meetings now, in my own neighborhood vs when I was younger and a reporter for a town newspaper in a ritzy area that I could never dream to live in (and with snobby people worried about the stupidest things...)

On that note....
I have two articles that will be in this week's Sunday Globe. I'll post links on Sunday.

Lesson # 2: sentiment vs. sentimentality

My former mentor, Hester Kaplan, taught a wonderful lecture on how writers can get their readers to feel the characters' emotions without being sentimental about it. What's the difference between sentiment and sentimentality? Namely that sentimentality makes you feel something through the use of the narrator's voice not through the characters/events of the story, and sentiment means you feel something legitimately through experiencing the characters/events of the story. Sentiment creates a thought or view that arises out of good descriptions and characters, whereas sentimentality manipulates the reader's emotions through highly charged imagery that ellicits unearned feelings.

How do you avoid sentimentality but ellicit sentiment?
1- Use specific images and situations, not general/abstract ones.
2- Don't rely on adjectives
3- Don't rely on cliches or hackneyed subject matter
4- Don't tell the reader what to feel, let him/her experience feelings along with the character.
5- Use events/images that surprise your reader.

An exercise: Write about falling in love in a way that is not sentimental. I will tackle this in a future post.

Some thoughts on teaching

I want to apply for a TA-ship at Lesley for the fall. The application is due in a week, and I cannot get motivated to do the two-page essay. Mostly because I have no idea what to write. The questions are: What particular interests do you have in relationship to an assistantship on campus? What particular skills do you bring to the position? What do you envision as an ideal mentoring relationship?

Maybe I'll just brainstorm on here about the questions, and hopefully come up with something. If you have any ideas for what colleges are looking for in this type of essay, how to begin creatively, etc., let me know!

*I want my assistantship to be a teaching assistantship, not a research assistantship.

*I have taught various forms of writing (creative, freelance, journalistic) to adults at various Adult Education centers around Boston for the past 5 years. I've also begun working with teens in high school classrooms, helping them with their writing.

*I love student interaction, and really feel that teachers learn as much from their students as vice versa. I also enjoy having discussions with students about their work because they usually bring such passion to it. And of course it's rewarding when you can see their work improving over the course of a semester.

*Skills I bring: Excellent writing, editing, and oral communication skills. The ability to give feedback in a constructive and polite manner. Highly organized and responsible.

* I'm not sure I know enough about mentor relationships in this capacity to comment on what my ideal relationship would be. I guess I would like to spend time in the classroom observing the teacher teaching, as well as to teach myself. I would also like to be involved in the grading of papers, and would need some mentoring in the beginning about what constitutes an A paper, etc.

Feeling like my head might explode

I was scooting along just fine, but now I'm feeling a huge sense of
overwhelm. I think this has a few sources: 1-I'm going away this
weekend so I need to get my MFA submission done tonight. 2-I want to
cook a bunch of yummy treats for my trip, which will compromise how
much time I have to work on writing tonight. 3-My "day job" has been
crazy this week. 4-I've been putting together a proposal for a large
freelance project. The amount of time/work this will take is daunting,
but more than that, the thought of negotiating the cost of the project
is stressful for me (and I have to do that in a phone meeting today).
5-I *think* I will be volunteering at 827 soon. I am almost too
overwhelmed to be excited. 6-I'm behind on my interdisciplinary MFA
project. My advisor is very understanding, but I still feel bad. Plus,
that means next week, when I normally let myself relax a bit between
submissions, I will be busting ass on that.

What am I going to do? I just don't know. A personal day is surely in order for next week. And I may try to throw a massage in there, too. But even that may not
be enough! Suggestions or just tele-hugs are welcome.

Learning

I feel like I'm really getting somewhere with my story. More than that, I feel like I'm really getting somewhere with my writing. First semester the most important thing I learned was what a real story was--that it showed movement of a discernable sort and that it was made up of scenes that built on one another and had true purposes. (I probably knew these basic things somewhere, but I didn't know them, if you know what I mean.)

This semester I'm learning a ton about how to bring out theme in a story, how to use details to build up that theme in interesting ways. And I feel like I can see a serious progression in the strength of my pieces from the first ones I handed in last June to this last one I'm working on now (with a serious blip in there to mark the crap that was the first story I handed in this semester).

So, kudos to me. Hah. Just kidding. But I am pretty amazed with how much I'm learning from this program. I should be an advertisement for Lesley College.

How not to have a nervous breakdown

Anyone who knows me might guffaw at this post's title. After all, nervous breakdowns and I are quite intimate. But, I have managed to stay fairly sane around my MFA work. So I thought I'd write about things I've found helpful.

First and foremost, I give myself a 5-7 day break after handing in my submission. I might work on stuff, but I don't have to. During that time I can read books not on my reading list, watch movies, catch up on house stuff I've been putting off, etc. I generally try to plan something nice for the weekend after a submission. This time, I'm going to NY to visit my family. This time off really helps me feel like my degree has not totally taken over my life.

Generally there's one weeknight a week that I don't work on MFA stuff. It tends to be Wednesday, and Brian and I tend to do something nice that night.

On the weekends, work is definitely a priority, but I always squeeze some not-work into each day. This weekend, on Saturday I had brunch with some friends, then worked for most of the day, and then went to a movie at night. Sunday I played tennis and then worked for most of the day.

That's about all. There are still some areas where I'd like to be saner--namely in not freaking out and doubting that I'll ever be any good at this stuff. Have any tips for keeping a balance between work (schoolwork or otherwise) and life?