A Variation on the Writing Path: Part II: The MFA

You may never feel like a real writer until someone gives you that first resounding acceptance, and requests your work for their journal. At least I never did. In my time at grad school, I had a few publishing nibbles that somehow convinced me to never give up. But ultimately, I lived in the convincing bliss--and still do--that there is something worthwhile in the act of writing.

In regard to having a career in writing, I got minimal support from my advisors at Goddard. If anything, this wasn’t even a consideration. It’s as if there is an unwritten rule that everyone pursues an MFA to become a working writer, but no one talks about it. This seemed particularly true at Goddard. In fact, if there’s one thing you sacrifice for going to a lauded school that no one seems to regard enough, it’s that you may come away from it lacking in the knowledge you might find most useful. The awful thing is you won’t realize this until it’s too late. The real world experience you get from just writing is about all you can count on.

I probably could have done more at the time I was in school, but no one provided any encouragement or direction, and I didn’t have a clue. I don’t blame myself for my naivete, because even when I managed to ask for guidance, I received stern resistance, as if my enthusiasm turned them off. This is perhaps not so surprising. These advisors were just struggling writers like we all aspired to be, most with a few modestly published books from obscure presses. I got the sense that none of them wanted us students to venture into their hallowed halls; we acted like they all had some secret society to protect, and they never disabused us of the notion.

I used to staunchly defend Goddard against this shortsightedness, but the truth is, I’d advise anyone to not go there unless she has exceptional self motivation. Almost ten years out, I only know of a handful of my classmates that are still writing (I’m referring primarily to the fiction writers). I would be curious to see the statistics on post MFAs in creative writing who are still actively pursuing that dream. Unfortunately, it can seem as elusive as that, pursuing a dream. I’ve also lost touch with most of my classmates--perhaps a reality of the long distance so many end up traveling to attend a low residency program.

I didn’t go to Goddard for a career, exactly. I wanted to get the training and instruction of an MFA in order to become a better writer. I can honestly say at the time I applied, I was desperate to get my foot in the writing door, and Goddard’s program looked appealing.

Since then, I’ve pursued literary journals, publishers, and agents in the face of often daunting indifference. That I’ve managed to eke out a writing practice is more a testament to my perseverance--I would be hard pressed to give much credit to anyone else. I’m always curious about these young writers whose debut novels or story collections have three pages of acknowledgements, as if it takes a village to make a writer. I suppose it does require one to produce a book, and then when the blurbs are given out, more names to thank again.

Several years on from my MFA, I have begun to find some support and encouragement from a community outside of Goddard. Yet even this has the taint for me of feeling unnatural, even contrary to its purpose. I’m still looking for a way to establish my presence in the proverbial community of writers. The village isn’t on any map.

No matter my gripes about Goddard, I am almost certain I would have felt far less comfortable in any other program. I made do with its peculiar limitations. I should stress that the work was not easy, but it was rewarding and worthwhile. After the initial struggle, I became adept. I was eager--maybe too eager for my advisors’ modest expectations. But I learned how to read critically there, and how to apply what I was reading to the enrichment of my own creative work. This was useful for me in eventually writing reviews. This is what I made of the program for myself. I could have done it more easily if I had wanted; I chose to push myself. I had to overcome my own limitations to stay on top of the reading and writing. It was like riding a wave in shark infested waters for two years; though you might lose your balance a few times, you never fell off.

In this regard, I don’t mean to sell short Goddard; I actually loved my advisors there, who instilled in me my practice. I still write regularly, which is usually daily. Without question, it is an important part of my life. I can’t even keep up with all of the new material I generate, though unlike Vollmann, I don’t have the wherewithal to get it all between covers--though I’m sure I wouldn’t even if I could.

Writing is one of the most self contenting vocations because it creates its own projects, its own problems, its own momentum. That is, before or after you strip away the sense of humiliating slights, the chronic rejection, the crippling envy. Even in spite of these difficulties, it can be practiced without much to impinge from the outside world. I was thinking today why I do any of it: why work so determinedly on a fifth novel when the first four may never see the light of day? I don’t know if you need to have an audience--but it is nice on occasion. Just the fact that I’m writing this somewhat intimate confessional on a blog gives me the sense that it will reach a few interested readers. As for the novel du jour and the hard hours of obscure toil that go into it, there’s a small hope for its discovery by someone other than myself. Who doesn’t want the rewards of a celebrated work?

One certainty: no two writers follow the same path. Although I can say that I got serious about writing when I decided to pursue my MFA, I had expected the completion of the degree to make the choice of writing as a vocation a bit more comfortable, more conducive to my aspirations; looking back, it’s been anything but that. 
 

Interested in reading Part I? Check it out here.

A Variation on the Writing Path: Part I

When I first began writing, on my own, with no teachers, no schools, no resources other than the friends I gave pages of carefully formatted prose to, I didn’t know even the tip of the iceberg when it came to the business of writing. In fact, it might be said that finding the resources for tapping into this information were scarce. This has been nearly 25 years ago. It’s often a wonder to me that, coming as far as I have, there are young writers starting out now who have all of these resources at their fingertips thanks to the internet. The writer’s path is much more deliberate now if you choose it, since writing has essentially become popularized, a desired career in itself, though the irony is of course, in order to really excel at it, it requires hours of solitude and discipline, commodities that would seem to be lacking in the culture that so fetishizes the writer as the kind of ultimate creative force. In other words, so many taking part in it seem to be heavily versed and immersed in the social media that invokes this conversation, that I begin to wonder--how do these people actually put any time in for writing? (The truth of this of course is that a writer doesn’t normally spend their allotted time--be it 8 hours a day or more if they are fortunate or supported, by writing--at writing; though social media, even if I were a full time writer, would still be a draining time suck to me).

I didn’t begin sending workout until probably ten years ago, already well a decade into my pursuit of writing; I’m not sure I even knew or understood before then that this was a regular thing that aspiring writers such as myself should or could do. Maybe part of this was really fear of rejection, though I genuinely think I had no concept that you would simply write a story and submit it to one of dozens, if not hundreds, of journals (now it is accurate to say, thousands, as there must be this many markets out there). If I scratch the surface, I might have erroneously believed that any fiction, like journalism and essay writing, was solicited. On the other hand, I’m not certain I had any familiarity with literary journals. I do remember my writing group talking about one of our members being “ready to send a story around.” I recall a distinct feeling of, “How dare he? That work isn’t worthwhile.” Or, at seeing the kind of hand made xeroxed “journal” they were in, I didn’t want anything to do with it. I’m sure I knew of institutions like the Paris Review, but again, I assumed anyone who wrote for them was approached by an editor and commissioned, possibly. So again, my pre-1997 approach to a literary market place was to imagine it as an off limits, almost hallowed place that for some reason I didn’t feel I was worthy of. As much as I began writing short fiction as a piece I might submit--and because it fit the writing group aesthetic--I’m not sure I was interested in it as much as I was a novel I’d been working on for years, which was known as Passenger. I was geared toward being a novelist, though one who had no apparent connection to the outside world (!).

When I applied to the top five or six graduate programs for an MFA in creative writing in ‘97, I remember being miffed by the letter from Brown University. It had said something like, “Most of our applicants have established themselves through publication in literary journals…” and my feeling then was, frankly, f___ you, Brown. Though the writing was, essentially, in the letter, it would still be a few years--at least seven--until I finally began to send work out to literary journals. This would only happen after moving to San Francisco, bathing in the light of the burgeoning writing community, amoebic and otherwise, that was suddenly, everywhere. Zyzzyva was one of the prominent journals I knew of--I’d picked up discarded copies at the local thrift store and pored over the work Vollmann had in them. Also, my boss had played on a softball team with Howard Junker in the seventies; he had encouraged me to send Junker stuff, calling his number at work and telling him I was going to do so. All I ever received were rejections with “Onward” on them. (Zyzzyva, by the way, has really become an elitist establishment literary journal since Junker left; their objective is to be a NY-arriviste-centric publication, or maybe another hyphen to add is--Bay Area elitist.)

Soon, I took a writing class or two at U.C. Berkeley Extension, with the hopes of applying again. I applied for the Stegner after learning about it from reading Stephen Elliott, and of course, I pursued the top programs again. After this, my second failed attempt at grad school applications, something must have clicked. I took a writing class at the Writer’s Salon with the wonderfully encouraging Linda Watanabe McFerrin, and thereafter, I began to submit my work to journals whose names were coming up among fellow writers. Now, to be shamefully honest, I only took the class because I wanted and needed someone to write me a letter of recommendation. Miraculously, or because I had genuinely showed promise, I asked Linda for this on the second class meeting, and she was happy to do it for me. But again, I was already looking down the road before I’d even had the tools to get my vehicle there. This time, saying to hell with my elitist aspirations, I applied to Goddard, a low residency program in Vermont, and got in. I was ecstatic.

Now, you’d have to be living under a rock, or perhaps on Mars, to not recognize the vastness of literary culture that is pervasive in 2015. I think it can make people who are not familiar with it or not all that interested in literature imagine it as a career or vocation that is readily available to anyone should they so desire it. And the culture itself doesn’t help to dispel this mythology, making genius writers of everyone from a promiscuous geriatric memoirist writing about her year of abandon, to an autistic child writing inspirational self-help.

Interested in reading Part II: The MFA? Check it out here.

Demystifying the Writing Workshop Ideal

When in the dark night of my literary soul I sometimes wonder, what if I had gotten into Iowa? I console myself with this thought: I might have gotten into Iowa if I had tried, later (in other words, if I applied now). I know I have the confidence for it now. But it’s a stupid question. Still, I often wonder what I’ve missed for opportunity for having not gone to a “better” school. Is all of my praise of my school something like the kid who is happy on Christmas morning with the particular shape of his lump of coal?

With these things it can seem like sour grapes. But I don’t think I’ve failed to exceed even my own initially meager expectations, so why look back with anything resembling regret now?

At Iowa, they must insistently focus on getting their writers’ work placed--a clear commercial approach that really had nothing to do with where I went for my MFA. There it was almost a defiantly anti-commercial, as if it was shameful to aspire to literary success.

In equal ways I’m resentful of my prior unsuccessful attempts to get into good MFA programs (by good I mean, perhaps the top ten on the US News listing), and yet glad I ended up with the experience I did. Likewise, with those Stegner people--I think about a former colleague applying every year and wonder when he’ll just start trying to write better and do what he can to get his work published. I don’t admire his blind persistence (to be a Stegner, or not to be, that is the question) because it assumes that lottery quality of it. Yet is the fact that a Fellow who has produced nothing but mediocre novels, and got in the year I last applied, make me wonder if in fact it isn’t unlike a lottery?

And yet if it is a lottery, I’d sometimes much prefer the odds of having gotten it; yet what does it say for all of the successful Iowa grads I admire I can think of an equal number whose work fails to excite (not only me, but the book world public,) and whom must have initially been greeted with the kind of bated breath and expectation befitting a Nobel candidate?

This all comes from someone who looks at himself as exceptional, of course, though probably not in ways that most people care. I consider that what I’ve been able to produce has been exceptional, and for whatever reason I didn’t have the grades, the pedigree, or the proper ass sniffing tolerance to get into an Iowa. I certainly dashed expectations of my imminent failure when I got accepted into the University of Michigan architecture program and became one of the sort of elect there--and I didn’t work nearly hard enough at what I should have then. And I’ve been floating on my U of M laurels ever since.

Maybe the question isn’t, is Iowa great? so much as, can Iowa open doors? Absolutely.

Just the tenor of these Kevin Brockmeier notes makes me believe Iowa is a cut above. The impression I have is that apparently all of these writers get publication contracts out the door--so it’s pure prestige to go to these programs. And knowing now what I do, I might have tried harder to get in. Because once you get in, that’s where you will forever be associated, besides all of the connections you will make in a good program, all of the opportunities to advance, and the name of the school you will forever talk about.

If someone says it doesn’t matter where you go to school, guess again.

Spouting Edifying Brilliance

The work ethic is close to the one of craft. In the Midwest, where I’m from, it’s hard to escape the notion that you can't get anywhere unless you are willing to work hard at it. As much as I’d occasionally like to believe in innate genius, I no longer think there are so many of them walking around spouting edifying brilliance fully formed. If anything is lacking from the discussion of what makes for brilliant writers, it’s really about how hard they have had to work to get there. Craft, being tied to the notion of work and sweat, probably gets a sniff once in awhile from the unjustifiably entitled, and yet, at the risk of sounding utterly un-hip and downright backwater patriotic, I think hard work is one of the only true legacies of this country’s striving and success. (Granted, capitalism has thrived on this exploitation, but perhaps you get my drift.) Thus, it’s not surprising that an outsider would disdain this humble legacy that has helped foster the MFA program proliferation in the U.S. This is all a long way of saying that I really love and applaud Mark McGurl’s take down of Elif Batuman’s critique of his book, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing.