Tag Archives: writers and writing

Smart Conversations About MFA Programs

22 May

 

 This post is a little late and very long, so most of it is below the jump.

Per my previous post, I do not believe that MFA programs are killing US literature, or that they do more harm than good. I do believe though that they do some things much better than others, and we should be able to have an open and critical conversation about that.

1)      We should be clear about what MFA programs can and can’t do

Some people react to the concept of an MFA program by saying you can’t be taught to write. This is substantially true. In fact, most MFA program faculty are aware of this, which is why every spring they spend hours a day reviewing application files in an attempt to only admit students who they think can write in the first place.

An MFA program also can’t teach you to have interesting things to say, though, as before, I am of the opinion that deciding to go to graduate school does not make you fundamentally less interesting, and does not negate the things that happen to you before, during, and after your decision to attend.

The purpose of an MFA program is not to teach you to write, or to teach you to be interesting, but to teach you to edit, which, if you are anything like most writers, is how you will spend most of your “writing” time. On my first day of graduate workshop, the instructor said that if 15% of the advice you got was useful, you were in a very good workshop. That number often seems about right to me, and while there have been days when I’ve been exceedingly grateful for that useful advice, what I really got from workshop was the ability to filter useless advice from useful advice—to be able to articulate to myself what I was trying to do, to dismiss the criticisms that were completely off base, to look at some criticisms that felt wrong and use them to identify what was going on with the work that the reader wasn’t getting it, and to listen to the criticism that seemed right, even if  it meant doing work that was difficult, even if it meant ignoring the people who loved the story the way it was, because I knew it could be better. Developing this kind of filter is critical, not just for writers in MFA programs, but for all writers. Whether or not you ever set foot in a workshop, if you are successful as a writer, the world will be full of people who have things to say about your writing, and what it should be doing differently: agents, editors, publishers, reviewers, critics, your mom. Ideally, the skill set one develops in an MFA program helps you to cut through all of that noise faster. I have to say, I’ve been lucky enough to have never witnessed outright cruelty in an MFA workshop, though I’ve heard enough stories to believe that it happens with some regularity. I am not a person who believes you learn from cruelty (which, even if it’s based in honest criticism, is distinct from honesty). But, if as a writer your faith in your work can’t withstand mean criticism from one instructor, or from some person across the table, what’s going to happen to it when you get a dismissive rejection from the New Yorker, or a mean review?  Your faith in your work, and your editorial instincts have to come from within, but sometimes nothing teaches you that faster than trying to listen to other people.

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Stupid Conversations About MFA Programs

20 May

I waited so long to have a blog that it turns out I actually have a lot to say about MFA programs, so I’ve divided this into two posts: one about the legitimate conversations we might be having about MFA programs and what they can and can’t do, and one about the stupid conversations that get in the way.  This post got longer than I intended, so part two, Smart Conversations about MFA programs, will probably go up tomorrow.

A lot of complaints about MFA programs start with the assertion that writers should be “living,” instead of going to school.  Understandably, writers with MFAs tend to get defensive when the conversation is opened this way. Most people, I would venture, tend to get defensive when the conversation opens with “how do you feel about the fact that you’re not a real human being?” If going to graduate school was supposed to provide me with some kind of injunction against “real life,” against emergency phone calls from friends and family, physical and financial threats and challenges faced by people I love, money worries, racism, heartbreak, and the uncertainty of living in a world that seems constantly on the brink of large scale disaster, then the Iowa Writers’ Workshop has some serious explaining to do, because I never got my exemption paperwork.  I know a number of people who got married, divorced, or had kids during their MFA programs, I guess they’ll be disappointed to find out that these weren’t “real,” life events from which they learned things or by which they were changed. A number of people in MFA programs have full time jobs while they attend; it’s too bad the fact of their being in graduate school negates whatever else they are doing in the world.  

Certainly, there are a handful of shallow, petty people in MFA programs, and people who can’t see outside of their own experience or empathize with people unlike them. That’s because there are handfuls of shallow, petty, narcissistic people in the world, 22 year olds and 40 year olds and 80 year olds, writers and doctors and homemakers. If you are 22 years old and it has never occurred to you that most of the world lives and thinks differently than you do, the problem is probably not your MFA program. In any case, it’s not like the alternative to an MFA is  going to be forced humanity training that will make you a different and better human being.

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Musings on the Black Book Section

18 May

A while back, I wrote a short piece for PEN American, working through some of my ambivalence about the “black book” section in a lot of US bookstores. Here’s the opening:

I first understood what people meant when they spoke of intangible white privilege when I realized that I read differently than other people. Literature had often asked me to identify with characters who were not only unlike me in terms of their experience of race, but were often actively hostile to women, or to Black people or to Black women. The strangeness of this identification didn’t occur to me until I heard my white classmates complain about having to do the same when we read books by Black authors. Years later, I would read DuBois and wonder whether my ability to identify with authors and protagonists who would despise me was evidence of a fractured self. But at the time, the inability to read outside, or even against, the self seemed as much a limitation as a privilege.

You can read the full piece here: Looking for Black Literature

I’m curious as to how other people have thought about these issues, as either readers or writers?

Hald

18 May

I just got back from a week of being spoiled rotten at the Hald Writer’s Retreat in Denmark. Hald is a lovely manor in the Danish countryside, which offers longer residencies throughout the year, but I was invited for a week, along with five Danish writers and four other US writers, as part of a program sponsored by the Danish Arts Council. It was one of those weeks that reminded me how very lucky I’ve been as a writer, and gave me the kick I needed to get back to my novel.

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