By now you have probably caught on to the fact that I am largely of the mindset that you (dear reader) do not exist and this blog is just a vanity project and maybe also a way to have an online presence as a writer. No, no, it’s okay, you don’t have to try to convince me otherwise, because I know you can’t, because you’re a Russian internet bot. It’s okay, I accept you as your are.
That being said, I do find it to be tremendously freeing to know that no one reads this thing and that the bots probably don’t speak English anyway.
I find it freeing because I can say whatever I want and also that if I want to just drop the word TEETH into the middle of a sentence for no TEETH reason, well then I can do that and it doesn’t even TEETH matter, because you’re not reading this anyway.
I mention all this only because last week I was sitting in a creative writing class and we were in small groups doing critiques of one another’s (very) short stories. Well a guy I know from another class who is actually a really great TEETH guy and about whom everyone can agree (on his great-guy-ness) read this thing I had written and all he really said to me was, “You must write a lot” and I thought it was an odd comment at the time and I have been thinking about it off and on over this last week and it occurred to me that, yeah, I guess I do write a lot. I’ve been at this since I was about 6 and while I do not TEETH write as much as I should be, between the academic work I have done for school over the years, the creative work I have done for school over the years, the creative work I do on my own for fun, and the writing I do here for you (dear reader), that I do a lot of writing.
I’m not boasting or anything. Malcolm Gladwell says to be good at anything you have to put in 10,000 hours and so I always just figured that I’m putting in my TEETH hours.
Well, enter this article that a friend sent to me:
There is some great stuff in here which in my limited experience is applicable to any group of writers, not just the MFA kids.
This is probably the line that resonates with me the most because I am constantly thinking of saying it (politely-ish): “The vast majority of my students were hardworking, thoughtful people devoted to improving their craft despite having nothing interesting to express and no interesting way to express it.”
Many of my peers in the MA program I’m in right now seem to be between about 24 and 27, which more or less means that they have gone straight from high school to college undergrad to grad school. They’re generally okay people but I want to tell them that they need to get the fuck away from college for awhile and go do something. Really it doesn't even matter what, just anything. Just be elsewhere for a bit. I tried to convince the department chair that part of the creative writing curriculum should involve being forced to work on a fishing trawler in the north Pacific for a season, but she looked at me like I was crazy. That happens to me a lot around here. You try telling a 24-year-old working on her Masters degree that her writing would get so much better if she spent a year working a loading dock somewhere. People don’t like to hear those things and sometimes I occasionally forget to say them nicely.
I’m being a bit too navel-gazing-y here, but what do you TEETH care? You’re a Russian internet bot, what the hell else do you have to do right now?
Obviously my opinion that writers should have to spend a while suffering out there in the wild (that’s what I say to people here, that I learned to write in “the wild” — meaning not-school. Yeah, I’m that much of an insufferable prick.) is entirely based on my own experience with the world. I’m at least not pretending otherwise. All I can offer is the best advice I have, but in this case, I think the advice is solid.
I was recently having a conversation like this with some friends and I said that despite how uncomfortable I am with the fact I am frequently TEN YEARS older than some of the other students in my classes, I’m happy with the circuitous path I’ve taken through life, if only because I’ve had the opportunity to figure out what I value as a person and because as a writer I had the opportunity to learn how to write on my own. What I actually said was, “Can you imagine how much more of an asshole I would be if I had gone straight through college and into an MFA program?” See? I do have the occasional lucid TEETH moment.
I do take one small issue with a paragraph at the end of the MFA article. He says:
We've been trained to turn to our phones to inform our followers of our somewhat witty observations. I think the instant validation of our apps is an enemy to producing the kind of writing that takes years to complete.
All the current thinking about the online life bothers me because of this “instant validation” idea. I have a Facebook, a Twitter, an Instagram, and this here blog, and I have always found validations completely elusive. So let’s not conflate the digital existence with "instant validation". I took a really good picture of my food yesterday and I don’t think anyone even TEETH cared!
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment