Writers Can't Help But Write

I've been doing a lot of soul searching on this subject, and I have to say that I just can't help but be what I am which happens to be a writer. Last year about this time I applied to as many MFA programs as I could afford. That ended up being five, which is a horribly small number but so was the number in my bank account. I was rejected from them all. That was a little soul crushing, I'm not going to lie. For as long as I can remember I've been telling stories. I remember telling stories to my little sister because neither of us could sleep so we might as well be creative. Mind you, this was AFTER we would make up our own bedtime stories with Dad! I've just always been attracted to the creation and sharing of stories, so to be so firmly denied by five MFA programs was heart breaking.

So, after some hoop jumping and because a few very wonderful and amazing faculty members liked me (who knows why!) I got into SIUC's MA program instead. The advice most new writers hear is usually along the lines of "if you can do anything else in the world and be happy do that instead." This MA program was my attempt at doing something else. I couldn't tear myself away from literature, so why not major in literature instead of trying to write it and see if that makes me happy. Good plan, right? Well, no, not really. Because the truth is, it really doesn't fill that little space in my heart that is only shaped for fiction writing. My inner storytelling seems to resent all of this English analytical business. I really just don't enjoy tearing apart other peoples stories and molding them to fit my theories as to what sort of symbolism their use of color is throughout their novel. One semester down and I'm not really proud of anything I've written for these classes. I received all A's, isn't that nice. It's just not the kind of writing I feel fulfilled doing. So now what?

Well, now it looks like I'm going to have to join all of my fellow writers on that uphill climb of mount Successful Publishing. By the looks of things, not many people make it to the top these days, but apparently I caught the same derangement as every other writer and I just have to try. Why does anyone climb a mountain really? Because it's there and because they are compelled to climb it.

I just don't feel like my self in this literature program. I look around at my colleagues and I see that they honestly enjoy all of this, but for me it's like pulling teeth. I sit in front of my computer and pull out my hair just to slowly ooze out paragraphs of analytical crap. I don't even believe my arguments, which makes getting A's on these papers even worse. I feel like an impostor and at any moment SOME one at the table is going to see through my clever disguise and call me out. "You, there, at the end of the table. You read pop fiction, don't you? You can't be one of us, you're a fan of Stephen King!"

It's not like I'm NOT a fan of literature. As a child I ate up stories by Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austin. I still love reading Melville and Hemingway, and even in the sixth grade I would read Shakespeare's comedies over and over again because they were hilarious. It's not that I don't like literature, it's just that I think I appreciate different aspects of literature than my fellow English MA students. I love good, well-round characterization, or clever plots; I love stories that seem to suck you in so completely that when you are finished you feel as you just got back from a really good trip out of the country. I appreciate how the author endears some characters to you or how you end up liking a character in spite of yourself. I like it when the authors weave worlds around you that are so real you miss them when your done. I appreciate, no, I love a good, well-written story. These observations are the observations of a story lover, but not really anything an academic article could be about, at least not by an MA student. A writer could probably write an article about another writer's technique, but I'm not sure I would ever be able to teach a class on such observations if I am not an MFA student.

So, where does this all leave me? It seems to leave me sitting here praying I can get into an MFA program sooner rather than later, and it really has me considering dropping the whole MA racket altogether. Plenty of writers worked mundane jobs while writing in the evenings and praying for success. I don't define myself by my profession, so I could be perfectly happy working at some Starbucks because I know I'm more than just a barista. I'm a writer.

Writers Speak Up, I Can't Hear Your Voice

So, the topic of voice was brought to my attention today. Questions like what are we talking about when we say an author has a good voice, what is voice in writing, can it be taught, how does someone improve their authorial voice; these were all discussed in length, though it was never concluded as to just what voice really is in a text. I tried to define it several different ways because I know voice exists I just wasn't really sure how to point it out. It can be painfully obvious when compared that different authors have different ways of saying things. Stephen King comes to mind instantly because he has a very distinctive voice; I can always guess an quote from King. There are other obvious examples, like Faulkner or Hemingway, authors who we use to now describe the voice of new authors, but what is voice really?

Voice could be almost anything, it could be the author's choice of words, where they put certain phrases, how they say certain phrases. Voice could be how the author constructs thoughts, describes a tree, strings words together; voice could be the feeling of the author coming through the text. Passion, coming through the words.

Maybe that is why voice is so hard to find in modern stories. Maybe, due to the readily available numbers of MFA programs - due to the thought that creative writing can be taught like history, mathematics or science - due to the very business-like world of publishing and the ability to screen artists for the proper academic degrees the feeling, the emotion, has been sucked out of the art. And isn't that the heart and soul of the whole endeavor; passion?

A friend once told me that it is a curse to be an artist because we are entrusted with feeling and expressing emotions for our whole society. He said we feel emotions twice as strong because we need the surplus to poor into our art. I loved this idea because it gave me an excuse for my "moods"; for crying at every episode of Bones I watch and for getting as passionate as I do over all the little things in life. (I will literally sing over a particularly fluffy blanket or dance for a bizarre new fruit at Shnucks) The more I think about what he said the more I see he is right. Emotion is what brings the story off the page, it's what fills each word and makes the pages fly by unseen but felt. The good books make me feel the same emotions as the characters.

The great books can make me sob.

Voice in a story is the emotion of the author; for the topic, story, even the individual characters. (I've cried over killing some of my darlings, but for the sake of the story it must be done.) A strong voice can transfer those emotions from the page to the reader.

So, what has sucked this passion from our modern writers; and, more importantly, what can we do to get it back?

Not All Poems Are Good, People.

So I'm feeling like a horrible student of literature. It's not that I don't enjoy literature, I do. Really, I love to read and I usually enjoy reading new books for class and discussing them. I don't feel like a horrible student because of the books I have to read this semester, I feel like a horrible student because of the poems I'm being forced to read.

I'm a creative writing student, and for some reason the university feels that for me to get a complete and well rounded education for creative writing I must be forced to take a years worth of poetry classes where they force me to write my own poetry. I am not a poet. I've never pretended I was poet. I don't write poetry, I write fiction. When I go for my MFA I have to choose either poetry or fiction and never shall the two meet. At least, not in one program. So, my learning how to write poetry has nothing to do with my future in an MFA program, it's just SIUC's form of torture before they allow me to graduate.

That being said, I do not like the poetry I am being forced to read and emulate in my class. It's not that I hate poetry as an art form, I happen to like several poets. Ogden Nash, Rumi , W.H. Auden, Edgar Allen Poe, John Donne, Lord Byron, Shakespeare, all sorts of poets. I like poetry; however, I do not like THIS poetry. If the capital letters don't stress this enough let me make it clear, I do not like this, what IS the present literary era? Post-postmodernism? Are we still in the postmodernism era? Anyway, I don't like this incredibly long and boring poetical crap that we are producing in the modern era.

I just had to read five "expanded object" poems by five different authors and frankly most, if not all, of them were long and boring. Let's face, maybe Frost was write about unrhymed poetry. (Frost, by the way, said that writing an unrhymed poem was like playing tennis without a net.) I don't know, there are several poets I like who don't rhyme, but they seem to show more talent than these poets.

Robert Pinsky's poem "Shirt" just seemed long and depressing. I could see the point he was trying to make about sweat shops, but then he goes beyond that and somehow we end up in Scotland and "Braveheart" talk and I just don't really see the connection. I know there are things called poetical "leaps" but this one leaped right past me and I believe it missed its mark.

Worse, however, was Eamon Grennan's "Cows". This was pretty much as thrilling as watching a bunch of cows chew their cud. No, sorry, not my idea of a great read.

Can any of these authors write a sestina? Do they have any poetical talent whatsoever, or can they just string words on a page? I'll admit, I CAN'T write a sestina, but then again I'm not pretending to be a poet. Shouldn't a poem take a little more talent than writing vague or overly descriptive sentences and arranging them in some artistic way? Shouldn't writing a poem be challenging? Right now it seems like any teenager with angst can write a poem. What IS poetry any more?

And for that matter, I really must ask one last time, what literary era are we? Have we even started one or are we still trying to copy the greats from postmodernism? Is that all we will ever do, copy? Where is the poetry for this age? Maybe we should, if we are going to mimic, mimic a later age. Maybe we should try to recapture the greatness of an era BEFORE modernism, instead of continually following in the footsteps of the postmodernists.

Anyway, that is my rant for today. Mostly because I was bitter for having to waste a part of my Saturday reading poems I would never have finished if I didn't have to.

I am truly frightened. I was procrastinating, tooling around on the internets trying not to think about how I couldn't seem to write ANYTHING today, when I stumbled across a list of various blog sites. Now I thought I knew a lot of blog sites, but this was ridiculous! I mean seriously, what is hi5? Or bebo? This was crazy! But, not as crazy as it gets. Have you heard, oh make believe readers, of a site named Writernia?

Now I've been through a few creative writing workshops because that is what creative writing majors do. We read each other's work, usually while feeling pretty good about our own, and try to offer the best advice we can. Well, not always the best, we don't want a lot of competition out there in the old publishing world, but we offer some basic advice. You think, things like verb tense changes and whatnots. Sometimes, if I'm the one reading your story, you'll find huge red marks that read, "Hell no!" But such plot advice can be rare depending on who is reviewing your work.

Anyway, so I've read peer work in these classes, and usually with a LOT of bemoaning if that particular peer has a history of just awful stories. (Mind you, there are some peers whose work far out does my own! I love and hate to read it because the stories are both very good and way better than my own, hence depressing.) Anyway, this site, Writernia, is a WRITERS blog!!! So guess what, it's filled with peer work!!! And just like in a workshop, while there will be some diamonds, there is a LOT of rough. A lot of rough. Wow! So much rough!

Now, PLEASE don't get me wrong, I don't believe my writing is, well, anything to write home about, but I am a reader. I read just about anything. I LOVE cheesy fantasy novels with knights on horses and wizards and fay folk running about causing a ruckus, love it! I read Stephen King and I read Jane Austin, I read EVERYTHING. I love stories. So, when I say that some of the stories on the blog are horrific and NOT because they are horror stories, you have to understand that I'm saying this from the opinion of an avid devourer of words! It was crazy!

Which naturally means I'll be making several visits to this site to read more stories. Why, you ask? Because I did leave there feeling a little more confident in my amateur work AND in my basic ability to at least know how a story is suppose to work. I've been learning the technical for years now, and it's just nice to know that I've retained a little knowledge. That, and it's a LOT of fun to read some of these stories out loud in a very dramatic Shakespearean act voice. It makes me giggle.

... yes, I am evil.