Call for Questions and New People
4 Jun
1. The DCWYTBMA question hopper is almost empty.
Won’t you help fill it back up?
2. I’m woefully off pace for my goal of helping 100 NEW PEOPLE this year.
Won’t you help me re-empacen myself by referring a friend?
3. The New Yorker has a piece on the creative writing workshop.
Won’t you read it and share your passionate/contradictory opinions about it?
4. People in the past were prescient fools.
Won’t you join me in laughing at/admiring them?
Thanks and take care.
“this and experiment… and we’re not going to make money.” -said the newspaper editor about printing his articles over the web. Oh buddy are you ever NOT going to make money. I love that the “subscriber” had a rotary dial phone!
I believe the correct quote is “This is an experiment…” I just can’t type.
That line about not making money jumped out at me too. It’s an experiment in our own demise!
Well, the article was good to read since I’m considering applying to an MFA program here in Texas. I’m having a hard time deciding if it is really what I want to do.
The idea that writing programs are these restaurants baking their own bread, strikes me as true. I’ve long been unsure about these programs–perhaps because I knew I couldn’t get in. They seem to be the in vs. out writers. The approved and the not.
But if you say that writing can’t be taught, you also encourage that writing-is-a-gift attitude. I mean, that oh-you-lowly-non-writer-can-never-hope-to-be-a-part-our-blessed-talented-flock.
Saying writing can be taught can give hope to the kid who has no connection to artists in any other way. “I could go to school and be a writer.”
I’m not sure I’m making sense, but the can’t be taught side can sound arrogant. But does that mean writing programs work? I’ve no idea. Will I apply? I can’t say.
Well, I’m here, mostly lurking, but I’m kind of new. Do I count towards your 100?
Hi McKoala! (Old buds from way back.)
Writing can be taught. People do it all the time.
I think the issue lies, as with most teaching, with the learner. Many many writers can learn to be excellent writers.
Many more simply aren’t interested in learning to be better.
Hello McKoala. Thanks for de-lurking.
As for counting toward the 100, you’d need to ask me a question or seek my advice in order to count toward the 100.
So please do.
That’s a great article in the “New Yorker”. I don’t know, we’re not talking about being “taught” in the conventional sense of learning–history, mathematics–in discussing the arts are we? I’ve never attended a workshop but does sound like a potential relief from the solipsistic existence this activity can become, opening new vistas through others of like aspiration, stimulating to a higher level an ingenuity innately present. Maybe.
Oh! Pick me, pick me. I’m new and everything.
I would like to know why I always discount my efforts – I have “real” artwork (that I don’t seem to get around to doing much) and then I have “non-art” that I mess around with and do nearly every day. I tell people it’s a matter of intent and materials – just goofing around with whatever is at hand doesn’t cut it – I can’t show or sell the every day stuff – only the serious art counts. Am I right or am I wrong?
Thank you for considering making me more awesome.
mapelba: I think the trick in answering the “writing can/can’t be taught riddle” is that there’s writing, and there’s writing.
Writing — “creative” writing, which is the kind MFA and similar programs deal with — is an imaginative act, and a technical one, and a mechanical one. You hitch up the imagination to the understanding (conscious or not) of how to assemble it into a narrative, and then you hitch that to the knowledge of a language’s conventions, and voila: a creative writer.
Totally my opinion, of course, but I think MFA programs tend to — can — really address only the one in the middle. I don’t think it’s possible to “teach” someone an imagination; at best you can sort of engender it — give the mind a ton of stories to absorb, and time to absorb them. The mechanics of language might be addressed in MFA-type curricula (maybe they are), but I think mostly they’re dealt with on an as-needed basis, on the assumption that (a) if someone at age 21+ is still confusing their/there/they’re then a 4-month course isn’t going to fix it, and (b) that’s what advance readers and copy editors are for, anyway.
Which leaves the middle bit: What’s the best way to get from “Once upon a time” to “The End”? What works and doesn’t? How do you go about effectively switching POVs? And so on.
(None of which says anything about the possible career benefits of an MFA program — making contacts and such. Just talking about the teaching-writing question.)
John Simpson lured me over here. I’m surprised to be this pleased to find a new place to hang out since I have been trying to whittle down word counts.
I do have a question. My manuscript is over the limit on word count, but I think I can get it down close enough to acceptable levels that I am not really concerned.
I have two friends, however, who have written tomes. Yes, I hang out with overachievers. I’ve read one completely and bits of the historical. Both have had very positive comments from agents who are aware of the word count, but I wonder if the current climate is going to kill these books.
They really are extraordinary writers and stories, but one is very frustrated at the cut-and-dry approach some people have to longer books.
Yes, back to the career question for a second. Since my professional background is in business, including the attendant advertising, promotion, internal and external correspondence that goes with it, and lacking those “Vanity Fair” assignments on a regular (or any) basis, Ive been seeking out corporate writing opportunities. (I like the origination and expresson of ideas and have some grasp of a business setting from life on the street.) Tough go however, when up against those whose entire resume is that type of work or unemployed journalists and PR gurus.
@lazym and Julie: Your questions are now officially in the hopper.
@everyone who commented on the MFA article: I am crafting a post about writing programs that I think you will find interesting.
New follower. I see your note on making your explanation larger…if you can edit your wordpress stylesheet, add a line that looks like this:
div.textwidget {font-size: larger;}
or, search through it for the word “textwidget” and see what font-size is in the curly braces and make it a larger #.
Great blog. Now I have someone else to follow. Nice to see there are other people who like helping folks.