"Stuff is eaten by dogs, broken by family and friends, sanded down by the wind, frozen by the mountains, lost by the prairie, burnt off by the sun, washed away by the rain. So you are left with dogs, family, friends, sun, rain, wind, prairie and mountains. What more do you want?"
Federico Calboli
Monday, December 17, 2012
Quote
"Thus my advice to the aspiring fiction writer: don't be tempted by that graveyard of literary talent, creative writing courses. Take a sharp turn and study history instead."
Good advice. I very occasionally encounter an MFA vet with real chops, who used grad school as an avenue to make useful connections in publishing and more importantly to acquire and utilize financed writing time (a recent example: Hanna Pylvainen, who published a superb short novel this fall called We Sinners, and won a well-deserved Whiting Award), but for every writer who meets this description I have personally met dozens who served essentially as useful idiots for the preservation of creative writing chairs, matriculation statistics, and as cheap labor for English departments. You can make a case that the vast numbers who go nowhere in effect collectively (if unwittingly!) prop up an institution that aids the notable 1%, but no one is really going to "learn" in a workshop what I believe are the two crucial aspects of great fiction--voice, and vision. Near as I can tell, you either have them, or you don't. On the other hand, that same 1% probably would find a hell of a lot more useful fodder in the history books.
The best writing programs in US universities don't have MFA programs (Princeton with John McFee, Alice Walker and Joyce Carol Oates teaching undergraduates, UPenn with its odd assortment of poets, and Yale with John Crowley and others). Gary Snyder wrote that studying anything with a master (carpentry, car repair) would teach more useful things than studying an art with a mediocrity.
James Carlos Blake said something similar; I'll try to dig it up. The gist was that history teaches us how people really act under pressure — good stuff for a writer.
8 comments:
Good advice. I very occasionally encounter an MFA vet with real chops, who used grad school as an avenue to make useful connections in publishing and more importantly to acquire and utilize financed writing time (a recent example: Hanna Pylvainen, who published a superb short novel this fall called We Sinners, and won a well-deserved Whiting Award), but for every writer who meets this description I have personally met dozens who served essentially as useful idiots for the preservation of creative writing chairs, matriculation statistics, and as cheap labor for English departments. You can make a case that the vast numbers who go nowhere in effect collectively (if unwittingly!) prop up an institution that aids the notable 1%, but no one is really going to "learn" in a workshop what I believe are the two crucial aspects of great fiction--voice, and vision. Near as I can tell, you either have them, or you don't. On the other hand, that same 1% probably would find a hell of a lot more useful fodder in the history books.
The best writing programs in US universities don't have MFA programs (Princeton with John McFee, Alice Walker and Joyce Carol Oates teaching undergraduates, UPenn with its odd assortment of poets, and Yale with John Crowley and others). Gary Snyder wrote that studying anything with a master (carpentry, car repair) would teach more useful things than studying an art with a mediocrity.
Steve
This youtube clip shows an eagle? grabbing a child in a park. She drops the child quickly.
Looks real to me
Don't know anyother way to get this to you.
Pat Nolan
James Carlos Blake said something similar; I'll try to dig it up. The gist was that history teaches us how people really act under pressure — good stuff for a writer.
Jim Cornelius
www.frontierpartisans.com
I've always thought one of the best practices for would-be writers is to be a voracious READER!....L.B.
That's the truest statement of all, Lib...
That was Lane Batot not Lib-- though she says over my shoulder that she agrees 100 % !
....I guess that's just a case of "add Lib"....L(no I).B.
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