Things I Can Say About MFA Writing Programs Now That I No Longer Teach in One


"You’re going to need to spend a lot of time alone." - James Yamasaki


I recently left a teaching position in a master of fine arts creative-writing program. I had a handful of students whose work changed my life. 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. My hope for them was that they would become better readers. And then there were students whose work was so awful that it literally put me to sleep. Here are some things I learned from these experiences.

Writers are born with talent.

Either you have a propensity for creative expression or you don't. Some people have more talent than others. That's not to say that someone with minimal talent can't work her *** off and maximize it and write something great, or that a writer born with great talent can't squander it. It's simply that writers are not all born equal. The MFA student who is the Real Deal is exceedingly rare, and nothing excites a faculty adviser more than discovering one. I can count my Real Deal students on one hand, with fingers to spare.

If you didn't decide to take writing seriously by the time you were a teenager, you're probably not going to make it.

There are notable exceptions to this rule, Haruki Murakami being one. But for most people, deciding to begin pursuing creative writing in one's 30s or 40s is probably too late. Being a writer means developing a lifelong intimacy with language. You have to be crazy about books as a kid to establish the neural architecture required to write one.

If you complain about not having time to write, please do us both a favor and drop out.

I went to a low-residency MFA program and, years later, taught at a low-residency MFA program. "Low-residency" basically means I met with my students two weeks out of the year and spent the rest of the semester critiquing their work by mail. My experience tells me this: Students who ask a lot of questions about time management, blow deadlines, and whine about how complicated their lives are should just give up and do something else. Their complaints are an insult to the writers who managed to produce great work under far more difficult conditions than the 21st-century MFA student. On a related note: Students who ask if they're "real writers," simply by asking that question, prove that they are not.

If you aren't a serious reader, don't expect anyone to read what you write.

Without exception, my best students were the ones who read the hardest books I could assign and asked for more. One student, having finished his assigned books early, asked me to assign him three big novels for the period between semesters. Infinite Jest, 2666, and Gravity's Rainbow, I told him, almost as a joke. He read all three and submitted an extra-credit essay, too. That guy was the Real Deal.

Conversely, I've had students ask if I could assign shorter books, or—without a trace of embarrassment—say they weren't into "the classics" as if "the classics" was some single, aesthetically consistent genre. Students who claimed to enjoy "all sorts" of books were invariably the ones with the most limited taste. One student, upon reading The Great Gatsby (for the first time! Yes, a graduate student!), told me she preferred to read books "that don't make me work so hard to understand the words." I almost quit my job on the spot.

No one cares about your problems if you're a ****** writer.

I worked with a number of students writing memoirs. One of my Real Deal students wrote a memoir that actually made me cry. He was a rare exception. For the most part, MFA students who choose to write memoirs are narcissists using the genre as therapy. They want someone to feel sorry for them, and they believe that the supposed candor of their reflective essay excuses its technical faults. Just because you were abused as a child does not make your inability to stick with the same verb tense for more than two sentences any more bearable. In fact, having to slog through 500 pages of your error-riddled student memoir makes me wish you had suffered more.

You don't need my help to get published.

When I was working on my MFA between 1997 and 1999, I understood that if I wanted any of the work I was doing to ever be published, I'd better listen to my faculty advisers. MFA programs of that era were useful from a professional development standpoint—I still think about a lecture the poet Jason Shinder gave at Bennington College that was full of tremendously helpful career advice I use to this day. But in today's Kindle/e-book/self-publishing environment, with New York publishing sliding into cultural irrelevance, I find questions about working with agents and editors increasingly old-fashioned. Anyone who claims to have useful information about the publishing industry is lying to you, because nobody knows what the hell is happening. My advice is for writers to reject the old models and take over the production of their own and each other's work as much as possible.

It's not important that people think you're smart.

After eight years of teaching at the graduate level, I grew increasingly intolerant of writing designed to make the writer look smart, clever, or edgy. I know this work when I see it; I've written a fair amount of it myself. But writing that's motivated by the desire to give the reader a pleasurable experience really is best. I told a few students over the years that their only job was to keep me entertained, and the ones who got it started to enjoy themselves, and the work got better. Those who didn't get it were stuck on the notion that their writing was a tool designed to procure my validation. The funny thing is, if you can put your ego on the back burner and focus on giving someone a wonderful reading experience, that's the cleverest writing.

It's important to woodshed.

Occasionally my students asked me about how I got published after I got my MFA, and the answer usually disappointed them. After I received my degree in 1999, I spent seven years writing work that no one has ever read—two novels and a book's worth of stories totaling about 1,500 final draft pages. These unread pages are my most important work because they're where I applied what I'd learned from my workshops and the books I read, one sentence at a time. Those seven years spent in obscurity, with no attempt to share my work with anyone, were my training, and they are what allowed me to eventually write books that got published.

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. That's why I advise anyone serious about writing books to spend at least a few years keeping it secret. If you're able to continue writing while embracing the assumption that no one will ever read your work, it will reward you in ways you never imagined. recommended

Ryan Boudinot is executive director of Seattle City of Literature.

LOVE AND LOVERS

by

TOD HOWARD HAWKS


Chapter 1

Jon walked down Broadway Thursday toward Tom’s to eat breakfast. He had taken this stroll hundreds of times after being at Columbia for five years during which he had eaten breakfast at all possible alternatives and found Tom’s to be categorically the best in Morningside Heights. It was a beautiful Fall morning. Monday he would begin the second and last school year at Columbia and in the Spring he would receive his MFA from the School of the Arts.

When Jon entered Tom’s, he was stunned. Sitting three down in aisle 3 on the right side in a booth by herself was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. After standing still for a few moments, Jon slowly walked toward this woman and stopped, then spoke.

“Hi, I’m Jon Witherston. May I join you?”

The young woman responded, “Sure.” Jon sat down.

“I’m Bian Ly. It’s nice to meet you,” she said.

“I’m assuming you’re a student at Columbia,” said Jon.

“Yes, I’m a senior at the College. Are you also a student?” asked Bian.

“Yes, I am. In fact, I graduated from Columbia College a year ago. Next Spring, I’ll be receiving my MFA from the School of the Arts. I’m a poet,” said Jon.

“A poet! How wonderful!,” exclaimed Bian.

“Thank you, Bian. What’s your major?” asked Jon.

“I'm majoring in Human Rights,” replied Bian.

“The world needs to major in Human Rights!” said Jon.

Bian smiled.

At that point, the waitress came over and took their orders. Both wanted breakfast.

“That is a beautiful ring you are wearing on your little finger,” said Bian.

“That a Nacoms ring,” said Jon. “Nacoms is a senior society at the College. I was selected to be a member,” said Jon. “I was Head of NSOP. Where are you from, Bian?

“I’m from Hanoi,” said Bian.

“Hanoi is a long way from Topeka, Kansas where I grew up, but I did come East to attend Andover,” said Jon.

“I also attended boarding school, but in Hanoi, not Massachusetts. I graduated from Hanoi International School,” said Bian.

“It seems we have a lot in common,” said Jon.

The waitress brought their breakfasts, which they started eating.

After finishing their meals, the two chatted for about twenty minutes, then Jon said, “Bian, before I bid you a good rest of your day, I’d like to ask you if you might like to join me to visit the Guggenheim Museum to see a showing of Vasily Kandinsky’s paintings this Saturday afternoon then be my guest for dinner at your favorite Italian restaurant in Morningside Heights.”

“I’d love to,” replied Bian.

“I’ll pick you up about 2 p.m. Where do you live?” asked Jon.

“I live in Harley Hall,” said Bian.

“Hartley Hall–that’s where I lived all four years during my undergraduate days,” remarked Jon. “ You’ve got a couple of days to pick out your favorite Italian restaurant,” added Jon. “I’ll wait in the lobby for you.”

Bian smiled again and got out of the booth.

“See you this Saturday at 2,” Jon said as he waited for Bian to leave first. Then he just sat in the booth for a while and smiled, too.


Jon arrived at Hartley Hall a bit early Saturday afternoon. He sat in the lobby on a soft leather sofa. Hartley Hall. Columbia. Four years. It had been an amazing time. Chad Willington, a fellow Andover graduate from Richmond, Virginia, was his roommate all four years. A tremendous swimmer, Chad had been elected captain of the team both his junior and senior years. He was now working at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street. Jon’s most cherished honor while he was at the College was being elected by his 1,400 classmates to be one of 15 Class Marshals to lead the Commencement Procession.

Bian came into the lounge. She looked beautiful.

“How are you, Bian? Are you ready to go see Kandinsky?” asked Jon.

“Indeed, I am,” said Bian.

“Let’s go, then,” said Jon.

The two walked across campus on College Walk to Broadway where Jon hailed a cab.

“Please take us to the Guggenheim Museum,” Jon told the cabbie. The cab cut through Central Park to upper 5th Avenue.

“We’re here,” said Jon and paid and tipped the cabbie.

The Guggenheim itself was a spectacular piece of architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that spiraled into the blue sky. Jon paid for the admission tickets, then both entered the museum and took the elevator to the top of the building. Then began the slow descent to the bottom on the long, spiraling walkway, pausing when they wanted to the see a Kandinsky painting closely and talking with each other about it.

Vasily Kandinsky was a Russian painter and theorist, becoming prominent in
the early decades of the 20th Century. Having moved first from Russia to Germany, he then went to France. Kandinsky was a pioneer of abstraction in Western art. He was keenly interested in spiritual expression:  “inner necessity” is what he called it.

It took quite a while to make their way down the spiraling ramp, stopping at almost every painting to share their views. Finally, Bian and Jon reached the bottom.

“Well, that was most interesting,” said Bian.

“I agree,” said Jon. “Have you decided which is your favorite Italian restaurant in Morningside Heights, Bian?” asked Jon.

“Pisticci,” said Bian.

“Let's go!,” said Jon.

They took a cab to Pisticci. The waiter brought them menus, which they began to peruse.

“You first,” Jon said to Bian.

“I would like the Insalata Pisticci (bed of baby spinach tossed with potatoes and pancetta with balsamic reduction). Then Suppe Minestrone (with a clear tomato base and al dente vegetables). Finally, I would like the Fettuccine Al Fungi (handmade fettuccine tossed with a trio of warm, earthy mushrooms and truffle oil),” concluded Bian.

Jon followed. “I would also like the Insalata Pisticci, then the Suppe Minestrone, followed by the Pappardelle Bolognesse, then the Burrata Caprese. Thank you.”

Bian and Jon ate their meals in candlelight.

“Tell me about growing up in Hanoi,” Jon asked Bian.

“I am an only child, Jon. My father is Minh Ly and my mother is Lieu. My father was the youngest General in the war;  nevertheless, he rose to second in command. He has been a businessman now for a long time.

“My childhood was like those of most children. As I grew older, I loved playing volleyball. I read a lot. I began learning English at an early age. I had lots of friends. I love my father and mother very much.”

“Why did you come to Columbia,” asked Jon.

“Columbia, as you know, is one of the greatest universities in the world, and it’s in New York City,” said Bian.

“Why did you choose to major in Human Rights, Bian,” asked Jon.

“The world, and the people and all other living creations on it, need kindness and love to heal. All have been sick for millennia. I would like to help heal Earth,” said Bian.

Jon was struck by Bian’s words. He felt the same as Bian.

The two continued to share more with each other. Finally, it was time to go.

They took a cab back to campus and Jon escorted Bian back to Hartley Hall.

“I’d like to exchange phone numbers with you. Is that OK with you?” Jon asked.

“Of course,” said Bian.

“Thank you for a wonderful day, Bian,” said Jon.

“And you the same, Jon,” said Bian.

People ask me all the time what my major is, what I’m going to do with my degree, as if that somehow defines me, somehow is a mold into which I should fit. As if being a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic, or a nurse makes me real; as if calling myself a statistician, a technician, a psychiatrist, an ophthalmologist, a zoologist, a gynecologist, an herbologist is any more definitive than calling me by name. Because somehow the letters AA, BA, MFA, LDS, EE, DD, or PHD are supposed to make me who I am.

I cannot be defined by the classes I took or the papers I wrote or the tests I failed. I am far more complex than that and I refuse to be satisfied with a label, so when you ask me what I’m doing in school, what I’m going to do afterward, and I tell you I’m gonna teach home economics, don’t look at me like I’ve gone off the deep end, like I’m wasting my brains and wasting my time and wasting my money, like I’m negating every feminist victory and reinforcing female stereotypes. Don’t look at me like I’m never gonna make a living, never gonna make anything of myself, because it’s my brains and my time and my money, my living and my self.

And how else can I be, how else can I fit my definition if I give in to the pressures of you, the pressures of him, the pressures of them, the pressures of it, and do what someone else thinks is right for me because they want me to be defined by what I do instead of who I am. I am a girl who snores when she’s sick and hiccups after she eats. I’m the girl who dated your youngest son and had a crush on your older brother. I’m the wild woman in love with her mountain man. I’m the girl that is sometimes eloquent and often awkward and twice as likely to hug you as shake your hand. I am the adult who eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a tall glass of ice cold milk and the Floridian, who if offered a slice of pea-can pie would say “Don’t you mean pe-cahn?”

I’m the girl who loves to cook and cooks to love, and if you don’t know what I mean by that think of how a homemade meal makes you feel and then get back to me. Sometimes I’m the girl who crochets and is learning to knit, but I don’t know if I like it yet. I am a victim of the techie generation and I am helplessly addicted to facebook and youtube and myspace and stumble and twitter and flicker and all of that stupid stuff. I am a ****** who loves movies and has to get there early because it’s just not the same if I miss the previews and I’m the girl who loves to eat but hates to exercise and always complains about her flab.

I am the daughter of a sweet southern woman and a hard working ex-Marine and I am the sister to the brother who is almost taller than me and the granddaughter of the four most amazing grandparents you will ever have the chance to meet. I’m a family and consumer science major who loves biology and algebra and is fascinated with the manipulation of words and sometimes sings a song or two and used to play the flute and is practicing piano. I’m the girl who works in the weight room and turns on the light when you come to play racquetball in court number three and mops up those scuffs you left because you didn’t wear non-marking shoes. I’m the neighbor at your apartment who’s always sewing late at night and parks her car in your space.  

I’m a best friend, a sister from another mother, a daughter, a niece but not a nephew, one day an aunt, a roommate, a one-time lover, a student, sometimes a teacher, a cousin, an employee, a visitor, a customer, a someday-degreed-and-lettered member of society, but before that, during that, and after that, I am Jennifer Marie Cassell.

In his breakthrough work of channeled literature, I Am the Word, author and medium Paul Selig recorded an extraordinary program for personal and planetary evolution as humankind awakens to its own divine nature. I Am the Word is an energetic transmission that works directly on its readers to bring them into alignment with the frequency of the Word, which Paul's guides call the energy of "God in Action."
Paul was born in New York City and received his Master's Degree from Yale. He had a spiritual experience in 1987 that left him clairvoyant. As a way to gain a context for what he was beginning to experience, he studied a form of energy healing, working at Marianne Williamson's Manhattan Center for Living and in private practice. In the process, he began to "hear" for his clients, and much of Paul's work now is as a clairaudient, clairvoyant, channel, and empath.
Paul has led channeled energy groups for many years. In 2009 he was invited to channel at the Esalen Institute's Superpowers symposium, where he was filmed for the upcoming documentary film Authors of the Impossible. He is the subject of the feature-length documentary film Paul & the Word which will be released late summer, 2011. His workshops in 2011 include Edgar Cayce's A.R.E. in New York City, the Jungian Center in Vermont and the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calfornia. Also a noted playwright and educator, Paul serves on the faculty of NYU and directs the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College. He lives in New York City, where he maintains a private practice as an intuitive and conducts weekly, channeled energy groups.*

Personal and planetary evolution- Live channeling with Paul Selig
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAgh2pXDDls&feature;=youtu.be
Waking Universe With Guest Paul Selig
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BI0Lgb9Kk&feature;=youtu.be

meaningful conversation
                      gestures of compassion

a tribe of cohorts
fades back into the night ~

each on their path
                developing projects

as if we all pretend to be
                       Santa Claus

     lists are checked twice  ~

a swelling to the point
                        of burst
              fills my breastplate
                      

                          goodbye
                           farewell
until we meet
again /

The slam poet in cords, in denim,
rambles from neon beer haven
to flybuzz brothel, cracking quiet
jokes about soup to shiny junebugs
in the relentless moonlight.
One hundred dollars in thirty-five bills
slowly retreat from wallet
toward water-cut whiskey.
He’s got a chapbook widely
available at frozen yogurt shops
across the metro; he’s got a
tour in the works, tri-county,
every middle school from
Shawnee to Seminole; he’s
got a collection of ex-girlfriends,
made up almost entirely of wizened lesbians;
he’s got an MFA from UNC Wilmington,
and he shouts this more than speaks this
from his treacherous barstool to the sleepy bartender.
One of the girls, she takes him upstairs,
and to her he says, Your freckles—islands
in the sea of your milk-white skin.

The night passes, warehouses are razed,
and he watches the loft apartments emerge.
The food trucks come. He parks beside them,
typing poems made to order out of his trunk. The
money flows in, crumpled and sweaty and
in one-dollar denominations. The Old Fashions
transfigure into Old English. And in his pocket
thesaurus he looks for a word. It’s not vagrant,
nor vagabond. It’s not homeless, nor wayward.
He lies in the long shadow of a Midwestern sunset,
starved and shaking. Up from the blackened
city shrubs comes an indifferent breeze and
just as he thinks the word Pauper, he dies one
on the corner of 23rd and Western.

She said “Describe yourself in a sentence,
We want to see what you do with constraints.”
So I thought to be clever and said
“My sentence will extend eternally, bound by infinite commas,
and perhaps, if I’ve very lucky; a semicomma or two;
you see the shackles that you’ve tried to impose are only a barrier if you let them be;
but me, I see opportunities where none should exist,
excuse me ma’am this may be and admittance interview but I see it as an investment opportunity,
my future, your gain… oh and period.”
She looked at her collegues, not betraying any amusements, annoyance, entertainment, nothing.  As if I had given the same answer as the last four people who sat where I do.
She rephrases, “How about a sentence with less than 10 words.”
I smile “I am worth more than a ten-word statement of intent.”
Eleven words. She noticed.
Twenty minutes later I am released,
apparently I’m not the right fit for their program.

a kiss
one day I'll be nothing
the best days of my life have been embarrassing myself on social media
it's constant.

there is no sound in the world
muddy infrared generalizations recognized as awareness
in deep thought means I stare at an object in silence.

since then a spider has become more nothing than usual
I think I might have died too
passion for writing is the chemical decay so carbon dating is calculated through words

the truth has never emptied me so thoroughly
my headache is gone, I wish this was good news
a kiss is worth savoring like the number of days your friend's Netflix account stays active

what did God try to create
a reality where one can receive a MFA in loneliness and still manage to be unemployed
that is a distinguished honor especially since Facebook has been pivotal

I've never been an exhibitionist. Fame and money have never been my goals. If I played music it was for myself, softly so no one could hear. If I made art, it was unassuming doodles on scraps of paper that didn't matter. If I wrote, the final pieces were buried away, whether in journal pages or word documents in neatly organized file folders.

Social media changes everything.

Suddenly, everyone has a voice. Suddenly I'm thinking, why not my voice, what's wrong with my writing?  Sure, I didn't get an English degree, I hold no MFA, but plenty of people write online, after all, it's just the Internet.

"It's just the Internet." What a catch 22 - in my head, it's either "Don't air your ***** laundry, no one wants to know," or, "Go ahead, air your ***** laundry, you're a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things, who's going to care?"

I've never been an exhibitionist, but social media changes everything. You have a thought? Tweet it. You like a photo? Pin it. You have an opinion? Post it. Facebook, tumblr, ello, Hello Poetry, wordpress, blogspot - there are so many venues, take your pick. The world is your oyster. Express yourself.

Fame and money have never been my goals. And I don't say this in an attempt to be original. I don't say this with the idea that I'm above anyone who'd want either. Because let's be real, would I say no to being paid to write? Of course not.

No, what I'm really after is something else. Connections. If I unleash my thoughts into that strange universe that is the Internet, maybe, just maybe, I'll get something back, a spark, a "message received." Not a "Hi, how are you," but a "Yes, I understand. Let's share stories."