Guest Blogger Jane Paffenbarger Butler on: Theme Reading with High School Writers, aka: Pharmacist Dispenses Great Expectations

One of the most enjoyable ways I meet other writers is at small conferences, often over a meal, and one topic that often comes up is how we all make a living while chasing writing goals. That’s how I met Jane Paffenbarger Butler and learned about her unique job—which I’ve invited her to write about here.

Jane has degrees in pharmacy and health systems management and worked in clinical research. While raising three children, she wrote in fits and starts, but then got serious, joining the Brandywine Valley Writers Group and Main Line Writers Group. She’s at work on a memoir, You’ll Get Over It, Jane Ellen. An excerpt placed second in nonfiction at the 2017 Philadelphia Writers Conference. Her work has also appeared in the anthology Unclaimed Baggage, and in the Philadelphia Inquirer. She’s the 2016 and 2014 winner of the West Chester Story Slam.

Please welcome Jane Paffenbarger Butler.

Most days, I adore my job. I am talking about the one where I get to go to my local high school and hang around the English classes talking to kids about their writing. Today, for example, a steady stream of students visited me; some wanted to discuss what to write in their comparative papers on Wuthering Heights and Dante’s Inferno, others needed help proving a point made in Merchant of Venice. It may sound pretty high brow I know, believe me it is not, especially for someone like me who is a pharmacist by training. But the same dynamic occurs whether the students and I are talking about Shakespeare or the Sunday comics. The focus is on art and on the act of responding to it.

Other days, in other classes, I work my way around the room asking each student to tell me their ideas for assigned poetry, memoir, or short story projects. I tell them that ideas mellow and age and do not usually spring to the page fully formed. I tell them that it’s okay, in fact it’s preferable, to get started by just writing in stream of consciousness.

My title is Theme Reader, and I support the work of a high school English teacher by reading and commenting on each student’s writing assignments. Yes, it is a support role, and it is a peach job for someone like me, an aspiring author. This is a teaching job with none of the strings attached. I meet no parents, give no formal grades, and discipline no one. Instead I am a writing coach, and my time is spent reading teenage students’ work and talking to them about the craft of writing.

I am also paid to sit in on the viewing of classic films and TED talks, and get to stay in tune with young people who gladly explain to me such mysteries as gifs and K-pop. And what could be better than sitting in on a discussion of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying or Twain’s Huck Finn? Or reading twenty-five papers from the AP Literature students who each select, from a lengthy list, a different classic novel to analyze? Often, the students’ detailed breakdown of each book is so complete, by the time I review and offer comments on their projects, it feels as if I’ve just read the book myself.  

Sometimes, in classes where students are not as motivated, it is my duty to inform them of the power of words. That words can be a tool by which we get what we want out of life. I help them see that learning to use words to their advantage could be a way to get out of bad circumstances, a way to rise above people who make life difficult, and a way to work through issues that are hard to manage. Words are power. I love helping them learn how to understand, harness, and wield that power.

In Creative Writing, an elective class, students arrive not as hostages but as volunteers, open to my crazy suggestion that we daydream a little about what it means to be human. With the whole world as fodder for topic, I help students zero in on what their own voice yearns to say. This year I am meeting with an independent study student weekly to work on her novel. The notes I took recently on Robert McKee’s Story, Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, and Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, while trying to elevate my own projects, have become perfect resources for our work together. Sharing such material conveniently reinforces my personal goals, too.

When I was a Clinical Research Monitor at a pharmaceutical company, among my many tasks were study reports and protocols, and I excelled at ensuring the internal consistency between tables and charts and between statistical facts and stated conclusions. I yielded the red pen as editor for a 400-page New Drug Application Summary submitted to the FDA, based on data from hundreds of patients. At my interview for the Theme Reader job, I explained that although I wasn’t a certified teacher and had no degree related to language or English or anything one might suspect relevant (and which the job specs listed), I love teaching and students and the English language. I handed over the bound New Drug Application Summary, the thin manuscript of my memoir, mentioned my membership in local writing groups and my participation in writing conferences. They hired me on the spot. That was ten years ago.

One of Jane's six word memoirs. 

The best part about my job is that I must show up every week and pay attention in class. This time around I am personally interested in what makes for a good story and what constitutes a rhetorical device. My job requires me to say out loud the facts I know to be true about writing, to sit alongside students and reconsider the masters, to teach patience and taking risks on the page, and to learn, learn, learn.

To top it all off, I even get a paycheck.  

Get to know more about Jane at her website and blog.

What I Heard and Learned at the AWP Writers Conference

Last weekend, I spent a day and a half at the AWP conference, and because I hadn't planned things out in advance, I missed a lot I'm sure that, had I spent more time studying the program, would have been useful. I went with my gut, with my knee's pain level, and my energy and willingness to scout out a tucked away presentation room three-quarters of a mile of connecting walkways and escalators away.

As many conference attendees do, I sometimes caught the first half of a panel presentation, then ducked out to listen to the second half of another. It may be that someone, in one of the sessions I mention below, said something extraordinarily exciting and I missed it. Nevertheless, here's a potpourri of the takeaways I either jotted into my notebook, or that made their way into my brain. 

At a panel playfully called, "Nope, That Still Ain't a Story: Developmental Editing in Creative Nonfiction," two authors and their editor discussed their joint experiences. Bill Patrick, of Hudson Whitman Excelsior College Press, explained that while Amy Ryan "didn’t have a book" when she brought him her manuscript of living with diabetes, writer Anthony D'Aries "had four books" lurking in his manuscript about learning to understand his father. Ryan talked about getting instructions from Patrick about chapters she needed to write, often more personal and revealing than she'd planned; D'Aries discussed the process of locating the essence of his story, and paring away. 

Patrick also mentioned the value of "bridge chapters". These explore the less personal aspects of the main memoir topic/story, but are related and connected to the larger picture. They give the reader a bit of a break from heavy unfolding narrative, and act as a way of moving the camera from close-up to a wider angle; they can also provide context of how the narrator's story fits into the broader world.

> If you're thinking of running a one- or multi-day workshop, retreat, mini-conference, there was the panel, "Starting Small: Grassroots Workshops and Conferences". Dave Housley from Barrelhouse suggested finding a like-minded organization to partner with—like a college, arts center, etc.—that can provide free or low-cost space. Tyler McMahon, who runs the Ko`oalu Writers Workshop  in Hawaii, warned, "Don't run at a deficit; you want to break even or make money from the start." Another good tip: serve a free lunch at a session for which you want a large audience! For those seeking gigs as presenters or workshop leaders at small conferences, panelists advised developing a unique program that other writers can't offer, and/or something you've developed specifically for their audience.

> At "Opening the Doors to Discovery: The Generative Writing Workshop," panelists offered interesting ways to utilize prompts, writing exercises, and reading for inspiration when conducting one-time workshops with time for writers to produce new material. Baron Wormser (one of my MFA workshop leaders a decade ago), said he thinks of a prompt as "a quick way into the unconscious, to get at the unknown, the unbidden." It forces a writer to access some new area of thought because something must be produced in the time allotted. Another panelist advised that at one-time gatherings (as opposed to on-going workshop series), reading and sharing be met only with positive responses, absent critical feedback. Kim Dana Kupperman recommended locating prompts within a piece of published work the group reads together.

> "Essaying the Edge: Teaching Alternative Forms of Nonfiction," focused on the so-called hermit crab essay, hybrids, collage, and other experimental nonfiction. Panelists talked of sneaking in these forms without at first identifying them, so that students might simply read and like them, and decide on their own what to call them.

> At the panel, "Just Don't Read the Comments: On the Joys and Risks of Publishing Personal Essays Online," I heard just the last ten minutes, including advice from Laura Bogart to ask for headline approval and hashtag/tagging approval, pre-publication. Her awareness of this was spurred by an incident when one of her essays was headlined and tagged in a way that included Trump's four-word slogan; she asked that it be changed, and the editor/venue complied, but not before it had resulted in unpleasant emails and online thrashing.

> At an abundantly informative panel, "Beyond the Classroom: Teaching Outside Academia," I was scribbling so fast, and all four panelists were making so many useful suggestions every minute, I didn't record who said what. The following bits of advice came from Stuart Horwitz, Julie Duffy, Jane Friedman, Andi Cumbo-Floyd, and Gabriella Pereira.

Know what you WANT to teach (not just what you've been teaching all along). You'll earn more by teaching/leading an add-on workshop at a conference than if you are one of the general presenters. Develop packages and products to offer repeat clients/students. Offer a free something to attract mailing list sign-ups. Hand out (or offer to email) something useful following an in-person teaching event. Pitch your online or in-person class with a very specific outcome highlighted ("After four weeks, you'll have two essays ready to submit.."). Students and coaching clients want to be held accountable, so build in a deadline/reporting/accountability component. Offer tiered pricing if possible [$X for the full feedback option; $(X-Y) for a scaled down version.] Include student/client accomplishments in your promotional materials. 

I just saw today that Jane Friedman has a new blog post up outlining much of what she talked about at the conference, plus more.

> Finally, it seemed fitting that, in Washington, D.C., during the final session of the final day, I ended by listening to one particular panelist whose sincere, practical and pragmatic, encouraging talk on "How to Publish Your Book Without an Agent," made me want to stand up and shout, Nevertheless, She Persisted! That panelist was Janice Eidus, someone I recognized from Facebook and from her essays, but had never met. But by happy coincidence I'd share dinner with her later that evening (via invitation of a mutual writing friend). Eidus and her fellow panelists' stories of perseverance and eventual publication—and the sprawling Book Fair where I found at least a dozen independent traditional publishers of literary works that I was not previously aware of (and trust me, I'd already compiled a long list!)—capped off my personal AWP experience on a hopeful note.

Want more post-AWP coverage? I'll have a bunch of links to others' blog posts in the Friday link round up later this week. 

The Way out of Prose Problems is Through: Through poetry, sometimes.

This week, I am asking my creative nonfiction MFA students, to consider poetry. To read about poetry. To read poems. To ask themselves what they can learn from the poet and from the poem. Then, I'm asking them also, to write something that feels like poetry to them. Prose poetry. A narrative poem. Free verse. Maybe something lyrical. A haiku.

I'm not suggesting they embark on a serious study of poetry forms (though if that's interesting to any of them, why not?). What I'm doing is pushing them outside of their writer comfort zones. Reading a form they don't write in, to discover how those writers operate, and why. Giving them a new lens through which to consider that cranky essay, that recalcitrant narrative, that stubborn slice of memoir. To look from a new angle, with a different and strict economy of words, at what a piece of prose is struggling to be about. And to listen to what might happen on the page when the prose becomes a poem.

Every time I do this, in any class or workshop, the response is mixed. What I tell them all is how much I've learned about writing from the other genres. How pleased I was, during my own MFA program, to discover everything that poetry, and poets, and poems, and the blurry line between prose poetry and creative nonfiction, had to teach me about getting at the heart of what I was trying to write.

With the act of writing a poem, I think prose writers are well reminded of the value and possibility of each individual word. Of the need to think about each word on its own. Each word in connection to the words that come before and after. And in relation to the places where there are no words. These are nuances of writing that sometimes get lost in what can be an avalanche of words in prose drafts. Poetry demands the prose writer in me to stop and consider: this word? that one? or another one entirely? or no word? a space here? end here? or there? why? what's between the words, where there are no words?

I often try a problem child piece of prose as a poem, which shows me something about what I'm trying to say. Usually, I then go back to prose, wiser. But not always. About eight years ago, I did a crappy first draft of what I assumed would be a narrative essay, about a day I took a walk with one of my kids. When it wasn't working out, I tried capturing just one moment of the experience as a poem. That felt better. Then I put it away for a long time. I looked at it again last summer, as my younger son, who appears in this poem as a 10 year-old, was packing for college. I realized it was, and is, and is only, a poem. It appears in a new mixed-genre anthology, In Celebration of Mothers (edited by Trisha Faye), published this month.  

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-SteveJohnson

This Week in Writing Workshops, Post-Election

In three writing workshops so far this week, before plunging into anyone's pages, I tried to take the temperature of the room, post-election. Since we all hadn't seen one another since BEFORE, I had set aside 10-15 minutes to chat and maybe vent—longer than we typically spend on small talk.  

I wasn't surprised to find the range of emotion included sadness, rage, confusion, frustration, fear, resignation. (And while I knew I had to be prepared to hear and make space for those with the opposite view, as I'd predicted, that wasn't necessary. We live in a deep blue part of New Jersey).

Then I moved on. Or, tried to.

But when I asked my usual opening question, always some variation of, "So, how did the writing go this week?" I was unprepared for the strong responses, most at one or the other end of the productivity / concentration spectrum. Either no words had appeared on the page because writers were too paralyzed, distracted, or emotionally wrung out to write…or, writing was all that had gotten done, in an almost nonstop stream.

I was in the latter camp myself. Since November 9, my fingers had barely left the keyboard. While I wasn't writing political opinion pieces or essays about what the election meant for America, I found that staying busy at what I love to do and do best, was my own private way of avoiding a total emotional meltdown. That—and making batches of soup and other comfort food, alongside my elder son.

Maybe I needed to remind myself that I would survive. For me, the act of writing alone means there are stories yet to tell, that we're not at the end of our own story yet, that the creative well inside exists apart from, and often in spite of, outside vagaries.

The writers around the workshop table told similar tales. Putting their heads down and plowing on with plots and drafts and (solvable) prose problems provided much-needed focus. Writing was available too, in the worried hours of the night, the frightening mornings before (or instead of) turning on the news. Like me, those writers were glad to have something to work on that felt do-able, whether unraveling a fictional character's troubles or describing a narrator's dilemma.

Others had the opposite response: the election outcome shut down their writing drive, pushed the writing impulse over a cliff. Either writing felt meaningless in the face of the gloomy bigger picture, or the bad news had completely robbed them of concentration and focus. Sitting still at a writing desk was not possible, given the upheaval in their minds and heart.

A few reported that while they had been writing, none of it was probably going to be salvageable; but the act of writing had felt comforting and familiar, and let them feel in control of something. Others said they were glad not to have brought all their negative emotion to the keyboard, so that when they are ready to return to their works-in-progress, and when they read that work in the future, it won't have the taint of "I remember writing this the day after…"

Finally, in each workshop, as the talk waned, I noticed a kind of unspoken hunger to get down to what we were there to do: talk about writing, read and share writing, listen to and give feedback on writing. It seemed to me that the act of gathering as writers—no matter what kind of week we'd all individually had—was important, or at least useful. That it was reassuring to be together, doing something familiar, something that at its core, promises things can improve, that we have change at our fingertips.

Revision, after all.

Images: All Flickr/CreativeCommons. Fingers on keyboard - Adikos; Tacks - HDValentin.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- November 4, 2016 Edition

> I'm not much of a baseball fan, but I am a fan of beautifully written, sport-related essays and feature writing, especially a piece that bring together big team events with the humans who love them. Like this one, which ran on ESPN the morning after the Cubs' World Series win.

> Beautiful review by Alexis Paige at Brevity, of the new essay collection by my brilliant MFA thesis advisor Barbara Hurd, whose lyrical prose always astonishes.

> In New York City, legislators have introduced a bill to protect freelancers from editorial clients who don't want to pay.

> This is not new, but I read it again yesterday while passing along reading suggestions to some writers who are struggling with the concept of massive revision. Imagine tossing out an entire novel? Laura Dave explains.

> If you teach writing, or act as a writing coach, or simply help another writer with a project from time to time, I think you will appreciate Jane Bernstein's honest assessment of her behavior working with a former workshop participant.

> How about some levity? What if "Election: 2016" were a novel? Can you imagine the rejections from literary agents? Devorah Blachlor did.

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons - WackyStuff

The Circle of the MFA: What I Learned 10 Years Ago, and What I'm Passing On (I hope)

Every January and July, I anticipate the photos and congratulatory notes for the newest graduates of the MFA program I myself completed in 2008. The two years I spent attending residencies at Stonecoast (at the University of Southern Maine) were pivotal for me as a writer, and in many ways, as a human being.

Almost coinciding with the news about this summer's graduates, I found myself talking about what I learned at Stonecoast and how that influences my work today as an instructor and thesis advisor (in the Bay Path University online MFA program in creative nonfiction). The occasion was an interview for the Bay Path Director's Blog.

Here's a bit of my response to a question about what I most want to tell students: 

"... I want to advise every student to savor every moment, to dive in deep to every opportunity the program puts in their path, because any MFA in any form is always over too soon..."

You can read the rest of the interview here.

Image: Flicker/CreativeCommons - ccdinges101

Stuff My Writing Students Say, Part 19

"Why do I have to outline?"

You don't. Not if you don't want to. But sometimes, you should.

I got this question quite a few times over the last two weeks when I was requiring that my MFA students produce a "crappy outline" for a longish piece of literary journalism they are being asked to write this semester. Many balked.

Probably I would have balked too, when I was a graduate writing student. Then of course, I would have done it anyway, maybe grumbling the whole time.

Here's the thing: I am not a huge fan of the outline. Use one. Don't use one. Whatever works for you. Writers of all stripes and all skill levels can do with or without one, mostly according to personal preference, habit, past experience (good or bad), or complexity of the writing project before them. 

But as an MFA faculty mentor, who in one particular course, in one particular semester, is asking--pushing--writers to write in a form, and with a skill set, that isn't familiar to some, I'm insisting on an outline of some kind.

Those last words are important: an outline of some kind. Of any kind, really.

By this I mean any kind of document/form that helps in organizing one's thoughts. You like the Roman numeral kind we did in high school? Fine. (Though most of us hate that format, and I see very few of those.) 

Maybe an outline is a list. An organized compilation of notes. A linear (or not) progression of ideas. 

One of the best outlines I ever saw from a student was a word collage, fitted onto the shape of the letter W, which for her articulated the double narrative arc she envisioned in the piece. Another outline that rocked was a video montage of the places that would figure into the piece, with background music snippets that spoke to the emotional landscape each location evoked in the writer. Another student wrote what she envisioned to be the beginning sentence of each of about 12 pages. Someone else created a storyboard.

Once committed to producing an outline of some sort, the results often rock. But first, there is usually grumbling, usually connected to the idea that outlining, or advance planning and/or organization of any sort, will stifle or even kill the creative process.

I'm not buying it.

Outlines, organization, planning activities can co-exist with whatever you think of as your unbridled creative urges:  free-writing, meandering on the page, nonlinear drafts, metaphorical or lyrical language, collage or segmented bursts. 

Preparing a *crappy outline* doesn't suggest that you then abandon all the intuitive ways in which you bring a story to the page. It merely asks you to communicate -- mostly to yourself, and sometimes to someone else (usually an editor or instructor) -- some cogent thoughts on what direction you may be heading, what could be included and why, and how you might organize either the material, your time, or your research efforts.

In the end, I believe the best use of an outline is often simply the ACTION of writing it. Something happens in your head as a result of spending the time in thought, in imagining how the piece might develop.

Many times, I've written a crappy outline for a long or complex writing project -- and then put it away, never to truly interact with it again. But the act of doing so had an important effect on my thought process and helped propel me forward with some sense of confidence and curiosity.  

As with many things I am asking of my MFA students this semester, and which writers anywhere might wish to consider: if it makes you uncomfortable as a writer, do it anyway. Writers grow in the discomfort zone.

You can read the other 18 posts in the Stuff My Writing Students Say series here.

Images: Flickr/Creative Commons - npslibrarian; Venn diagram chart - terriem; folders - enoch.

Beware of what you wish for. (And what you don't.) -- My Teaching Writing Update.

For the past seven years, I've tried to keep this blog filled with tips, advice, and resources that will help writers. For the past few months I've relied heavily on some generous guest post contributors and interview subjects (as well as link round-ups) to do the job. My own contributions dwindled because I was extra-busy. Thanks, readers, for supporting the guest bloggers, and sticking around! At first my busy-ness was all about writing, teaching, and editing in fairly equal portions. But lately, that shifted. I hope you'll indulge me a bit while I explain. Then, the plan is to get back to a more regular posting schedule in September. - Lisa

During my MFA program, I frequently thought (and sometimes said), oh, I'll never teach.

Ahem. 

Toward the end of those two years, a mentor who knew me well predicted, I think you are going to teach. It's clear you want to help other writers.

"Nah," I said. 

Three months later, a local library hired me to teach an adult memoir class and another in freelancing. Within six months, I was teaching creative nonfiction online via small private classes I'd developed. Within 15 months, I was teaching in the continuing education writing program at Rutgers University, and two years after that, I was asked to teach memoir and personal essay writing for a lovely, multiple-location regional organization, The Writers Circle.

In between, I created the *I Should Be Writing!* Boot Camp for writers in any genre (it's now on-demand solo course). Along the way, I developed a monthly coaching option, which brings so many wonderful writers my way.

Now, I'm setting out on new teaching adventures. And, I've been thinking of Barbara Hurd, who like all terrific mentors, sometimes say what their students don't necessarily want to hear. I've also come to understand the power of the MFA community one develops, too.

When Suzanne Strempek Shea, a faculty member from the Stonecoast MFA program I completed, called me about 20 months ago to gauge my interest in joining the faculty of a new all-online, all-nonfiction MFA program in the planning stages for Bay Path College (now Bay Path University), I didn't hesitate. It sounded perfect. 

I said yes, then tried to put it in the back of my mind, tried to temper my excitement. After all, it was nearly two years away, and needed all kinds of approvals and certifications before it could (would?) launch.  

A few days ago—after a summer of syllabus revision, training in the online course management system, and wonderful conference calls with the director and other faculty—I welcomed some 20 students into the two classes I'm teaching in that vibrant new MFA program.

Once the students began checking in, I realized that I was right where I wanted to be.

But there's more to the teaching story.

In April of this year, the Rutgers program was shut down; sad, but I'd had a good run there.

I live about one mile from Montclair State University. I've used the library there, attended literary events there. I've signed my kids up for programs there, our family has seen plays and concerts and sporting events on campus. And two years ago, I applied for a teaching job there. I didn't get it.

What I did get – about a month ago – was a call from the writing program director: Was I interested in teaching one section of an undergraduate elective creative nonfiction writing class? 

My plate seemed full already. But then, isn't it always? 

I was a kid who always loved school, longed for the smell of fresh pencils and the feel of new notebook pages. As an undergraduate college student, I jammed my schedule with as many different kinds of writing and literature classes as I could. I remember the feeling of being in those classrooms. I love September and the idea of a new semester. (And I'll be they one day unwittingly contribute to my Stuff My Writing Students Say series!)

So next week, I'll be in that classroom at MSU. I'll be online with my Bay Path students every day. I'll be writing. I'll be sending out the memoir. I'll be editing, and prepping for the fall session at The Writers Circle, and helping to get out the fall issue of Compose Journal.

It's a lot.

It's a little bit of everything I ever and never wished for, and clearly need.

Wish me luck.

Images: Flickr/Creative Commons - Old time teachers desk, Todd Petrie; Scrabble tiles, Denise Krebs; Notebooks, Kristen Nador; 

Poetry for Prose Writers -- Get Your Regular Dose

Until about 8 years ago, contemporary poetry seemed alien to me; in some vague way, I used to think either I was too unimaginative to understand it, or those who wrote it were uninterested in having anyone who is not also a modern poet comprehend its meaning.

Then I enrolled in an MFA program and that was the end of that. Even those in the creative nonfiction track like me were rubbing up against poets all the time. Eventually, I sat in on more than the polite number of poetry seminars. I discovered poetry that relies on the narrative line, prose poems, and – biggest head-thumping moment of all – that not only might I like to write some, but that a poem may be the best exercise of all for a prose writer. This came clear to me in a workshop my final week, led by a poet, with an even mix of nonfiction writers and poets around the table.

In the last five years, I've developed the habit of purposefully reading several new poems each week (I try for one each day but don't always manage it). Some stumble into my path, which is easy enough to understand: I now have many poet friends, whose work is regularly getting posted, published, praised, and passed around. I watch for new work by poets whose material I was first exposed to in the MFA program, and later via my expanding circle of (all kinds of) writing colleagues, and try to catch up on their older works too.

Like several mentors and workshop leaders I've studied under, when I began teaching and leading workshops, I adopted the ritual of beginning each session by reading a poem aloud. I ask those gathered (usually all prose writers) for a bit of forbearance, and to first simply listen as I read. Then, I pass around copies and ask someone else to read it aloud again. Sometimes we're lucky to have someone in the room who also writes poetry, and knows far more than I about the art of reading poetry aloud.

Then we talk about it – just for a few minutes. Whatever comes to mind. The language, word choices, images. Rhythm, intent, what's purposely left out. The lyricism, the music. How does it make you feel?

I'm not suggesting to the writers at the table that they write poetry, or mandating that they read more than this one poem each week. Aside from learning to appreciate another form of written art, mostly I do it because the writers who've gathered have typically just arrived from the busyness of their non-writing lives -- jobs, families, chores, traffic, noise, ice or heat or bad news on the car radio -- and I want to create a transition moment, a specific line where we cross from that over-stimulated, fast-spinning world into the land of words, language, art on the page.

I can tell that some folks only tolerate this 3-4 minute interlude; they want to get on to the real business at hand. That's okay. Because once in a while, something else happens, something terrific. Like the other night, in a Memoir & Personal Essay class, when we read Gretchen Marquette's poem,"Ode to a Man in Dress Clothes" (originally published in the Paris Review, though I discovered it republished in Harper's) which has an uncanny resemblance to creative nonfiction. 

After we'd read it twice and talked briefly about the images, the writer's possible invocation of memory; about tone, and how the second half of the poem differs dramatically from the first half in form, pace, and rhythm, one of the woman at the table smiled and reported: Wow. I used to think I didn't like poetry at all. I used to think it was so dense and odd. But I now I like it.

That is all.

Photo: torbakhopper/Flickr Creative Commons

Stuff My Writing Students Say, Part 16

"You're kind of cranky. But in a good way."

Last night, the final night of an 11-week memoir and personal essay class, a writer who attended each session (despite complicating situations in her life), said this to me by way of explaining why she'd always turned up. "It's partly because you're a bit of a grouch, in a good/funny way," she said, and she wanted to see what I might grumble about each week. She assured me my crankiness was limited to instances of lazy writing, sloppy editing, and last minute, half-hearted revising, and that otherwise I'm a nice person.

Okay, I'll take that.

Which gave me a chance to reiterate what I say on the first day of every class or workshop, but students tend to forget: I'm not the sort to spend our scarce few hours together telling you how wonderful your precious prose is, how talented and gifted you are, that your every word sparkles. I don't tell writers, or frankly, expect writers to believe, that I love everything about their work, that they are going to get published somewhere wonderful and quite soon, that an essay or chapter is nearly perfect as first submitted.

I don't laud praise all over a manuscript, and then slip in a few small quiet words about something that you may, perhaps, possibly might consider changing just a bit, because, at least in my opinion, and I may be wrong, it could use, you know, just a bit of tweaking.

I developed this philosophy from having been on the other side of the table for years, sitting across from all kinds of writing teachers, workshop leaders, and editors. Long ago I concluded that if I wanted to grow as a writer, praise is lovely but not entirely helpful. And, it's not what I'm paying for, what I'm there for.

If I'm in the student/client chair, I'll take cranky and tough--which I'm fairly sure is mostly another way of saying demanding--over sweet and nice. Mind you, cranky/tough/demanding has to come along with: helpful, resourceful, encouraging. So I may be cranky but I try hard to be all those things, too.

Cranky/tough/demanding works if backed up by precise feedback, and focused, specific editing suggestions; with questions that help/force a writer to re-think, re-imagine, re-see (revise!) their work. So I work hard to do a lot of that.

Cranky/tough/demanding, when coupled with genuine interest in seeing the student writer challenge him/herself, also requires a willingness--in order to push that writer's craft toward growth--to sometimes not be liked. (Kind of sounds like parenting teenagers, huh?)

I'm occasionally, no maybe frequently, not liked by some folks in the early stages of working together. Most of the time, they like me again later on. But not always. That's okay.

My students and clients can think I'm grouchy or a bit of a crank, or tough or demanding, and I don't mind. As long as they also think I'm helping their writing develop, go new places, leap forward.

Growth, development, leaps forward usually aren't the result of patting anyone on the head and telling them how wonderful their work already is. Let's face it, you can get that from Mom, your best friend, your sweetheart.

The teachers, mentors, workshop leaders, and editors I had who were tough, who seriously challenged me, who were daring and smart enough to draw a line through a paragraph of mine and write in the margin "Who cares? Rewrite," are the ones who propelled me to work harder, to revise, rewrite, shred, and start again-- and to raise my own standards. The ones who were sweet and soft left me feeling good for a few hours -- and then very soon after, I felt cheated, out of money and time.

Anyway, I'm not always cranky. Sometimes I do tell students how much I admire their writing, but this typically occurs when writers have gotten through three or six or 16 drafts, and by then are beginning to be a little tougher, a little more demanding too, of their own work. 

When I can see how hard a writer has worked to make each word sparkle, each page shine – and that they've moved on in their writing development, I've been known to say, "This is GOOD."

I could say "great" I suppose. But let's not get carried away.

Read the other 15 installments of  Stuff My Writing Students Say.

Image:  Flickr via Creative Commons / mootown