What It's About

I've been thinking recently about the difference between craft--that is being able to convey things well and interestingly through good diction, style, structure, etc.--and actually having something to say. In particular I was reflecting on the benefits of studying writing in a formal program and what one learns there compared with what one doesn't learn there. I feel that my experience in graduate school was useful in developing my craft abilities as a writer. I have no doubts that I am a better writer today than I was five years ago. And, in a strange way, writing is harder for me today than it was then because I know of so many various factors to pay attention to now (when I'm rewriting, I can spend a couple of hours and only get through a paragraph). I've studied craft and, I think, become a decent craftsman.

However, one thing that isn't really addressed, and I don't know if it's possible to address, in an MFA program is content. It's great if one can write well, but if one has nothing to say, then what's the point? And I think that's one of the problems I'm encountering at the moment. I feel like I can write well (of course I've still got more to learn and more developing to do, but basically I write well), but I'm increasingly unconvinced that at age thirty I have anything worth writing about. When I start to develop the ideas I have, I usually become excited about a new prospect and start to think through the implications of the idea only to become discouraged because it's nothing very original or different. Now I don't think this is strictly a problem that I have. I think most writers probably have this basic problem. Great writers have been producing work for so long, how can we, now, add anything new to the discussions? That isn't necessarily a problem. Approaching something old from a new angle can work. Or even doing something old, but doing it well, can be solid. The problem for a young writer, though, is that sometimes the ideas that seem fresh are actually old. Or if I recognize that an idea is old, but I think I can still do it well, that might not be enough. Why would an editor want to publish some old idea from some young nobody? I recently received a very nice letter accompanying a rejection. The letter said that my story was well written, but essentially takes on an old idea and adds nothing new. And I couldn't disagree with their critique.

I read a blog today about a similar issue, and that is whether one gains better experience from the "real world" than from the academic world. In essence, that's part of my concern. I'm thirty years old. I spent my entire childhood up to age twenty-two in school. Then after only a short break, I returned to school for almost the entire remainder of my twenties. Now I'm out of school as a student but still in that world as a teacher. Most of my life experience is from that world. I like that world. It's a good world. But it does leave me feeling limited in my understanding of humanity. When I interact with my students, who are largely from very different socio-economic, cultural, and intellectual backgrounds than me, I feel perplexed by their attitudes and behaviors. Likewise, I feel that I might not be able to properly imagine other situations and lives. I've heard that a writer doesn't need any real experience because it's all about imagination, so the great writer has learned everything they need to know about humanity by age seven or so, and from then on it's a matter of making up stories. This contrasts with the other view, that a writer would be better off spending years on a failed marriage than on an MFA. My sensibilities lean toward the imagination camp, and yet I'm not sure if that actually works.

The difficulty for me is that I fear my own views of the world, or something about the way my mind works, might be different enough from the average that my work doesn't quite resonate with others. On more than one occasion I've written fiction where characters were created from my understanding of how people think and act, and the reaction of my readers was puzzlement as to why the character acts and thinks as he does. Or I've had the reverse experience as a reader, where I read a story and find the motivations of the characters completely baffling, but the others around me see those characters as everyman types that anyone can relate to and understand. Maybe it's a matter of life experience, that I simply haven't done enough to understand the world around me as much as I'd like to. Sometimes I think that the best plan of action would be to sort of set aside the immediate goals of publication and so on and to simply live life for a while longer to try to come up with something worth writing about. I could continue to work on my craft to keep my skills up, but maybe I simply won't have any stories worth sharing with the world for another ten or twenty years, if then. I don't know.

The downside of a plan like that is that, essentially, I've never felt that I was very good at living life. Many of the basic experiences that people have and that then produce the inspiration for good writing are beyond my experience or understanding. And I don't know that there's any way to have those experiences merely for the sake of having them. I don't think life works that way. When I was younger, I sort of attempted such a thing. I had never really dated before, and I suspected that it would not be a good idea to date this one particular girl who was interested in me. However, part of what convinced me to do it was that it would provide good life experience for me as a writer. The relationship ended as I always knew it would. I've long felt that the anxiety of the experience while it was happening followed by the depression when it was over was plenty of reason to avoid the experience to begin with and I should have followed my rational brain that told me not to do it. But at least I now had this life experience that is a rite of passage for most people. I had experienced a young romance and could now write about it. But it turns out, the way I experienced that was not similar to how most others experience such a thing. I wrote about it, and people felt like my character was an enigmatic freak.

I don't know that there's any way to overcome this obstacle. My inclination is to hope that continued living will somehow magically transform me into someone with greater understanding and more significant ideas to put into my writing, but I also suspect that there's a lot of truth to the notion that one learns the essentials by age seven, and somehow I just never quite learned them the way others do.