Friday, January 1, 2010
Another Fellowship
I recently found another fellowship opportunity that looks awesome. This one is for people with an MFA or PhD in creative writing who haven't published a book yet. It is a one year deal to teach a creative writing class each semester and work on a book, and it pays $27,000 for that year. This is the type of thing that would be a huge boost to a CV in helping to land teaching jobs down the road, it would provide a lot of time to write, and it would provide creative writing teaching experience. This one is almost more appealing than the Stegner Fellowship I applied for because it involves teaching creative writing, which I really want to do, it's in Wisconsin, which seems more like my kind of place than California, and I'm betting it's less competitive because it doesn't have quite as big a name and is probably not as geographically appealing to a lot of people. Anyway, it looks awesome, so I'm definitely going to get my paperwork together and apply for it. I'm in the process now of applying for full time teaching jobs for the coming school year as well, and I feel very hopeful that maybe I'll manage to land something great this year.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
My Name in Print
This week I finally got a copy of one of the journals where my work is appearing. It's funny how things work out. I've been working seriously on fiction for about a decade and have also dabbled in nonfiction and poetry, producing one piece each of those forms. Both of those pieces are now seeing publication while my fiction continues to be rejected. The nonfiction piece was written a few years ago, revised over a period of a couple years, and submitted to journals; one held onto it for a year before accepting it, and now several months later, I finally expect my copy in the mail any day. The poem was written one day a few years ago when I felt oddly inspired to put my thoughts into that form. I pretty much didn't touch it for about three years. Then last summer, I pulled it out, revised it, and sent it off. It was accepted to the first place I sent it, and now it's the first of my writing to actually see print. What an odd, odd process. I must say I am quite proud of this poem. I think it's damn fine, and I don't want to play down the accomplishment, but it's just so odd to achieve a bit of success on what is essentially my first effort when I've yet to truly taste that success on the work I've devoted thousands of hours to.
Anyway, this post isn't about the differences between fiction and poetry. (However, I do have one quick side note on that issue related to a previous post; I had earlier guessed that perhaps fewer people submit poetry, and since poetry takes up less physical space in a journal, more can be included; therefore, perhaps a higher percentage of poetry is accepted. Recently I read a statistic from one prominent journal: annually it receives about 800 poetry submissions and 3,200 prose submissions. Certainly that is only one example, but it again raises the question about acceptance rates among the different forms.) What I want to write about here is the quality of work that is out there being published in these tiny journals.
I must admit that after my poem was accepted so quickly (literally, the first place I submitted it wanted it), I started to wonder if perhaps that was a comment on the journal itself. If they wanted to publish ME, then maybe they weren't really very good. Maybe they had no taste and didn't recognize how crappy my work was. Maybe rather than working in my favor to demonstrate that I can write, being published at this journal would be a total waste of time because they're not legitimate. They're a joke, and putting this publication on my CV will show that I'm a joke, too.
So I got the issue in the mail this week. The first thing I did, of course, was turn to my poem and look at my own work in print. But shortly thereafter, I read through all the contributor's notes to see who else this little journal was publishing. Was it as I feared, that it was full of junk? I was stunned to read the bios of my fellow contributors. Most of them had published fairly widely, many in top tier literary journals. There were writers whose work had been in print for decades, authors of full length books, tenured professors, the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate. Clearly this is not a tiny little insignificant journal that will publish any crap that is mailed to them in a manila envelope. And, yet, it is fairly small. I suspect it has few subscribers and is only sold at the school bookstore at the university that publishes it. But even so, accomplished writers are publishing in this journal.
Then again, perhaps writers who have achieved success at more prestigious journals send off their lesser work to smaller places. Maybe this is the place to throw away stuff that otherwise isn't good enough to be published. As I've read through the issue, I haven't found this to be the case. I'm very impressed with the quality of writing. Although small, this is a fine, fine journal. And I'm proud to have my work appear beside such fantastic writing.
The conclusion I come to then is this: even the very small journals you've never heard of are publishing truly great work. Established writers are not too proud to send their pieces to a wide variety of places, which means that when beginning writers are submitting their work, the competition is incredibly fierce. We don't simply need to be better than the other beginning writers. We need to be as good or better than the writers who have been publishing for decades. This experience reinforces my view that it is amazingly difficult to break in. But it also cements my understanding that getting published at all, having any small journal accept one's work, is quite meaningful. There are many, many great writers out in the world, and to be able to have one's words appear in the same place as those other writers is really a comment on one's abilities.
Anyway, this post isn't about the differences between fiction and poetry. (However, I do have one quick side note on that issue related to a previous post; I had earlier guessed that perhaps fewer people submit poetry, and since poetry takes up less physical space in a journal, more can be included; therefore, perhaps a higher percentage of poetry is accepted. Recently I read a statistic from one prominent journal: annually it receives about 800 poetry submissions and 3,200 prose submissions. Certainly that is only one example, but it again raises the question about acceptance rates among the different forms.) What I want to write about here is the quality of work that is out there being published in these tiny journals.
I must admit that after my poem was accepted so quickly (literally, the first place I submitted it wanted it), I started to wonder if perhaps that was a comment on the journal itself. If they wanted to publish ME, then maybe they weren't really very good. Maybe they had no taste and didn't recognize how crappy my work was. Maybe rather than working in my favor to demonstrate that I can write, being published at this journal would be a total waste of time because they're not legitimate. They're a joke, and putting this publication on my CV will show that I'm a joke, too.
So I got the issue in the mail this week. The first thing I did, of course, was turn to my poem and look at my own work in print. But shortly thereafter, I read through all the contributor's notes to see who else this little journal was publishing. Was it as I feared, that it was full of junk? I was stunned to read the bios of my fellow contributors. Most of them had published fairly widely, many in top tier literary journals. There were writers whose work had been in print for decades, authors of full length books, tenured professors, the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate. Clearly this is not a tiny little insignificant journal that will publish any crap that is mailed to them in a manila envelope. And, yet, it is fairly small. I suspect it has few subscribers and is only sold at the school bookstore at the university that publishes it. But even so, accomplished writers are publishing in this journal.
Then again, perhaps writers who have achieved success at more prestigious journals send off their lesser work to smaller places. Maybe this is the place to throw away stuff that otherwise isn't good enough to be published. As I've read through the issue, I haven't found this to be the case. I'm very impressed with the quality of writing. Although small, this is a fine, fine journal. And I'm proud to have my work appear beside such fantastic writing.
The conclusion I come to then is this: even the very small journals you've never heard of are publishing truly great work. Established writers are not too proud to send their pieces to a wide variety of places, which means that when beginning writers are submitting their work, the competition is incredibly fierce. We don't simply need to be better than the other beginning writers. We need to be as good or better than the writers who have been publishing for decades. This experience reinforces my view that it is amazingly difficult to break in. But it also cements my understanding that getting published at all, having any small journal accept one's work, is quite meaningful. There are many, many great writers out in the world, and to be able to have one's words appear in the same place as those other writers is really a comment on one's abilities.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Saying Something
Once again, I'm contemplating the purpose of writing fiction. I think fiction should primarily entertain. I don't remember which book it was (Stein On Writing by Sol Stein or one of John Gardner's books?) that made the observation that reading a piece of fiction should provide an experience more interesting than not reading it. Or something like that. And I agree. I think there's nothing wrong with simply entertaining. In fact, if a book isn't entertaining, then no matter how much it plays with form or touches on important subjects, it fails. For me, one of the great examples of this problem is Toni Morrison. Of course she's a best-selling writer and a Nobel laureate, and Beloved was voted by a group of publishing professionals to be the greatest American novel of the end of the twentieth century/beginning of the twenty-first. I have read two or three Morrison novels, and although I can analyze them for a literature course or admire the innovative way she tells a story, I simply don't enjoy reading her work. It's an entirely intellectual exercise for me with no emotional connection; the work doesn't resonate and excite me the way reading Hemingway or Roth or Salinger or Carver or so many others does. Of course, this is where the largely subjective nature of the whole thing comes in, and I recognize that regarding Morrison, my opinion is in the minority.
Anyway. The first objective is to engage, to entertain, to provide a dream that is superior to sitting around not reading. But that isn't necessarily enough, unless one is writing genre fiction. Simply being entertaining is fine for a mystery or an adventure story, and even in those cases, I think the best works have some additional resonance, some thematic elements that raise them above merely being a diverting way to spend several hours in another world. For example, The Shining is about the effects of alcoholism and abuse on a family; The Silence of the Lambs is largely about feminist ideals. But if one is writing something that is realistic, that isn't driven by high conflict or enormous events, if one is dealing with the small, the mundane, then I think by necessity the work must offer more than the experience of reading; it must have a lasting impact, leave the reader contemplating ideas. Right?
Here's part of my thinking. I wrote a story years ago about a lonely man who encounters a girl in a coffee shop and the experience affects his life; I brought it in to a grad school workshop, and my professor was able to succinctly express why it wasn't a great story: "Salinger did it first and did it better." Within the past year or so I received a rejection from a literary journal for a story about a young man contemplating having an affair; the rejection itself was a personal note rather than a form rejection slip. The editors informed me that although they wouldn't be publishing the story, they liked my writing and would happily consider more work from me. The problem with the piece I submitted is that it didn't "contribute anything new to a familiar situation." And, like my professor, these editors were exactly right. My story was well written, but it's nothing unique.
I'm not especially interested in experimenting with form and doing anything wildly different. So how do I make my work significant? How do I add something worth paying attention to? If offered a choice between my story and Salinger's, I would recommend that a reader pass over mine in favor of the master's. I'm also not interested in writing plot-driven genre fiction. So, if my work isn't gripping because of the high tension and it isn't reinventing what a story does, why should a reader bother with it? I think the answer might lie in having something worth writing about, some observations about the world that make a reader feel like perhaps they've experienced what it's like to be somebody else or to reconsider experience from another perspective. I think I have to have some sort of intellectual angle or theme that elevates my fiction.
And that is the challenge.
I've recently been working on a short story that I began last summer. When I started it, I had no idea what it was "about." I just had an image of a character in my head and then something happened, and then something else happened; another character came into the scene, and eventually I had a rough draft. I've reconsidered and reevaluated and reconfigured the plot and characters, and I'm at the point now of rewriting the story so that it will likely have little resemblance to the initial version I wrote a few months ago. But the issue I'm struggling with is this: what the hell is the thing is about? I think I've got some interesting plot details and some reasonably engaging characters, but I'm still not sure that the story has anything to say. I have some rough themes that the story touches on--death, loneliness, attempting to make connections with others, the unceasing progress of life--but I'm not sure that I'm actually saying anything about anything. Touching on a theme is not the same as actually having a position. Is it? I remember Stephen King commenting in his On Writing that theme is overrated and tends to come on its own without the writer having to stress over it too much. I suspect he's right, but he also had the advantage of writing plot-driven high tension pieces where theme can elevate the piece but isn't necessarily required to give it its purpose.
So what I wonder, what I've been wondering about more and more for the past year or two, is whether I have anything worth saying to the world. Maybe the best I can hope for is that I'll write stories that others before me have written better. Maybe I'll have one decent story that's basically a Salinger ripoff and another that is a pale version of a Carver story. Is that enough? Can one ever truly hope to add anything new? Is that a completely unrealistic goal that is best abandoned sooner rather than later? I used to shake my head at fellow students who talked about being original because I long felt it was an unattainable objective. I also felt, and still do, that having the goal of making a difference, of changing the world or changing people's minds through one's art is ludicrous to the point of nearly being delusional. Yet somehow, despite knowing that for a long time, I'm still struck by the difficulty of facing that reality. If I truly accept that I can't contribute anything new, then what am I actually trying to do? Is it enough to do something old and do it well? I hope so, but I don't know.
Anyway. The first objective is to engage, to entertain, to provide a dream that is superior to sitting around not reading. But that isn't necessarily enough, unless one is writing genre fiction. Simply being entertaining is fine for a mystery or an adventure story, and even in those cases, I think the best works have some additional resonance, some thematic elements that raise them above merely being a diverting way to spend several hours in another world. For example, The Shining is about the effects of alcoholism and abuse on a family; The Silence of the Lambs is largely about feminist ideals. But if one is writing something that is realistic, that isn't driven by high conflict or enormous events, if one is dealing with the small, the mundane, then I think by necessity the work must offer more than the experience of reading; it must have a lasting impact, leave the reader contemplating ideas. Right?
Here's part of my thinking. I wrote a story years ago about a lonely man who encounters a girl in a coffee shop and the experience affects his life; I brought it in to a grad school workshop, and my professor was able to succinctly express why it wasn't a great story: "Salinger did it first and did it better." Within the past year or so I received a rejection from a literary journal for a story about a young man contemplating having an affair; the rejection itself was a personal note rather than a form rejection slip. The editors informed me that although they wouldn't be publishing the story, they liked my writing and would happily consider more work from me. The problem with the piece I submitted is that it didn't "contribute anything new to a familiar situation." And, like my professor, these editors were exactly right. My story was well written, but it's nothing unique.
I'm not especially interested in experimenting with form and doing anything wildly different. So how do I make my work significant? How do I add something worth paying attention to? If offered a choice between my story and Salinger's, I would recommend that a reader pass over mine in favor of the master's. I'm also not interested in writing plot-driven genre fiction. So, if my work isn't gripping because of the high tension and it isn't reinventing what a story does, why should a reader bother with it? I think the answer might lie in having something worth writing about, some observations about the world that make a reader feel like perhaps they've experienced what it's like to be somebody else or to reconsider experience from another perspective. I think I have to have some sort of intellectual angle or theme that elevates my fiction.
And that is the challenge.
I've recently been working on a short story that I began last summer. When I started it, I had no idea what it was "about." I just had an image of a character in my head and then something happened, and then something else happened; another character came into the scene, and eventually I had a rough draft. I've reconsidered and reevaluated and reconfigured the plot and characters, and I'm at the point now of rewriting the story so that it will likely have little resemblance to the initial version I wrote a few months ago. But the issue I'm struggling with is this: what the hell is the thing is about? I think I've got some interesting plot details and some reasonably engaging characters, but I'm still not sure that the story has anything to say. I have some rough themes that the story touches on--death, loneliness, attempting to make connections with others, the unceasing progress of life--but I'm not sure that I'm actually saying anything about anything. Touching on a theme is not the same as actually having a position. Is it? I remember Stephen King commenting in his On Writing that theme is overrated and tends to come on its own without the writer having to stress over it too much. I suspect he's right, but he also had the advantage of writing plot-driven high tension pieces where theme can elevate the piece but isn't necessarily required to give it its purpose.
So what I wonder, what I've been wondering about more and more for the past year or two, is whether I have anything worth saying to the world. Maybe the best I can hope for is that I'll write stories that others before me have written better. Maybe I'll have one decent story that's basically a Salinger ripoff and another that is a pale version of a Carver story. Is that enough? Can one ever truly hope to add anything new? Is that a completely unrealistic goal that is best abandoned sooner rather than later? I used to shake my head at fellow students who talked about being original because I long felt it was an unattainable objective. I also felt, and still do, that having the goal of making a difference, of changing the world or changing people's minds through one's art is ludicrous to the point of nearly being delusional. Yet somehow, despite knowing that for a long time, I'm still struck by the difficulty of facing that reality. If I truly accept that I can't contribute anything new, then what am I actually trying to do? Is it enough to do something old and do it well? I hope so, but I don't know.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Fellowship
I went ahead and applied. Today was the deadline, and I waited until this afternoon to finally make up my mind. The sixty dollar application fee was enough to make me hesitate, but finally I figured I might as well do it; I'm fortunately at a place in my life now where I can actually afford to toss away sixty dollars (not regularly, though). I know going in that I have a greater than 99% chance of not getting it, so my hopes aren't too high. But you never know until you try what could happen. I'm sure some of the 1,400 applications are really not very good, although I'd wager that many, many of them are excellent. And I know my work is at least decent. I have the degrees. I'm being taken seriously enough by top tier journals to at least earn an encouraging note now and again. So most likely I used up a bit of time applying, made my bank account a little lighter, and won't gain anything tangible from it, but possibly in a few months my whole life will change.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Making a Living
One thing that I suspect many of us don't fully appreciate when we head off to grad school to study writing is how difficult it can be to actually make a living. I knew that it would be tough or unlikely that I would manage to pay rent and buy food and essentials solely from writing, but I more or less assumed that once I completed my graduate degrees I would be able to land a full time teaching job. Even when I was directly told that wasn't necessarily the case, I don't think it fully sunk in. Now I realize just how difficult it is. I've read statistics that even a majority of folks with Ph.D.s in English cannot find full time professorships. As I look for jobs, I realize that I don't even meet the minimum requirements for most full time positions.
At the university level, they want substantial publication credits, which I don't have yet, or a Ph.D., which I don't have. Many universities require a Ph.D. even to teach the basic composition courses. At the community college level, they want experience. I'm currently in my seventh year of teaching, but the first five years were in grad school, which I've come to understand doesn't count for much. The key number at the community college level seems to be three to five years, and I'm in my second year at the community college. The notion that I will someday have a full time job is not unrealistic. I suspect it's within the next five years. But that's much longer than I expected it would take when I was in grad school.
I remember a professor in grad school who was talking about being a professor and what a noble calling it was and how nobody should pursue that life just for the money because there are so many other jobs out there where one can make much more money. I thought at the time he was full of it, and I still do. Those of us who spend years in grad school essentially don't have other marketable skills. Sure, I can work retail, but that pays far worse than teaching. It's not like my MFA qualifies me to work on Wall Street. The reality is that many of us who earn MFAs need to teach for a living because we don't really have other reasonable options.
But the nice thing is that even though I don't have a full time job and adjunct teaching doesn't really pay a professional wage in proportion to my level of education and experience, it's still a decent paying part time job, or at least it can be (I guess I'm lucky enough to have landed a position that pays toward the high end of the adjunct scale). For 2009, I will have made more money than I've ever made in my life. My taxable income will be about double what it's ever previously been. So that's not all bad (of course, I've essentially been on or below the poverty line my entire adult life). But even so, it still feels like I'm getting a bit ripped off. I teach four classes a semester. Full timers at my school teach five. If I had a full time position, I'd make close to double what I make now, plus I'd have benefits like insurance. That's a ridiculous difference. Plus, there's the factor that I'm technically part time, but teaching isn't like other part time jobs. I have to take my work home with me. I'm emotionally invested in the progress of my students. I work weekends. I stay up late at night grading papers. But the reality is this: what other choice do I have?
I think there are a couple of ways to think about this pickle. One is to realize that my efforts now will (I hope) pay off in a few years. It often sucks to be an adjunct. But in a few years, when I land a full time job, I'll be in a much better position. If I were to abandon teaching in favor of a better paying low-level office job, I could do that and probably make more money right now. But there wouldn't be much future in that. If I were to get a $10 an hour job filing paperwork or answering phones, I'd be okay, but ten years from now, I'd still only be making $11 an hour or something. But if I put up with the hassles of being an adjunct for a couple more years, I could be making double what I make now, maybe triple or quadruple. My professor was totally wrong: it does make sense to get into teaching for the money. Although the money isn't great now, I'm sowing the seeds that will grow in the future.
The second thing I think I have to consider is that it might be useful to reevaluate my efforts. I'm working a part time job. A full time professor at my school is expected to teach five classes, advise students, attend faculty meetings and so forth. I'm only expected to teach four classes. So if a full time position is forty hours per week, then my job should be less than thirty. I'm at school in the classroom or office hours about eighteen hours a week. So I shouldn't reasonably spend more than about ten additional hours grading papers or doing prep work. If I spend more time than that, then I'm really a bit of a sucker, working on my own time rather than the time I get paid for. But that is how I've regularly worked. I ordinarily spend much more time than that because I care about my students and I want them to succeed, and how much they get out of my class depends on how much work I put into the class. But is that fair? Should I care? Is it reasonable to expect me to put out that much effort for the amount I'm being compensated? I honestly think I should do less work. Maybe what this means is that I should collect fewer drafts of papers so I have less work to do at home. I should write fewer notes on students' work and adopt a simpler rubric for grading, where all I have to do is check a few boxes. The advantage to me would be obvious, yet I feel like my students would suffer. But then again, If I reduced my efforts I think my students would probably get a comparable experience to what they get from other teachers. I've often had grateful students say how nice it is to get such detailed feedback from me, which leads me to believe they aren't getting that elsewhere, and I've had students say that in their other writing courses, the teacher's expectations seem to be nothing more than that a student hand in a paper that is typed, that the quality of thought and skill are not full evaluated. If I lowered my standards and made my life easier, I think I would then be a fairly average teacher. Maybe being average is fine. After all, I'm not being paid to be above average.
I don't know. I can probably do some of that, streamline my process a bit to make my life easier. But I don't know if I could ever fully detach myself from my students. I really wish I could. It would be nice not to think or care about them. But I do care.
Anyway, back to the main point. The need to make a living is a giant obstacle that has to be overcome. The greatest thing a writer needs is time to write, but when one is trying to pay bills, it becomes tough to find enough time. Maybe the issue really is just that I have to put up with the unfortunate situation now and things will be easier down the line. If I can manage to publish enough in the next few years, then maybe I'll actually land a full time creative writing professorship some day. And then I'll be able to teach fewer classes, make enough money just from teaching where I won't have to worry about additional income in the breaks between semesters, and basically it will feel like I've got tons of time to write. But actually reaching that point is tough.
I think one of the toughest things for me to accept about the dreaded real world that we all must enter when we leave school is how hard it is at the beginning. I always figured it would be easier at the start and would get harder as one went throughout life, but I actually think it's the opposite. When one is young, one still has all the expenses of an adult life, but one has less ability to make an income that will fully cover those expenses. I figure my basic needs won't substantially change in the next ten or twenty years, except that I have loans to pay off now that will be paid off then, so basically I need more money now than I will need in ten years. Yet my earning ability will likely be far higher in the future than it is now. Right now I'm barely scraping by, but if I have a full time professorship in ten years, I'll have more money than I need. It just seems unfair that I can't swap out my situations and make that money now and then comfortably live on less then.
At the university level, they want substantial publication credits, which I don't have yet, or a Ph.D., which I don't have. Many universities require a Ph.D. even to teach the basic composition courses. At the community college level, they want experience. I'm currently in my seventh year of teaching, but the first five years were in grad school, which I've come to understand doesn't count for much. The key number at the community college level seems to be three to five years, and I'm in my second year at the community college. The notion that I will someday have a full time job is not unrealistic. I suspect it's within the next five years. But that's much longer than I expected it would take when I was in grad school.
I remember a professor in grad school who was talking about being a professor and what a noble calling it was and how nobody should pursue that life just for the money because there are so many other jobs out there where one can make much more money. I thought at the time he was full of it, and I still do. Those of us who spend years in grad school essentially don't have other marketable skills. Sure, I can work retail, but that pays far worse than teaching. It's not like my MFA qualifies me to work on Wall Street. The reality is that many of us who earn MFAs need to teach for a living because we don't really have other reasonable options.
But the nice thing is that even though I don't have a full time job and adjunct teaching doesn't really pay a professional wage in proportion to my level of education and experience, it's still a decent paying part time job, or at least it can be (I guess I'm lucky enough to have landed a position that pays toward the high end of the adjunct scale). For 2009, I will have made more money than I've ever made in my life. My taxable income will be about double what it's ever previously been. So that's not all bad (of course, I've essentially been on or below the poverty line my entire adult life). But even so, it still feels like I'm getting a bit ripped off. I teach four classes a semester. Full timers at my school teach five. If I had a full time position, I'd make close to double what I make now, plus I'd have benefits like insurance. That's a ridiculous difference. Plus, there's the factor that I'm technically part time, but teaching isn't like other part time jobs. I have to take my work home with me. I'm emotionally invested in the progress of my students. I work weekends. I stay up late at night grading papers. But the reality is this: what other choice do I have?
I think there are a couple of ways to think about this pickle. One is to realize that my efforts now will (I hope) pay off in a few years. It often sucks to be an adjunct. But in a few years, when I land a full time job, I'll be in a much better position. If I were to abandon teaching in favor of a better paying low-level office job, I could do that and probably make more money right now. But there wouldn't be much future in that. If I were to get a $10 an hour job filing paperwork or answering phones, I'd be okay, but ten years from now, I'd still only be making $11 an hour or something. But if I put up with the hassles of being an adjunct for a couple more years, I could be making double what I make now, maybe triple or quadruple. My professor was totally wrong: it does make sense to get into teaching for the money. Although the money isn't great now, I'm sowing the seeds that will grow in the future.
The second thing I think I have to consider is that it might be useful to reevaluate my efforts. I'm working a part time job. A full time professor at my school is expected to teach five classes, advise students, attend faculty meetings and so forth. I'm only expected to teach four classes. So if a full time position is forty hours per week, then my job should be less than thirty. I'm at school in the classroom or office hours about eighteen hours a week. So I shouldn't reasonably spend more than about ten additional hours grading papers or doing prep work. If I spend more time than that, then I'm really a bit of a sucker, working on my own time rather than the time I get paid for. But that is how I've regularly worked. I ordinarily spend much more time than that because I care about my students and I want them to succeed, and how much they get out of my class depends on how much work I put into the class. But is that fair? Should I care? Is it reasonable to expect me to put out that much effort for the amount I'm being compensated? I honestly think I should do less work. Maybe what this means is that I should collect fewer drafts of papers so I have less work to do at home. I should write fewer notes on students' work and adopt a simpler rubric for grading, where all I have to do is check a few boxes. The advantage to me would be obvious, yet I feel like my students would suffer. But then again, If I reduced my efforts I think my students would probably get a comparable experience to what they get from other teachers. I've often had grateful students say how nice it is to get such detailed feedback from me, which leads me to believe they aren't getting that elsewhere, and I've had students say that in their other writing courses, the teacher's expectations seem to be nothing more than that a student hand in a paper that is typed, that the quality of thought and skill are not full evaluated. If I lowered my standards and made my life easier, I think I would then be a fairly average teacher. Maybe being average is fine. After all, I'm not being paid to be above average.
I don't know. I can probably do some of that, streamline my process a bit to make my life easier. But I don't know if I could ever fully detach myself from my students. I really wish I could. It would be nice not to think or care about them. But I do care.
Anyway, back to the main point. The need to make a living is a giant obstacle that has to be overcome. The greatest thing a writer needs is time to write, but when one is trying to pay bills, it becomes tough to find enough time. Maybe the issue really is just that I have to put up with the unfortunate situation now and things will be easier down the line. If I can manage to publish enough in the next few years, then maybe I'll actually land a full time creative writing professorship some day. And then I'll be able to teach fewer classes, make enough money just from teaching where I won't have to worry about additional income in the breaks between semesters, and basically it will feel like I've got tons of time to write. But actually reaching that point is tough.
I think one of the toughest things for me to accept about the dreaded real world that we all must enter when we leave school is how hard it is at the beginning. I always figured it would be easier at the start and would get harder as one went throughout life, but I actually think it's the opposite. When one is young, one still has all the expenses of an adult life, but one has less ability to make an income that will fully cover those expenses. I figure my basic needs won't substantially change in the next ten or twenty years, except that I have loans to pay off now that will be paid off then, so basically I need more money now than I will need in ten years. Yet my earning ability will likely be far higher in the future than it is now. Right now I'm barely scraping by, but if I have a full time professorship in ten years, I'll have more money than I need. It just seems unfair that I can't swap out my situations and make that money now and then comfortably live on less then.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Journeyman
My thoughts at the moment are along the same lines as several previous posts. I've been reading short stories recently. In part I've simply been in the mood for short stories for the past six or nine months or so, but also I've been quite busy with teaching and grading and working and commuting; I've had less time to sink into a full novel, so it's easier to pick up shorter pieces that I can read in a single sitting. I've been dipping into collections, reading Raymond Carver, John Cheever, J. D. Salinger, George Saunders, and others. I've also recently picked up the latest O. Henry Prize, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize collections. What strikes me about these stories is that--and this is certainly a "duh!" statement--they are really, really good.
When I read stories by these artists--Pulitzer prize winners, MacArthur Genius grant recipients, writers with decades of experience, and some publishing their very first story--it hits me that I'm plain and simply not that good yet. I don't abandon hope or anything. I plan on being that good someday. But at the moment, I'm still struggling to find my own voice, my own style; I'm in the process of figuring out what exactly I want to say with my fiction. I have a couple of themes I keep returning to, but I also have ideas for stories that I haven't yet figured out what they're really about. Sometimes I manage a beautiful set of sentences followed by some awkward prose that completely disrupts the flow of the piece. I have a couple of stories I think are nice, but many more that are still far too rough to even seek feedback on.
Essentially, what I'm getting at is the notion that I am at the journeyman stage of my career, at least I think I am. I find it a useful metaphor to think of grad school and that period of formal education as an apprenticeship, a time of study under a master craftsman (or several master craftsmen), learning and improving and developing. But now I'm out on my own, and yet I'm not yet a master craftsman myself. I'm a journeyman. I have the basic knowledge and experience to be on my own, but I have yet to prove myself.
I sometimes find it frustrating when I'm looking for full time employment that there are jobs out there for creative writing teachers, but I don't yet meet the minimum requirements. I came across a great position recently for a one-year visiting writer instructor position specifically geared toward writers at the early stage of their career, and I have the education and teaching experience to qualify, but not yet the publication credits. There are many opportunities for small steps into the academic world, but before one is able to take those steps, one must publish and have a demonstrated mastery of the craft. Or, in other words, one must be further along the journeyman path than I am right now.
But I find it oddly comforting to think of myself as a journeyman and to read the work of masters. If I genuinely felt that I was their equal already, that I was an unrecognized master, then I would be endlessly frustrated by my lack of advancement. But instead I can try to continue learning from them, honing my own craft, pursuing my efforts, and hope that soon I will reach their level.
When I read stories by these artists--Pulitzer prize winners, MacArthur Genius grant recipients, writers with decades of experience, and some publishing their very first story--it hits me that I'm plain and simply not that good yet. I don't abandon hope or anything. I plan on being that good someday. But at the moment, I'm still struggling to find my own voice, my own style; I'm in the process of figuring out what exactly I want to say with my fiction. I have a couple of themes I keep returning to, but I also have ideas for stories that I haven't yet figured out what they're really about. Sometimes I manage a beautiful set of sentences followed by some awkward prose that completely disrupts the flow of the piece. I have a couple of stories I think are nice, but many more that are still far too rough to even seek feedback on.
Essentially, what I'm getting at is the notion that I am at the journeyman stage of my career, at least I think I am. I find it a useful metaphor to think of grad school and that period of formal education as an apprenticeship, a time of study under a master craftsman (or several master craftsmen), learning and improving and developing. But now I'm out on my own, and yet I'm not yet a master craftsman myself. I'm a journeyman. I have the basic knowledge and experience to be on my own, but I have yet to prove myself.
I sometimes find it frustrating when I'm looking for full time employment that there are jobs out there for creative writing teachers, but I don't yet meet the minimum requirements. I came across a great position recently for a one-year visiting writer instructor position specifically geared toward writers at the early stage of their career, and I have the education and teaching experience to qualify, but not yet the publication credits. There are many opportunities for small steps into the academic world, but before one is able to take those steps, one must publish and have a demonstrated mastery of the craft. Or, in other words, one must be further along the journeyman path than I am right now.
But I find it oddly comforting to think of myself as a journeyman and to read the work of masters. If I genuinely felt that I was their equal already, that I was an unrecognized master, then I would be endlessly frustrated by my lack of advancement. But instead I can try to continue learning from them, honing my own craft, pursuing my efforts, and hope that soon I will reach their level.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Rejection
I got another rejection today. I know that rejections are an inevitable part of being an aspiring writer. There are many reasons a piece can be rejected, and it's a bit foolish to take them too personally. There's no way around them, and the old notion that those who succeed are those who don't give up is certainly true. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't frustrating when work is rejected.
I'm willing to admit that not everything I've written is amazing. In fact, most of what I've written is not that good. Part of the learning process is improving and being able to look back somewhat more objectively on past work and see where it is flawed. I think that despite writing seriously for the past several years, I have up to now produced only a small handful of work that is good and hundreds of pages of work that isn't especially good. But that small handful of good work is genuinely good. I swear it is. So it's frustrating when I continue to send it out into the world in the hopes that some editor out there will agree with me that it's good and have it keep boomeranging back.
Sure, it's nice to get the handwritten notes or personal e-mails telling me that, while my writing is good, this piece wasn't a match for that journal. Those notes buoy my spirits. But come on already, world. Please, please, please, with sugar on top, can I get one of my stories accepted?
Part of the struggle, I think, comes from the pure subjectivity of literary writing. Unlike genres, which have certain conventions, literary stories can be about pretty much anything and have almost anything happen or not. Characters might grow and change or they might not. Epiphanies may occur or they may not. One reader will say that a character has to change or else why bother reading the story. Another will say that it's a cliché to have a character change, and such a convention is outdated and unrealistic. Some editors will want work that has little plot but experiments wildly with form. Other editors will want traditional forms but plots that are unlike what has been seen before.
I've been reading literary stories for years, picking up journals and collections to see what is being published. Most of what I see I don't particularly care for. Much of it is simply boring because not much happens, or what does happen is so minimal that it's left mostly up to the individual reader to figure out why the events of the story have any significance. But I will admit that the stories are well written from a basic craft standpoint. The language is solid. The prose works effectively. Sentences and paragraphs construct a living dream. But beyond that, there are no real standards as far as I can tell. There doesn't have to be anything in particular that a story does. There doesn't have to be a catharsis or a moral lesson or a dramatic climax or a commentary on society or an interesting twist or a character that represents reality.
Actually, let me pause a bit on that last point. I think that one might be the real kicker. I think that the subjective nature of fiction lies largely in whether or not an individual reader connects with the characters and ideas, and creating a piece that connects with an individual reader or editor at any particular magazine seems to me to be largely up to chance. Experts advise new writers to read all the journals (and there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them) to get a sense of what they publish. From what I've seen, there seems to be no consistent vision or style for individual journals beyond the subjective tastes of the editors who happen to be there at the time; so, honestly, I don't see that reading all the journals accomplishes much. At least I've never been able to detect any real standards that differentiate one journal from the next. And as far as creating characters that will resonate with an individual reader goes, again, I think it's pure luck. I remember having wildly divergent views from people in my workshop classes. For instance, one particular story once struck me as being uninteresting in part because a character seemed so unrealistic, so irrational, that I suspected that the character must be insane, and I didn't understand the appeal of reading about insane characters if they are presented as if they are ordinary; yet others in the class loved the story, feeling that it accurately depicted the world as they knew it. I can think of other similar situations where viewpoints on stories simply diverged. And these were well written stories as far as the basic issues of craft are concerned. The language was strong. The situations were explained and the plot moved from point to point and so forth. But if we can't agree on what a realistic person is like, we simply aren't going to agree on whether the story is appealing or not.
So if it is indeed the case, as I believe it is, that having a story accepted is largely a matter of chance, of sending it to the right place at the right time where the right person happens to somehow find the characters and situation relatable and interesting, then is there ever any end to the frustration? I think it comes down to perseverance, I guess. The old saws are true: one must stick with it; not give up; try, try again. Once a writer has a reputation, I think editors start to ignore the issue of whether or not they personally find the piece appealing because it has already been established that the writer is good. In fact, journals will seek out established writers to send them pieces, and I'm fairly certain that a journal won't solicit a story from a well known writer and then reject it because the editor doesn't care for it. But getting established, having those first few people acknowledge that one is good is a frustrating endeavor.
A final note: Maybe this rejection today is hitting me harder than many do simply because of when it arrived. I'm a bit stressed at the moment because I have stacks of papers to grade this weekend; I have to work at my retail job tomorrow, which eats into my grading time; and the final weeks of the semester are going to be incredibly busy. And when I get stressed, I tend to get a bit depressed. I feel a bit frustrated in general with my life at the moment. I'm in my thirties without a full time job. My plan B is to teach, and even that isn't fully working out since I can't actually land a full time position, and it's often frustrating because many of my students don't care or don't try or really should not be pursuing a college education in the first place. And the dream I've been pursuing for years continues to elude me. It might be easier if I had some of the other things in my life that make life enjoyable for many people, like fulfilling relationships, but I don't. Apart from my immediate family, my only real friendships are with people I see in person only every few years because they live thousands of miles away. I feel like my entire life, my identity, is wrapped up in my dream to become a writer, and the reality is that that dream may never come true. And there isn't anything else in my life that makes me want to keep going day to day. Each day I sustain the hope that maybe today will be the day that I get that big acceptance. I check my e-mail obsessively in case a journal has sent me a notice that they'd like to publish me. So it's tough when that dream keeps getting dashed.
I'm willing to admit that not everything I've written is amazing. In fact, most of what I've written is not that good. Part of the learning process is improving and being able to look back somewhat more objectively on past work and see where it is flawed. I think that despite writing seriously for the past several years, I have up to now produced only a small handful of work that is good and hundreds of pages of work that isn't especially good. But that small handful of good work is genuinely good. I swear it is. So it's frustrating when I continue to send it out into the world in the hopes that some editor out there will agree with me that it's good and have it keep boomeranging back.
Sure, it's nice to get the handwritten notes or personal e-mails telling me that, while my writing is good, this piece wasn't a match for that journal. Those notes buoy my spirits. But come on already, world. Please, please, please, with sugar on top, can I get one of my stories accepted?
Part of the struggle, I think, comes from the pure subjectivity of literary writing. Unlike genres, which have certain conventions, literary stories can be about pretty much anything and have almost anything happen or not. Characters might grow and change or they might not. Epiphanies may occur or they may not. One reader will say that a character has to change or else why bother reading the story. Another will say that it's a cliché to have a character change, and such a convention is outdated and unrealistic. Some editors will want work that has little plot but experiments wildly with form. Other editors will want traditional forms but plots that are unlike what has been seen before.
I've been reading literary stories for years, picking up journals and collections to see what is being published. Most of what I see I don't particularly care for. Much of it is simply boring because not much happens, or what does happen is so minimal that it's left mostly up to the individual reader to figure out why the events of the story have any significance. But I will admit that the stories are well written from a basic craft standpoint. The language is solid. The prose works effectively. Sentences and paragraphs construct a living dream. But beyond that, there are no real standards as far as I can tell. There doesn't have to be anything in particular that a story does. There doesn't have to be a catharsis or a moral lesson or a dramatic climax or a commentary on society or an interesting twist or a character that represents reality.
Actually, let me pause a bit on that last point. I think that one might be the real kicker. I think that the subjective nature of fiction lies largely in whether or not an individual reader connects with the characters and ideas, and creating a piece that connects with an individual reader or editor at any particular magazine seems to me to be largely up to chance. Experts advise new writers to read all the journals (and there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them) to get a sense of what they publish. From what I've seen, there seems to be no consistent vision or style for individual journals beyond the subjective tastes of the editors who happen to be there at the time; so, honestly, I don't see that reading all the journals accomplishes much. At least I've never been able to detect any real standards that differentiate one journal from the next. And as far as creating characters that will resonate with an individual reader goes, again, I think it's pure luck. I remember having wildly divergent views from people in my workshop classes. For instance, one particular story once struck me as being uninteresting in part because a character seemed so unrealistic, so irrational, that I suspected that the character must be insane, and I didn't understand the appeal of reading about insane characters if they are presented as if they are ordinary; yet others in the class loved the story, feeling that it accurately depicted the world as they knew it. I can think of other similar situations where viewpoints on stories simply diverged. And these were well written stories as far as the basic issues of craft are concerned. The language was strong. The situations were explained and the plot moved from point to point and so forth. But if we can't agree on what a realistic person is like, we simply aren't going to agree on whether the story is appealing or not.
So if it is indeed the case, as I believe it is, that having a story accepted is largely a matter of chance, of sending it to the right place at the right time where the right person happens to somehow find the characters and situation relatable and interesting, then is there ever any end to the frustration? I think it comes down to perseverance, I guess. The old saws are true: one must stick with it; not give up; try, try again. Once a writer has a reputation, I think editors start to ignore the issue of whether or not they personally find the piece appealing because it has already been established that the writer is good. In fact, journals will seek out established writers to send them pieces, and I'm fairly certain that a journal won't solicit a story from a well known writer and then reject it because the editor doesn't care for it. But getting established, having those first few people acknowledge that one is good is a frustrating endeavor.
A final note: Maybe this rejection today is hitting me harder than many do simply because of when it arrived. I'm a bit stressed at the moment because I have stacks of papers to grade this weekend; I have to work at my retail job tomorrow, which eats into my grading time; and the final weeks of the semester are going to be incredibly busy. And when I get stressed, I tend to get a bit depressed. I feel a bit frustrated in general with my life at the moment. I'm in my thirties without a full time job. My plan B is to teach, and even that isn't fully working out since I can't actually land a full time position, and it's often frustrating because many of my students don't care or don't try or really should not be pursuing a college education in the first place. And the dream I've been pursuing for years continues to elude me. It might be easier if I had some of the other things in my life that make life enjoyable for many people, like fulfilling relationships, but I don't. Apart from my immediate family, my only real friendships are with people I see in person only every few years because they live thousands of miles away. I feel like my entire life, my identity, is wrapped up in my dream to become a writer, and the reality is that that dream may never come true. And there isn't anything else in my life that makes me want to keep going day to day. Each day I sustain the hope that maybe today will be the day that I get that big acceptance. I check my e-mail obsessively in case a journal has sent me a notice that they'd like to publish me. So it's tough when that dream keeps getting dashed.
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