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I write terrible poetry.  Like, really terrible, to the point that I want to put an example up here to prove it– except that I’m too embarrassed to post a small snippet on an anonymous blog that no one reads.  That bad.   The thing is, I’m not certain how I know my poems are bad, other than a vague suspicion they sometimes veer perilously close to the abstract, heavily-worded poems I filled journals with in my middle school and high school years. 

Because I am in an MFA program that draws a pretty strong dividing line between the poets and fiction writers, I haven’t come any closer to answering this question in my time in the program.  I’ve hedged around the question, asking poets what their workshops are like, what do they talk about, but all I’ve gotten is that poets think our fiction workshops are bloodbaths.  What’re their workshops like?  I still don’t know, although according to cynical fiction folks who ventured into a poetry workshop, poets pretty much sit around singing kumbaya and calling each others work amazing.  Somehow I don’t think that’s quite accurate, and anyway, that definitely doesn’t answer my question:  How do you know when it’s a good poem?

 I do think I’ve learned something about good fiction.  I’ve learned that good fiction has to compel the reader to continue reading.  How that’s done, I think, can vary widely.  Sometimes it’s strength of setting, sometimes it’s the plot, sometimes a reader falls in love with the character.  Sometimse the narrative voice captivates, other times the language usage stuns with its imagination.  But the bottomline is, you can only tell your story if someone is listening, and post MFA, we have no guarantee that anyone will ever read the entirety of one of our stories again (let alone read it twice). 

But how does this apply to poetry?  Reading a poem doesn’t require the commitment that even a story does , let alone a novel:  Most modern poems are just a handful of half-lines loosely scattered on the page.  On the other hand, poems are dense.  Each word in a poem carries the magnitude of a paragraph at least, and because there is so much meaning folded inside, interpreting a poem can be difficult.  So perhaps in poetry it’s not the reading that’s the time-intensive component.  It’s the meaning-making.  (Of course, most stories and novels can be unfolded for other layers of meaning, as well– but I think some poems operate as stories, and some stories operate as poems, something I’ll save for another post).  The test of a poem, I think, is engendering the commitment from a reader that makes them want to make sense of a few ambiguous lines.

That’s my hypothesis today, anyway.  But I’d love to have someone who actually knows something about poetry weigh in.

Oh, stripping.  I definitely wouldn’t say it’s a motif of my life,  but I’ve  had a collection of odd moments related to stripping zigzagging through the years.  A teenage friend who stripped on amateur nights.  My own 18th birthday, giggling with girlfriends as men slathered in baby oil, with nicknames like “Sal C,” cavorted across the stage of a Holiday Inn conference room.  A relatively proper sorority sister confidently asserting that the correct way to give many money to a stripper is to hold the bills in your mouth (your choice of whether to make him take it from you or whether you want to pull your own risque maneuver to deposit the bills).  And on

Stripping seems to be everywhere lately– popping up as a gym class offering, in the stories of my classmates.  I think people are fascinated by stripping for the same reason they are fascinated with good writing and religion; there is a very tenuous balance between revealing and maintaing mystery. 

Or maybe it’s got nothing to do with the balance and everything to do with the naked. To say a bachelorette party with a Chippendales theme is about exploring “mystery” seems like a huge stretch.  But I definitely do think writing is about that. 

If there is one thing I’ve learned from workshop, it’s that it’s not okay to intentionally confuse the reader.  But you can mislead them, use sleight of hand, throw in a few red herrings so that there is enough ambiguity and surprise to keep the reader going.  Which ultimately leads to a more satisfying ending. 

Hmm.  And which brings me back to the original idea, and which makes me think writing and stripping aren’t dissimilar after all.

It would seem obvious that writers are introverts.  They have to lock themselves into rooms for hours alone– they shun interactions that would steal them away from their story– they make up rules like “only knock on the door if dying”  (really, I’ve read that in more than one interview).  Sometimes, I think I have no chance of succeeding in writing because I’m not introverted enough.  Computer or friend?  The computer ain’t winning.

If you are an introvert, there are some interesting articles about how you can use that to your advantage in writing.   But I’m not an introvert (or, thank God, an “innie,” per the article).  I am extrovert (which luckily doesn’t lend itself to a cutesy nickname version).  I know I’m an extrovert, because guess where I decided to put my desk?  In the kitchen.  Where I could be around people.  Which ended up being a disaster… but that was definitely my instinct.  People people people.  Love them.

Here’s an article about being an extroverted writer.  What I like about is that it recognizes the #1 challenge extroverted writers will have– productivity (but you superior, productive innies, watch it– we extroverts are great networkers– if we ever have anything to network about).  The tips in the article also make sense:  know who you are, set goals, write around people (strangers, I would add, not people who will actually talk to you!), use software to your advantage (like this kamikaze-style one).

Here’s the thing, though.  I’m not sure articles like that are really addressing the depth of the problem.  After having a job that was far from a couture fit the three years before I started my writing program, I am a big believe in choosing your color parachute, finding your path, (fill in blank with other career self help book here).  In other words, I believe you do yourself a disservice when you stake a claim in a job that doesn’t fit who you are. Life doesn’t have to be that hard.  You can be so much more successful, and find so much more joy, when you work on getting better at things you are already good at– rather than always fighting against your own grain.

This article addresses the issue, loudly, before going to the quick tips.  Step #2 for increasing productivity?  Decide whether you really want to be a writer.  So, I guess that will be my dilemma over the remaining year and a half of my program.  I’m going to focus on the Quick Tips for now, because I’m committed to a) getting my degree and b) writing a novel (not necessarily in that order).  I’m also going to recognize that I have limited time I want to spend in introverted activities, and I’m going to use less of it for online shopping and more of it for writing.  Here’s a great tool for that, too.

And for those of you who don’t need tools like Leechblock and Chrome Nanny… I bow to you and your reservoir of internal discipline.  Really, I do.  I sometimes wonder if we would’ve had Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald* in a day of easy internet access.  Part of me thinks, Obviously– they were compulsive, brilliant, often introverted.  Another part of me thinks– Are you kidding me?  People with bad self control and relentless curiosity?  These guys would’ve spent all day online gambling or researching the ins-and-outs of bullfighting.

Anyway, if any extroverts have any tips they want to pass off, I’d love to hear them!

DP

*The fact that these writers are all white American males from the early 20th century is in no way meant to imply that only white American males from the early 20th century are implicated in my fictional quandary.  O’Connor, Hurston… everyone… I’m talking to/about you, too.

So, my title is a desperate grab for attention.  I’ve never watched American Idol.  However, there’s been enough American Idol infiltration into my happily TV-free life that I think I understand the general dynamics of the show.  Rumor is Paula is the softy (and possibly the drunk, but that’s for another day) and Simon is the (orange-tanned) guy who loves to be mean.  Or give constructive criticism.  Whatever they call it.

This was something I wondered about a lot in my previous life in the corporate world:  Does criticism really help?  Or do we just think it should?  Because what I saw often was that no matter how you Oreo it– in the compliment Oreo, criticism is the tasty cream filling– people often shut down.  Lose motivation.In other words, get worse.

This isn’t always the case, of course.  A lot of factors tie in:  How sensitive is the criticism-receiver?  What’s the surrounding context?  How genuine does the compliment wafer surrounding the criticism-cream feel?  What relationship does criticizer-criticizee have?  But the very possible outcome in writing workshop (where, I think, the same factors are still at play) is that the criticized decides that a) the feedback is stupid, and/or b) the feedback-giver is stupid.  Or that a) their story is stupid, and/or b) they are a stupid writer.  If someone’s really nihilistic, I suppose they could adopt all four of those beliefs.

Of course, they aren’t always wrong.

But that’s not the point– the point is, do people need criticism or encouragement most?  While the logical guess is that we need both, I’d love to do a radical experiment.  I’d like a company to switch to All Praise Personal Evaluations for a while.  And what I’d love even more?  An All Praise Writing Workshop.  And I don’t mean this in a Modest Proposal way, although I can’t help but think that if the idea sounds ridiculous, consider this: Aren’t we already running a lot of All Criticism Writing Workshops, without comment?  I really would like to see what happens.  Would people get worse, or would the encouragement drive them to write more, and therefore get better?

Has anyone been in a particularly criticism- or praise-heavy workshop?  What do you think?

DP

P.S.  The Dirty Prosician seeks all praise, all the time. Just in case you ever happen to be in workshop with me.  Just sayin’.

So, I faced down the story-that-shall-not-be-named, submitted it to workshop, and survived.  Actually, I more than survived:  Some people even liked it.  In a startling moment of non-hypocrisy, I will now force myself to submit to the same task I give my students every time they turn in an essay in class.  This is the dreaded Reflective Cover Letter.

1)  What do you feel like you did well in your (story, essay, mongoose hunt)?

I have to admit, I’ve fallen a little in love with my characters.  That doesn’t mean anyone else has; someone used the proverbial workshop indictment of “sketch” (I am biting back, just barely, my snarkiness re: his roughly-formed characters).  I think they are interesting, and I wouldn’t mind spending more time with them.  Also, I explored new territory.  This story has changed point of view three times, tense three times (past to present back to past), and played with a new way of framing dialogue.

2)  What would you do if you had another day?

Hm.  Besides finish the story?  Well, I think I have to clarify some of the relationships between the characters.  And make the voices a bit more distinctive.

Oh.  And finish the story.

3)  What process did you use?  How did it work for you?

The process.  Well, it was basically lots of procrastination, an equal dose of caffeine, and desperate maneuvers like burning candles and hunting down a theme song to write to (now that I think about it, those sound an awful lot like procrastination and not like the Very Necessary Acts I assured myself they were at the time).  This is pretty  much my standard process, coupled with a last-minute burst of adrenaline.  I am always– ALWAYS– printing off my story six minutes before the start of the class, setting copies machines whirring, and then running (okay, okay, even with this sort of urgency I’m still just walking) to class.

How did it work for me?  Bizarrely enough, it seems like this process worked okay for me.  I want another process, but I’m not sure how to get one.

DP

PS- In the pretend world where anyone actually reads this, I would LOVE to know a) have you ever changed your writing process?  How?

PPS- I learned the hard way:  Changing tenses takes a really long time.  Totally rookie mistake:  Not saving a copy in one tense before transforming it.  Because you might change your mind….

I spent my first few weeks in my MFA program baffled by the number of teetotalers and abstainers.  More than baffled.  Annoyed.  (Sometimes the inner undergrad in me roars, even though I’m pushing 30.  Annoyed is the true word, even if it’s ridiculous).  Where were the Ernest Hemingways?  The Mary Karrs?  The brilliant people whose troubles spent themselves in words and booze?  Instead, lounging around in dank and dirty bars in our dank and dirty college town, at least a third of the group swilled cokes and club sodas.  It did not compute.  I was depressed, thinking about the stories (that nobody would ever bother to tell) when we (in a highly unlikely occurrence) became famous.  Sipping club sodas– hell, sipping $2 Tecates– in the corner of a bar does not equal skinnydipping in a Parisian fountain.  Or however it is alcohol-fueled literary geniuses, particularly those of the early 20th century, spend their time.

Yes, friends.  I was that naive.

First of all:  Of course the Hemingways and Karrs and Faulkners and Cheevers were at the bar.  We didn’t have an unusually high number of Mormon MFAers; these club soda drinkers belonged to AA.

Second of all:  Our lack of alcohol-fueled exploits is hardly our greatest problem.  We had a great, boozy evening once.  We ended up at IHop.  We must accept that we are not the lushes of which legends are made.

I have a couple of theories on why writers like to drink.  I also have theories on sugar-eating and red socks, which I will save for other days.  One is a theory of correlation:  Writers often have tortured lives, and hence turn to both drink and writing.  I think that’s similar to what they are talking about on this page, which has a nice history of alcoholism and writing.  Here is another correlative theory:  Writers are badasses.  Drinkers are badasses.  Done.  I think that’s the general idea behind this  scholarly site… with less of an emphasis on writing, and more on the awesomeness of drinking.

But I can also see a causative link, one that is obliquely suggested in this LA Times article.   I think writers sometimes seek alcohol because of what it does for their writing, and I think what alcohol does for writing is the same thing it does for flirting, leaping off balconies, dougie-ing, or other hobbies.  It relieves inhibitions and anxieties and allows you to go forth.

I’m not saying that people should take up drinking to write.  I’m just saying that today I had a glass of wine while writing, and I liked it.  I think the trick, though, is what Joseph Tartakovsky wrote in the LA Times piece:  ”Prudent writers learn to take more out of drink than it takes out of them.”  Well said.

Anyone else have any writer/alcohol theories?

I wasn’t 100% sure “writerly” was a word.  Neither was spellcheck.  So I asked my friend Google, and found out quite affirmatively that it was.  This double-checking business on my part would make one of my professors quite happy.  He can’t understand why word-loving people like ourselves use so many words we can’t understand (or, maybe worse, words that don’t exist).

The answer, I think, is that we’re not just word lovers.  Many writers are profligate word whores.  We have moments of passion for and with words.  Sometimes it’s because they’re beautiful, but other times they’re just the thing that’s there when we’re desperately seeking.  Sometimes we love several simultaneously, and eventually it all starts to blend, and then maybe one day we pass a good looking word on the street and think, hey… I think I remember you.  Didn’t we get a drink together way back when?  And then the word says….  I’d like to take the metaphor further, but if you think it’s breaking down already, you should see it a few sentences later.

So then.  It’s a complicated relationship with words.  As writers we want them to express what they’re saying clearly.  We also want them to surprise, to jangle against each other with their newness, without obscuring what we’re trying to say.  Sometimes we make up new words, out of desperation or whimsy.  (As a side note, there are plenty of people who apparently like to make words– check out this site).  Sometimes we reach for a word, and fail to grasp the full meaning or connotation.  I wonder what it’s like in other professions:  Does a bricklayer feel the nuances in the way each brick sits or in how the cement spreads?  Is an account, ingeniously twisting through financial loopholes, feeling the same tension as they balance between technical regulations and possible rationales?

My guess is Yes.  And if so, my guess is that they spend just as many days loving their jobs as they do hating them.

Many writers have tattoos.  Well, many people have tattoos, and as we’ve established:  Writers are often people.   These tattoos glide across varied spectrums of tattooage.  We have bare-outlined Celtic symbols and elaborately shaded naked figures.  We have ink on elbows, inner lips, and lower backs.  We have tributes to loved ones, with dates and names attached, and alcohol-inspired etchings that are meaningful in their meaninglessness.  We have (just a few of us) sleeve tattoos consisting of our favorite words from our favorite authors.

I don’t even want to tell you about my tattoo.  It’s embarrassingly prosaic.  It’s not a heart, or a garland of flowers, but it might as well be.  It had about a minute of thought put into it, and if you were to see me at the beach, you wouldn’t waste more than a second of time taking in its wonder.  Still, while not explicitly about writing, it’s actually very representative of what I am trying to learn about writing:  Embrace mistake-making.

I don’t want to give my teenaged self too much credit for wise choices, but I actually do remember thinking about this the week I got my tattoo– what the act of getting a tattoo meant; I wasn’t overly concerned with what the tattoo itself might mean. (I was also thinking about how to win the love of a classmate with a black leather jacket, what type of bagel to get at lunch, and whether my car needed more leather decor:  Again, I don’t want to give my teenaged self too much credit for wise choices).  I wasn’t really worried about the tattoo itself because I knew I’d regret it when I got older, and that was the point.  Busting through the seams of teen years and into adulthood, I wanted an act that said:  I’m going to take chances, and that means I’ll probably mess things up, and I’m.  Not.  Afraid.

I was a little afraid.

So, eleven or twelve years down the road from an afternoon in a grungy tattoo parlor, I think that my young self was pretty prescient.  I still want to live bravely, and I want to write bravely, too.  Many times I don’t do either.  But I have a constant, inked-on-the-flesh reminder:  Keep trying.

Here’s to tramp stamps!

In another bout of procrastination, I found myself pondering writing rituals today.  Because one thing I’ve realized is that many writers have them, from the new age-y (candles! visualization!) to the prosaic (clean the desk, shut the door).  What I also realized, though, is that I didn’t really know what a ritual was.  So I turned to Wikipedia, as all diligent researchers do.*  And I learned that a ritual has many possible meanings, including:

1)  an activity that makes no sense to outsiders (courtesy of sociology)

2)  a repetitive behavior used by a person to neutralize anxiety (holla, psychology!)

I’m going to say that writers’ rituals are definitely the second and often the first– I don’t think outsiders would be unduly befuddled by a writer cleaning off their desk, but I do think that cleaning off the desk has a calming function.

So, let’s set up a logic game/syllogism here:

(Claim 1) Writers frequently engage in rituals.

(Claim 2) Rituals are intended to neutralize anxiety.

(Conclusion)  Therefore, writing (or writers, but I’m going to give us grace and blame the act instead of the person) is an anxiety-provoking, nerve-wracking act.

This isn’t surprising, since many writers openly attest to it (I think we could rename writer’s block “writer’s deep-seated fear they are inadequate”).  It is interesting, I think, to consider why.  Why is this thing, this fluffy, fantastical thing called creative writing so anxiety producing?  Isn’t it supposed to be fun?

No.  I don’t think so, really.  I recently went to an event where a writer who crosses the line between journalism and creative writing was being questioned.  ”But which one do you find most satisfying?” people asked.  When he gamely dodged the question, they re-asked it, in slightly different words:  ”So would you say creative writing is more satisfying?”

Wise writer.  He turned the question back to the room, largely made up of MFA students.  ”Well, I don’t know,” he said.  ”How many of you find writing satisfying?”  Forget crickets.  You could’ve heard an ant crawling across that floor.  What he ended up saying was that he found creative writing infinitely more challenging, and there was something in choosing the harder taskmistress, and so if you defined satisfaction as feeling like you were working hard at something you really cared about… well, then, yeah.  Creative writing is satisfying.  The flipside is so often feeling like you are failing at the thing you really care about.  The flipside is needing enough imagination to go along with your own creations.

So, I’m off to writing.  I haven’t actually settled on a ritual yet:  Some days I’m convinced I can only write when the window is open.  Other days I light candles.  Other days I clean the desk (not often enough, I think; I wish my anxiety pushed me towards helpful activities).  Other days I drink a glass of wine (please see earlier parenthetical comment).  I think the bottom line, though, is this:  Any ritual that diminishes your anxiety is a successful ritual.  So onward alcohol, onward prayers, onward cigarette-smoking, onward dog-walking.  Whatever works for you.

And if anyone has a particularly effective ritual, I’d love to hear it.  I’m not above stealing someone’s ritual in the hope it possesses sparkly magical writing-imbuing powers in its own right.

*If diligent meant people who can’t be bothered to compile their own information.  Which it doesn’t.

Let me tell you something about writers.  Or, let me tell you something about this writer, which I’m pretty sure applies to most writers, and maybe to all humans.  I’m a procrastinator.  Where’s my proof?  Several boxes of unreturned shoes in the closet, despite my so-small-you-can’t-see-it teaching stipend.  A daily checklist where items move  to “tomorrow” more often than bedbugs hop NYC apartments.  Oh, and how about this?   I started* this blog to document my journey through my MFA in Creative Writing.  Which I am approximately half way through.  Halfway through, first blog post…  this, nonexistent audience** of mine, is not a good sign.

You know what’s a worse sign?  The only reason I’m starting this blog post is because I have a story due for workshop on Tuesday.  I am writing about procrastination in order to procrastinate.  It’s a new level of sickness.

What I’ve said ad nauseum to friends, and will probably say here more than a few times (assuming I have another story due at some point, and my friends are avoiding me, and I am desperately seeking to avoid writing yet again) is that procrastinating is the curse of writers.  And let’s be honest:  Procrastination?  That’s just a long, Latin word for lazy.  You’ll notice that procrastination rarely takes the form of log-hewing or volunteering at the soup kitchen, but often takes the form of surfing Facebook and perfecting dog-walking.  At least for this girl.

The ironic thing about a creative writing program is that we’re not really impressed by hard working writers, rare as they are.  We love those with style.  Everyone in a program knows who the brilliant writers are, and who the hard working writers are, and unless the hard workers have the luck of being brilliant as well, they’re unlikely to impress.  What I’ve realized over time, though, is that I know plenty of good writers who don’t get published.  The hard working ones?  They write until (and then after) they get published.  End of story.  They make it happen.

I desperately yearn to be one of them.  And then I sit down to write, and I think about how lonely my coffee cup looks without coffee, or how the bed, with those crisp new sheets, is just dying to be napped on (have I mentioned personification can work to your lazination advantage?) and it’s game over.  The good news, though, is that I am going a little longer before I start giving wants and needs to inanimate objects.  I am choosing slightly more productive modes of distraction.  Small steps.

If you don’t see me back here soon, though, you know where to find me.  In my writing room, doing anything but writing.

DP

P.S.  Do you have any great tips to keep yourself from lazinating/procrastinating?  I’d love to hear them.

*By started, I mean picked out a name.

**Scratch that!  Based on the comments waiting in my inbox, I have a serious collection of pornography-loving and pornography-making fans out there!  That, friends, is what I get for picking a name like Dirty Prose.  Don’t ever let an MFAer name your business.  That’s also why I am currently approving all comments before they post (not out of a secret yearning for control, I promise).