Hearts to Bossypants

After each quarter I need a decompress book. By this I mean a book that would never be taught in an English Literature class, yet smart so it keeps my interest.

Enter Bossypants by Tina Fey.

I knew that Fey would be funny but what I didn’t expect, was her insight into the career of a woman writer. Granted, she has worked in comedy—a tough field—but I felt much applied to me.

Fey details her climb through the comedy ranks. How when she began at Second City the famous improv company assigned 4 men and 2 women per group. The rationale was that there wouldn’t be enough parts for women. Fey (I gather, repeatedly) countered, how could this be so when this was an IMPROV group? Even in the 90s, a man in drag might get the part over an actual women. She was told no one would ever want to see a sketch involving two women, and details how the hilarious “Kotex Classic” SNL parody ad was almost nixed because the men had no idea what the women were talking about.

Fey also reveals the process of comedy writing, going through various 30 Rock episodes and how they came together, attributing various MVP lines to the writers. I have say, my lonely world of literary prose seems pretty dull.

And yes, she tells the story of how she came to do her first Sarah Palin impersonation on SNL, the (in my mind now iconic) skit where Fey as Palin and Sarah Poehler as Clinton share the podium to decry sexism on the campaign. (I can see Alaska from my house!) Even juicier is that she publishes a copy of the sketch—along with the penciled in revisions. Writer geek heaven!.

This is all fun stuff. But why we love Fey, is because she's not afraid to write, “That night’s show was watched by ten million people, and I guess that director at The Second City who said the audience ‘didn’t want to see a sketch with two women’ can go shit his hat.”

Workshops and Draft Purgatory

This quarter I tallied my total number of workshops, including my MFA. Total count: seventeen. Granted, I am a shopmonger. I have taken nonfiction, fiction and poetry. I have taken multiple shops at one time. I love dissecting how works–in-progress are/aren’t working. I appreciate how shop drives me to produce. I love the whiskey bar post shop decompress.

The downside of workshop is that you have to endure being workshopped. Of course, the point is to break everything down. That’s how everyone learns. I have even felt nostalgia for past shops where I was vivisected, but that was later, because I turned in something better. The shop story worked towards a happy ending. But over time this story's power has dwindled.

Time presents a new workshop problem: I generally know what everyone is going to say before they say it. What I hear over and over is that my voice engages but my structure has problems, and/or that my piece needs more weight. Here begins the heartbreak of writing—just because you are aware of your writing Waterloos doesn’t mean you know how to avoid them. Or revise them.

My goal for the next few weeks is to sort through the wreckage of five years (gah!) of drafts. Admittedly, much of this did go towards a book on Laura Ingalls Wilder, which will come out with Press 53 this fall. Completion! (I’ll be writing more in this later and—locusts willing—launch a website this summer). But I also have essays, memoirs, stories, flash fiction, aborted first novel chapters and now poetry sitting in desktop purgatory. So that’s my goal in the upcoming weeks. To attend to these lost souls. See what can be saved. What gets put in the DNR file.

On Author Websites

Read any “must” list for writers and you will be told to have an author website. These freelancers earning $350 dollars for their Writer’s Digest articles will tell you to get one now, but my personal feeling is there isn’t much of a point until you have a book.

I had a website when I first started writing eight years or so ago, built around a former column of mine I wrote called “Charm School Reject.” The idea was that my hilarious postings would get me one of those blog to book deals. Uh, no. I couldn’t ever tap into a focus like Stuff White People Like or Julie and Julia. And as it turns out all I needed was a blog, not a website.

After a year or so I found I couldn’t keep the site up. My writing persona evolved and I couldn’t afford to have the look updated. The once snazzy site took on a patina of dust and disuse, so I let the domain name expire. Now that I’m researching author websites, I find I’m not alone. Many author websites are bedraggled, neglected, non-existent and/or amateur. Money isn’t the only obstacle. Elizabeth Gilbert’s site looks thrown together. You’d think with the movie deal and Oprah press she could do better than cartoon yellow backdrop and Comic Sans. Stephanie Meyer’s site is also surprisingly amateur. If you didn’t know that Twilight was a phenomenon you’d think she was working on the sequel to the Unibomber Manifesto.

Stephen King’s site is pretty snazzy. Although perhaps a bit too much so. I suppose I have a peeve against any site that makes me wait for it to load. Same for Margaret Atwood. I seem to remember preferring her simpler, older site that let you click on an interactive desk. I wonder if a writer really needs a site sporting 5 or 6 menu bars with pull down windows.

Moving on to more literary types, Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore or Amy Hempel don’t seem to even have websites. George Saunders has one that's hanging in there, but isn't to my mind worthy of the writer. Michael Chabon and Dave Eggers are branded by amazing graphic design, so I checked them out. Chabon has this artsy eight-track image with print too small to read. Wha? His events page was empty. If Chabon can’t maintain an events page, then the rest of us are fracked. Eggers has a bio page that splinters off McSweeney’s. The ubiquitous and seemingly indefatigable Steve Almond has one of the better sites. I would follow his lead if reading his publication history didn’t exhaust me so much.

I tried tooling around on iWeb, and the site wasn’t looking too bad, but reached an impasse on the blog format, which I didn’t like and couldn’t change. From my earlier post on Steven Rinella, I wound up looking up his website, which struck me as having the right balance of visual interest and clarity. So I wound up contacting his designer, Dave McKay, from Missoula who turns out to be a friend of a mutual friend. Despite my poorling status, I’m going to pay for a website, because maybe Elizabeth Gilbert is satiated, spiritually connected and loved, but I don’t have the self-esteem to have Google turn up a less than professional site with my name splashed across the top.

Goings-On About Town: Seattle Edition

It's Small Press Festival time in Seattle! What better way to celebrate National Poetry Month? I'll be hitting Recto Verso: A Small Press Expo on Saturday. And by "hitting" I mean standing awkwardly in a corner with a drink, shivering and praying no one talks to me. And purchasing some rad books.

On Wanting To Be the Girl With the Most Cake

Sugar, advice columnist for The Rumpus, fielded a question from a writer who finds herself unable to be happy for a friend’s authorial success. Sugar deals some straight talk about these issues, beginning with the idea that “We are all savages inside. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed. There isn’t a person reading this who hasn’t at one point or another had that why not me? voice pop into the interior mix when something good has happened to someone else.”

Jealousy was a terrible, terrible problem for me for a long time. At Montana emails were sent around congratulating people when they had a publication. All I could feel was a stab in the chest.

Montana (for me) wasn’t a program that pitted writers against one another, which isn’t to say there wasn’t a bit of wrestling with the sharks. Some of this jealousy and competition was good. A little burr in the saddle can work as motivation. If I bombed in workshop it made me work harder. If someone-not-me wrote an amazing story or essay then I was determined to outdo them. If there was a award I wanted it. If there was I contest I was scrambling for the gold medal.

Where jealousy became a problem, was when I couldn’t be glad for my fellow classmates and friends. Just like the woman who wrote Sugar, I wanted to be glad but really I was a hot mess inside. Why not me? Of course, I hid my pettiness the best I could but in truth I felt sorry for myself and lack of success.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine here got in the PhD at Utah with full funding, and what I realized was that I was so genuinely glad for her. I actually squealed in delight. That I was able to feel so happy for someone else’s success felt so, so good. A relief. Something shifted in me. I was like the Grinch whose heart grew two sizes that day.

So what happened? I admit my short story acceptance to The Gettysburg Review was like lancing a giant boil. I knew now that I wasn’t a joke. I also finished my book (more on this later). I haven’t made the NYT best seller list and my publication list remains rather middling, yet something changed where I no longer felt as though I wanted to be a writer, but I was a writer.

I have let go a great deal, too. I can’t control or worry about what other writers are doing. Worrying about that shit will drive you crazy. And the more I get in this writing life, the more that I see that it’s freaking hard even for the people we see as being so successful.

Which isn't to say I'm completely free of the twinge now and again. And as I write this, I’m thinking I miss some of the fiery, pre-Prozac me. I might froth up a little bit of that competitive spirit up again. Because while I am glad to be glad for my friends, it doesn’t hurt to want to kick ass now and again.

Funded v. Not Funded at Montana

Anonymous writes:

Does tiered funding create a problem in the workshops? Various handbooks and popular blogs out there say it does. The "advice" tells prospective students that it creates a situation which negatively influences the dynamic in the workshop. (Like a war between the "haves" and the "have-nots."The "advice" tells students to attend only if funding is offered. Can you and others weigh in on this? Obviously, I know from your comments that you were funded, but how were the experiences and opportunities of unfunded candidates? Do they come into the program with the stigma by other students and staff that their talents are less?

I admit when I discovered that I was the only funded person in nonfiction (out of five admits), I felt like pretty hot shit. I was chosen, special, the Star-bellied Sneetch. I had this idea that Judy Blunt had wielded my application like Excalibur from the stone. And sure, those first few weeks that I arrived in Montana were kind of nice. I was the “funded one.”

But after the initial thrill, the only difference became that 1) I was paid 9K a year and 2) I had to teach Fresh Comp. Once everyone began submitting their writing into workshop I had to admit that I was no better than anyone else. Everyone was super talented. There was absolutely no qualitative difference between the “funded” and the “unfunded.” None.

So far as how people were treated in workshop, I don’t think the faculty even remembered who was funded. I know that they hate not being able to offer funding to everyone. Basically every year the faculty sit down with a pile of apps, come up with who they would like to work with, and then make some very tough decisions. Dee and Kevin have told me that sometimes the final cuts feel very much like a coin toss.

Experienced writers know that it’s impossible to predict the career of a beginning writer. Think about it. What is there to know from a lone MFA writing sample? Once in a while there’s a Karen Russell or Lorrie Moore. But most of us dog it out for years before we write publishable work. Kevin said to me over again that while talent is nice, it’s the work ethic and determination that’s wins out in the end.

Of course, lack of funding has its problems. There’s the obvi, money. Those without TAs don’t get the teaching experience, and everyone teaching meets that first week of TA camp. There's nothing like the common enemy of pedagogical discourse to promote bonding. When I was at Montana, only TAs had an office. Finally, there’s the trickier and ickier idea of feeling less “wanted,” although I as I’ve said above, I don’t believe this is true. At least not at Montana.

On the plus side, not having to teach comp frees up time to write. Freshman Comp is time suck, an energy suck and a suck/suck. Slogging through twenty papers on the death penalty wears a writing soul down. I noticed that the unfunded writers often kicked more ass. They published more during the program. They took on outside jobs that were more interesting. And who knows? Maybe feeling like an underdog served as a motivation.

The Three Ps Advice Center

Hello Kelly:

My very close friend has been recently accepted into the Montana MFA program and I am so excited for him.

At the same time, I am worried about the prospects of relocating (from the east coast) and the prospects of finding jobs both during and after the program. Can you discuss your experiences?

Dear Worried,

Those of us who teach Freshman Comp know that the argument from authority is an argumentative fallacy, but for what it’s worth, here’s my story:

My life is divided by 1) before Montana 2) after Montana. I made friends I will keep forever, my writing transformed, and I lived in one of the most amazing places in the world. Montana is the place I learned I could be a writer when I grow up, a question that had haunted me my entire life.

Moving across the country was a pain in the ass. Of course. But I applied to programs out west on purpose. I WANTED to see the other half of the country. I live in Ohio now, and I’m still homesick for the jaw dropping, slap-you-up-the-face beauty of Montana. Probably a part of me will be forever scheming a way back there.

Re: jobs. Missoula isn’t exactly a captain of industry. But people do find work. Retail. Admin jobs. For me, a teaching assistantship was crucial, but that didn’t pay for the summer. I freelanced some. I landscaped. Even so, I emerged with about 5K of student loan debt. Then again, I wanted to do things. I took trips to Seattle, Glacier National Park etc. I treated myself to espresso drinks when I felt like it and drank call brand liquor.

I knew many people who didn’t have assistantships. Some of them had parents who helped them out. Some emerged with 40K of debt. Some worked out deals where they went for three years and finagled in-state tuition. The words “money” and “afford” are so subjective they are difficult to measure. I do know that those paying felt a great deal more strain. (I welcome comments from anyone following this blog on this situation below).

The MFA is not a career gateway. The year after transition was pretty rough on most of us. (Hence: this blog). But I don’t think the MFA is the total dead end everyone claims either. There are Montana MFAs with book deals and tenure track jobs. A few. A higher percentage of us have landed jobs that involve writing and/or teaching in some form or another.

The bottom line is I went to Montana to write. I did write. I am writing. And my writing life would not be the same if I hadn’t taken that risk.

To Tweet or Nor To Tweet

Montana grad Aryn Kyle recently began a blog, and writes in her first post:

When I think about all the tweeting and blogging and skyping we’re expected to do, I can’t help feeling slightly jealous of those writers of yore, the ones who lived in plague-infested squalor and worked by candlelight and died of tuberculosis before the age of thirty-five.

Exactly. I have had an on again/off again affair with blogging, and facebook updates, and I’ve resisted “Tweeting,” although now that I have a book coming out I feel the pressure to promote any way possible. I know that hiding behind the “I’m the sensitive/socially phobic writer type” excuse isn’t going to do me any favors. I need to suck it up. If don’t sell my book, nobody else is.

But isn’t it all so—exhausting. Online once I found George Saunders started to blog but after about five entries the posts grow shorter and more lackluster. (I couldn't find the blog today to provide a link). He begins in charming, honest Saunders style admitting his newness to blogging, but you can see he just couldn't attach a real purpose to it. Even a writer as good as Saunders quickly discovered how much work it takes to write even an average post. None of us got into this to be average. Our dream was to be poets and nonfictionistas and to pen great novels, not "maintain" a blog. But to keep a blog up, and post regularly, there will be filler.

The very thought of adding Twitter to my promotional list makes me want a nap. Celebrities can post about burnt toast or btichin’ parties or socks because they are famous. But I’m going to have to sweat out clever aphorisms like an Oscar Wilde machine.

And shouldn’t I be working on my “real” writing? And is all this social networking really doing anything? Often this all feels like posting into the void.

I don’t know. I suspect that the only way I’ll survive all this is by finding a way to make it fun. Because I can vouch that when social networking feels like a chore, I won’t do it.

But posting to the blog is much better than working on my syllabus for tomorrow. Uh, which is what I should be doing.

Montana Grad Spotlight: Steven Rinella

I could say my decision to apply to Montana was random, but I prefer to say I was following my instinct. I was Googling various states (Texas, Wyoming, South Carolina) paired with the words “creative writing MFA” and found the purple website with the cartoon grizzly bear. (The website has, sadly, since been updated to a sophisticated aesthetic). A little more research revealed that Montana was an older program (I liked the idea of a writing tradition) and a top program (I like success). The idea of moving West, far away from the South, also appealed.

Yet another motivation was Steven Rinella’s The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine. The book is centered around his year-long quest to hunt and fish for the necessary ingredients to prepare a 3-day, 45-course feast from French master chef Auguste Escoffier's Le Guide Culinaire. (It was Montana professor Dee McNamer that put Rinella in touch with the 19^th century cookbook). En route Rinella acquires such exotic makings as an antelope's bladder, a stingray, eel, and the smoked ham from a black bear. I read the book and know that this brand of researched quest represented the nonfiction I wanted write. I suppose I knew my career as a lyrical essayist wasn’t going to work. And this was before I’d even heard of the lyrical essay.

I’ve been rereading the book over break and find it just as engaging. No, I don’t care to fish for ling cod in a tippy canoe off a remote Pacific Northwest island. But it’s fun to read about. This time around I realize that the vegetarian girlfriend character in the book is another Montana MFA, Diana Spechler, whose book Who By Fire I have also read. And this time the scenes that take place in Missoula (for instance, gathering pigeon eggs off the Higgins Street Bridge) make my heart ping. I have since seen elk carcasses piled up in the backs of trucks and can personally vouch as to the tastiness of the meat.

Rinella now has a television show on the Travel Channel, which might make him the most successful Montana MFA so far. “The Wild Within” one-ups Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” in that Rinella goes into the wilderness, kills and skins the exotic cuisine he eats with relish.

I didn’t know this when I applied, but while Rinella was at Montana the program didn’t have an official nonfiction program. There was poetry and “prose.” I’m not sure what I have to say about this observation, exactly, other than it leads me to wonder about this recent addition of nonfiction to creative writing programs. I mean, didn’t nonfiction exist all along? What’s the big revelation? But that, I suppose, is best saved for another post.

Notes From The Annual Writers Conference

I found my one, lone page of notes from AWP in the dryer this morning. I know that was over a month ago. The notes were on a panel on dealing with difficult students in the nonfiction writing workshop.

Here’s what I wrote:

How to workshop the TMI piece: 1) be specific 2) be honest 3) help writers clarify their own ideas

Running a writers’ workshop is like running a kindergarten. You deal with the same players: 1) the star 2) the resenter 3) the diva 4) the tattler.

When dealing with a diva (who will constantly interrupt the workshop), diffuse by asking: “What would you like to accomplish in this piece?”

Sometimes people use memoir as a way of processing their feelings. This can get weird. One way to ease the discomfort of workshopping true story is to treat the nonfiction protagonist the same as a fiction one. Ask: 1) What does the character want? 2) What stands in her way? 3) What’s at stake if she doesn’t get what she wants?

And that’s it. Nice, right? All manner of respected literary giants around and I spend four days stuffing my face with every variety of ethnic food I could find. My excuse is that I live in a small town built on subs, gringo burritos and pizza. I crave spice.

Female Poets Shill Clothes for Oprah

I hate this: http://www.oprah.com/style/Spring-Fashion-Modeled-by-Rising-Young-Poets

For so many reasons. It's hard to keep them straight in my head. I hate the implication that a female poet has to be a clothes horse in order to get any attention, and that her poetry here is incidental to the business of selling clothes that most of the poets I know could never afford. I wonder what happened after the shoot was over? It's kind of fun to imagine Oprah herself approaching the poet-models, cackling wildly, and ripping the designer duds right off their backs.

Inevitably, though, the rage returns. And I have to ask myself Why? Why does it matter if these women chose to accept an opportunity for some exposure to audiences their work might not have otherwise reached? This is an impulse post, so I haven't really fully considered all of the angles, but I think it comes down to the commodification of it all. Like this $300 Ralph Lauren vest? You'll love poetry by Sarah Herrington!

Then again, maybe I'm just jealous. Maybe this is tapping into my baggage about pretty girls always getting all the attention. It's true, I'd love to model this old Gap t-shirt for you, with all its implications about my lifestyle and artistic talent, especially if it means you'll read my manuscript. What, you're sending the photographers right over? Great! I'll go wash my face.

The Creative Writing PhD and the Job Market

At Ohio University we had a professional development meeting recently and I asked the panel (CW, lit and rhet-comp profs who had all sat on various hiring committees) if the CW Phd was, truthfully, any kind of factor on the university job market.

The first answer was that schools such as Iowa or Michigan only hire writers with an established presence. "A book" isn't enough, and the PhD isn't the criteria either. That NYU hired Jonathan Safran Foer, who doesn't even have an MFA, comes to mind.

But---if the goal is a job at a smaller, liberal arts school then a PhD is a plus, because it gives you flexibility in teaching. (And yes, the CW PhD counts here). OU has placed people in this kind of tenure track job. It was also noted that if quality of life is a consideration, a smaller school might be a happier landing than a shark tank program.

Interesting to me, was how the three English Department fields have different criteria for an attractive resume.

For Rhet-Comp, teaching is critical, and demonstrated ability of administrative experience (by this I mean running a conference, not typing and filing. Althooooo. How else does one run a conference?)

For Lit, an established presence as a scholar is the thing. Too many committees, etc. might even count against an applicant, because he/she might be seen as not being serious about their research.

For us, the ability to help out with the lit mag or run the reading series makes everyone perk up. Because nobody wants to do this stuff. Grant writing ability is also a plus. Because writers never have any money.

The final tip was that grads who want a university job can’t leave the ivory tower. Not after the PhD. Grads have to adjunct or post-doc or whatever to remain in the pool.

Except the rules are always different in the arts, because there aren’t rules. Write a best-selling book that’s also a critical darling---and that NYU gig is yours. And who wouldn't rather be the sexy hire than the paper slave?