Sure, I had lots of excuses and distractions and I did make a pretty good effort of it. In the end, I have over 25,000 words of a story that I’ve been trying to get out of me for years. But it’s still a failed attempt. And I’m OK with that.

I’m not going to beat myself up over it because I came out of the experience with a few new and reinforced ideas and tips for anyone who is thinking about doing it again next year (including myself).

1. Writing is goddamn hard.
   Remember that. Balancing storytelling, craft, concentration, and (in the case of Nanowrimo) a focus on writing as many words as possible in a sitting — that’s difficult work. And for the most part, when I sat down to do the balancing act for two or three-hour spurts, it worked out OK. I just needed to do more sit-down sessions.
2. Writing is rewarding.
   When I did it, it felt great. When I wasn’t doing it, I was thinking about it. If it hadn’t been for a few weeks of career woes in November (one of those aforementioned excuses/distractions), this positive feedback loop would have kept me at it. So, feel good about it when you’re doing it, no matter how crappy the work is.
3. Know your capacity.
   One of the things I was most curious about when I started the project this year was exactly how many words can I write in an hour. The last time I did Nanowrimo — back in 2002 — I used a spreadsheet to keep track of my progress and in general it took a couple hours a day to do my daily goal of 2,000 words. Being that was 8 years ago, I wondered what, if anything, had changed in that aspect. Generally, I was able to write around 1,500 words in an hour. What does that tell me? Well, when I do sit back down again and tackle the rest of this work, I should have a pretty good idea of how much of a time commitment I’m looking at it.[1]
4. Feel your story.
   I say “feel” because I have a tendency to over-think my stories. It’s easy to get into “this has to happen” or my story must have such-and-such element to it. But that can end up putting the story in too tight of a box. And it can also make you inflexible and stifle your imagination. Things I was very clear about before the writing began ended up being put to the test as I started getting deeper into the story. I actually brought a dead character back to life in the middle of the story.
5. When the “real world” calls, answer.
   Yes, I’m disappointed that I didn’t complete the project. But I’d have been even more disappointed if I hadn’t dealt with the conflicts that arose. Maybe the most important thing I learned is that I don’t have to make my self-worth and esteem dependent on the outcome of a writing project.

Now that I look over this small list, I’m not sure how useful it will be as a set of tips for Nanowrimo, but it certainly helped me look at the bright side of failing. If I can’t learn something from my failures, well, I may as well just give up.

[1] I have discovered this is a useful bit of information for me. It’s often the unknown that keeps from fully committing to a project. If I tell myself, in order to finish this novel, it’s going to be X amount of hours over Y days/weeks/months, that’s the kind of data that helps my analytical side shake hands with my creative side. I need both sides to win.

In any case, I am playing the part of my own motivation and saying to everyone who wants to listen that I am back (on the block?) and I want to be a writer. I am a writer.

And now it’s time to write.

I hope people are still out there, sort of watching me and my self-neglected blog. I want to make this as public as possible — I am committing to finishing something I am proud of and working hard at it. There. I said it.

Have you been going through some rough writing times? Would love to know how you worked through it. For me, I guess it’s just been a matter of giving it time and eventually getting sick of hearing myself complain. That and ultimately showing my two beautiful girls that quitting at something you love just shouldn’t be an option.

Thanks,
Gordon

I’ve had conversations with people enough times to know a bit better how to respond to the question as well. So here’s my attempt.

There is only one thing I would have done differently: picked a different school.

Trust me, I am not denigrating the fine institution, instructors or students that I spent two years of Tuesday and Thursday nights with. I encountered some great people there, including a few instructors and fellow students who are making great contributions to writing and the teaching of writing.

But there is one thing I regret most of all, and that’s not focusing on teaching.

I am miserable in the corporate world. Always have been. Always will be. It puts food on the table but with every paycheck comes the price of a few ounces of my soul. I’ve been a professional writer and editor for about 15 years (including the horrendous years of being an assistant editor wherein I did nearly no editing and a crap-ton of assisting) — throughout these years I’ve never wanted to do something more than ditch the profit-driven corporate world and teach writing full-time.

So why did I go to a program that didn’t have an integrated teaching component to it? Convenience.

I was working full-time, raising two kids, my program was close by  (I could walk to it from my apartment), and held classes in the evenings. I also liked the fact that the program could be completed in two years.

If I had to do things differently, I think I would go back and find ways to make my MFA experience a little less convenient and a little more conducive to my long-term goals. It’s not that the experience was easy. Far from it. The two years I was in grad school were a couple of the most difficult I’ve had in my life — with the extreme highs and extreme lows of birth and death enveloping constant day-to-day struggles to just get shit done. In fact, if things had been any less convenient, I probably would have given up on the whole affair. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I ultimately didn’t accomplish something I had hoped to gain from the experience. If I had a time machine I’d go back and fix that one thing.

Before you embark on your MFA journey, understand clearly what your goals are and what you’ll have to give up in order to get them. As in all things creative, convenience and shortcuts don’t often bear out the results we really want.

What I learned was that to write a book you have to first become the person you need to be to write that book. I had to, like, literally change. I had to become a new person. I had to grow the f— up.

– Junot Diaz

Found this while browsing through the popular writing-related links on social bookmarking site Delicious. I can’t help but get a little annoyed at the $2-blog-writing schemes, SEO “content” farms, and a general deterioration of originality, voice, and real content that passes for so-called writing online.

Now I have an image to conjure whenever this black mood strikes me. To the person that wrotte [sic] it, thanks.

Like the article’s author, I have always been plagued with a close relationship with the little green monster. I find it stifles me. I become overly obsessed with the details of the other person’s success, trying to find the place in their timeline where they just got lucky, sniffing out the aspect of their art that is more calculated commercialism than creative vision. Overall, I find jealousy is a serious waste of my time and energy.

No, I think what motivates me in a constructive and positive way is the notion of opportunity. If I feel like something I’m writing offers an opportunity to do something I’ve never done before, I am full of energy, ideas, and commitment. Being jealous over someone else’s work or career makes me focus too much of my precious* effort on someone else. Opportunity makes me focus on me. When it comes to writing, I think that’s probably more worthwhile. Luckily, I believe that sense of opportunity is around me right now.

It will also help if I stop succumbing to buzz about hot writing wunderkinds. That’s a work in progress, for which I’ll need to quit paying attention to much of what flows through the New York Observer, New York Magazine, and Gawker.

* I say “precious” not out of a sense of luxurious value, but “precious” in the sense of rarity.

Truth be told, I haven’t been listening to much music lately.

What? A black guy not espousing the joys of music to write to? What of the jazz, the bump of James Brown? What the funk has the world come to? I jest, but it’s true that I don’t listen to music all the time. Sometimes it distracts me. Sometimes it diverts my attention.

Given all that nonsense, I do believe there are a few musical things in this world that I cannot do without:

1. John Coltrane’s saxophone
2. Miles Davis’s audacity (i.e., turning his back to audience, etc.)
3. The way Sting says “shock??? while playing Police tunes live
4. flamenco
5. Antonio Carlos Jobim
6. Lennon/McCartney
7. the funky drummer
8. the 12-bit sampler
9. All things Muppet
10. Mainstream radio from the 1970s and 1980s

As far as what music is good for writing, it changes all the time. I went through a period lately that anything from Erik Satie really set me off into the land of creation, and at the same time I was digging the experience of deep diving into the jazz catalogs of Riverside, Prestige, and Impulse. That’s just one example. One person’s taste.

Music is mutable, maybe more so than literature. If John Denver floats that boat, I’d love to buy a ticket to ride to the other side of the river. Who knows what may come of it?

Maybe it was my half-awake state on the subway, but reading this article did more to shed some light inside my tunneled brain than I expected. I’ve been struggling for years, but in a roundabout way, with my ideas. Namely, what is it I really want to write about.

There were the stories I wrote before grad school, usually narcissistic ramblings of a twenty-something male, who was often just enough like me to be transparently uninteresting. There was writing I did in grad school, that more closely approached “real??? stories, but still they ended up feeling like writing exercises to me. I wrote stories I felt like I should write given my station in life, economy, and society and the literature I was consuming.

All along the way, I kept feeling like there was something I was half-heartedly reaching for, but just barely stretching my muscles; wagging a finger in the air.

Beliefs. I almost always avoid that word. Is a belief system that distinguishing factor between those who make a living at this art and those of us who don’t? I can see how our beliefs (in our words, our talents, our commitment) bring us to the writing desk and keep us in the chair. That seems clear.

Our beliefs bring stories we’re dying to tell out of the shadows of our unconsciousness. With our beliefs we see the narrative, the structure, the tone and language of our art unfold, and we set them into type on the page with diligence and discipline.

But I’ve struggled for many years, because I told myself that I believe in nothing. And that felt right to me… No wonder it’s been so hard for me to produce.

I may be an occasional grump and a cynical bastard, but I think, in the end, that I’m not a nihilist. I do believe in some things. It’s time for me to give these beliefs the right of way. Keep in mind, I’m not talking about pedantic dogma or some kind of religious co-opting of science fiction. Nothing so insidious as all that.

I’m merely admitting to myself that it’s OK to let what I feel strongly about seep into what I write. And for the sake of my own conscious commitment, I want to put a few of these beliefs down, for the record, and for the ages.

- I believe, left to their own devices and will, people are inherently bad. We’re all assholes. And it’s only through the right love, encouragement, and guidance that any of us rise up out of the muck.

- I believe that the pursuit of the cheap and the easy only leaves us with more to fix and more to pay in the end.

- I believe greed is the deadliest of all so-called “deadly sins.??? It is the root cause of all others (murder, lust, envy, you name it). Greed is the granddaddy of them all. It’s time the old coot just kicked the bucket and moved on to another plane of existence.

- I believe in the cycles of the universe. What goes around comes around, even, eventually to all the conservative, up-tight, greedy assholes who seem like they get away with it. Not in hell, but in small ways, undetectable by those of who care to see bad people get their just desserts, what goes around comes around.

- I believe there are immeasurable forms of human relationships. My love for my children, my irreplaceable connection with my wife, my deep gratitude for my parents, and my unquenchable interest in my birth parents are all proof of that—for me.

- I believe quality far outweighs quantity. And I believe I’ll have another.

Toward the end of 2007, daily life was completely taking over all sides of my brain and I wasn’t thinking much about After the MFA. Thankfully, Armand stepped in to open his heart about his own misgivings of the writing life.

Now, a couple of months from my last post, it’s time for me to open up and figure out how to get back to business. Is there a business to get back to? While I’ve been toiling away at personal and professional pursuits, I’ve noticed that the academic aspects of the post-MFA life are slowly dissipating from my consciousness. Is it relevant to call this collection of words on the web “After the MFA” anymore?

I don’t want to misrepresent what I’m trying to do here, but I don’t necessarily want to change the focus or turn it into a vanity website that no one cares about except friends and family. When I started this site, I was actively trying to sort out my life after my MFA. At the time my thoughts were very much like this:

“I want to teach. Why can’t I teach? I need to get published. I want to get published. How do I get published? Are my former classmates getting book deals? Why can’t I revise this stupid story?” And so on.

Now, I feel like I’m more consumed with earning a living at what I’m doing, finding small and consistent moments to write, and continuing to learn about different genres, styles, and modes of communication. I won’t go so far as saying that the short story or literary fiction is dead. Plenty of other people are generating good click-throughs making bold (and ultimately irrelevant, as something always comes along to prove such pontifications wrong) statements like that. But I will go so far as to say that the general format of short-story writing that I learned in my MFA program has proven to be unsatisfying for me in recent times. This article in Wired, claims science fiction is the “last bastion” of writing that really makes you think, and it spoke for a lot of what’s been going through my critical mind lately–not that I think science fiction is the answer, necessarily.

For now, I think getting back to business will be keeping the discussion flowing about the so-called writing life–learning from people who read and comment here. I have some interviews I should do with some post-MFAers who are doing unique things (if you think that describes you, please get in touch). And as my interest and eligibility to teach writing starts to wane, I imagine I’ll be talking about that less frequently. But there’s still plenty learn and earn.

Favorite thing about 2007: starting and finishing a one-hour television pilot script.
Least favorite thing about 2007: getting bed bugs (goddamn you, New York City)

I have to admit that I’ve been fairly lucky as a writer. From time to time, I’ve been favored by flashes of good fortune, but the possibility of not selling my book is starting to get to me. I’m beginning to question my writing skills. I’m questioning my timing. I feel like my short stories must be too long. I feel demoralized. I’m afraid I’m going to run out of agencies, contests, and publishers to submit to. I check my inbox all the time looking for some sliver of hope. I realize the short fiction market is small, but that’s little consolation. I feel stupid for not having written a novel instead of a short story collection–I mean why didn’t I get a clue? Nobody buys short fiction anymore. I wonder whether I wasted all those nights writing a collection of (I think) thoughtful and well constructed stories that will sit in a drawer (well, not even in a drawer but on an external hard drive) until I die.

I feel stuck between things: on the one side a homeless short story collection and on the other a novel that probably (if I’m good and productive) won’t be finished until 2010. Yep, I’m officially depressed about writing.

So I turn to the awesome After the MFA community. Any thoughts? Anyone feel the same way I do? Any suggestions? How do you deal with the constant flow of rejection? How do you deal with frustration?

Cheers
Armand