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

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.

Aimed at amateur videomakers, but very pertinent to all storytelling.

“At some point, somebody’s gotta say ‘here’s why the hell you’re listening to this story.’”

[Inspired by a post at 43 folders]

It’s a simple notion–write your life in six measly words–that seems to have caught on: what started as a fun web project is now a book called “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.”Apparently, editors Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser’s (love that last name) quota for the obsure was woefully low; my entry appears on page 174, albeit with fine company. Even the New York Times and NPR are in on the half-dozen harps.

Nicely packaged book and a project inspired by a perfect example of le mot précis:”Baby shoes for sale. Never used.” Attributed to Hemingway, of course.

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)

“It’s a book,” he’d say. “You mean the story?” he’d ask.

It became a bit of a running joke in workshop, but the gist of his message was that academic-speak was not welcome in the discussion. I tended to agree, and not just to be a brown-noser.

Academic language may strive for specificity in its multisyllabic, complexified phrasing. All it ends up doing in a creative environment is separating us from the experience of a) creating and b) immersing in the creation.

I’m thinking about this as a result of reading Copyblogger’s article on the the subject of writing like a college student. Many people are bookmarking it on social bookmarking sites, so it’s a topic that resonates. The post’s focus is on copywriting, marketing, and blogging, but I think it holds true for all styles of writing. The article’s title claims “Writing Like a College Student Will Kill You Online.” Not just online. With the exception of the ivory towers, It’ll kill you everywhere.

Why obfuscate and put so much value on what I like to call $3-words, when simple, clear language transcends boundaries and gets your message to as many people as possible? The only answer I can come up with is that the writer of said precious words actually wants to erect boundaries, and only communicate to a select population.

I guess that’s cool for academics. I don’t want the way I write to keep people from being able to understand what I’m trying to say. That makes little sense to me. Guess it’s also reminds me why I never went for that PhD.

While I respectfully disagree with the recommendations for Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” (to me, the chapter on dialogue felt like the only fruitful discussion on writing in the whole book), there are some good books being discussed.

And, of course, there’s the requisite discussion about how true artists shouldn’t need to read “self-help books” and other such pontificating. Sure, a great deal of writing how-to books are horseshit, but I can’t imagine how anyone who loves writing can’t get something out of reading about the process and the craft.

Read the list.

Morbidly, I watched and learned about a brilliant writer from the Iowa Workshop, who published a first novel in 1972 called “The Stones of Summer.??? The novel receives a handful of reviews, they are mostly strong.

We later learn that the Mossman burnt himself out writing his first novel out of grad school. “The Stones of Summer??? isn’t published by one of the big houses. Mossman doesn’t promote the book. Then novel winds up filed on the Obscurity shelf. The writer goes on to a life of anxiety attacks, 20 years of welding, and caring for his elderly mother before the film director tracks him down.

All of this is woven around the discussion of one-hit wonder novels, from Harper Lee to Joseph Heller (sort of) to J.D. Salinger (technically) to a few other writers I had heard of but haven’t yet read. Now many of those books are on my Amazon list and I somehow, strangely, feel more charged (or thankfully just as charged as I did before) about keeping up with my craft.

I could have shuffled off to bed after watching “The Stone Reader??? feeling like the game is tricked against me and so many of us post-MFA writers. I could have looked at the view of the publishing world as the driven-by-chance, cannibalistic venture that it appears to be. There’s plenty of testimony to that effect. In the moview, the writer’s teachers, colleagues, even his agent add evidence to the fact that Mossman was an inevitable victim of the writing and publishing process. But — and here’s the rub — for all of them he was also that brief champion of art, unforgettable yet forgotten, burning like fire, and yet ultimately dimmed. We could all end up like this. But the trying, the effort, the possibility of one person reading that book and feeling something… It’s all worth it.

Check out the film, if you haven’t. Let me know what you think.

“Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” — Kurt Vonnegut

“Every man has his own patch of earth to cultivate. What’s important is that he dig deep.??? — José Saramago