Writing After the MFA
So. Writing.
I wonder how other writers deal with transition and change. Because I don't seem to be dealing all that well with it. At least, not in the sense that I can handle both change and writing at once. Part of it, certainly, is the end of the MFA. A post-MFA hangover, maybe, that is making it hard to go back to the blank page. Ohgod, I think, I don't know how a story works. I mean, who is to say I wasn't faking it the last two years? Where are my ideas? It turns out that without that STORY DUE IN CLASS deadline looming all of my ideas have turned into tiny puffs of cotton, easily lost with a strong breeze or exasperated sigh. And I do seem to sigh a lot.
Part of it, too, is looking for and applying to jobs and going grocery shopping and keeping a worried eye on my bank account and cuddling and hanging out and writing e-mails and making dinner and playing Words With Friends on my iPhone and reading and staring out the window. Life, that is. A new one without the demands of MFA life or my writing support group meeting once a week. Getting back into action (writing) is hard. This is not exactly news. Eileen wrote about it some weeks ago, returning from the Oydssey workshop. Lori Rader Day just wrote a great post about getting back to work at the end of summer, for both herself and her students. Professors warned us about it. Yet, here I am, in a familiar and worn out boat, having written nearly nothing since leaving San Francisco.
So, how do you do it? Do you just, eventually, put your butt back in the chair and start hitting the keys? Do you trick yourself? Set up an elaborate reward system? Give yourself a stern peptalk every morning in the mirror?
I think a bit of where I'm stuck is with the question of if I should move on, or not. The stories that are in my thesis are good stories. I like a couple more than others and I have an obvious favorite. A couple are merely fine and are not, truly, living up to their potential. I think the standard advice is that I need to give them time to breath, I need to let them sit in a drawer and think about something else. I thought that'd be easy. And those first days and weeks after the end, as I was driving back with my father, I did feel a sense of relief. I wasn't worrying about those stories, they were done and in a box, locked into a closet in the MFA office. Inaccessible. But now I'm back home with my computer and those same word documents and I am thinking about sending them out and all of a sudden it has become tempting to dive back into them, just you know, to fiddle or fix or tinker or improve.
This, I should resist. I am starting to send out stories (a post on that later this week) and I don't need to be obsessing about work that I'm also submitting. I know that is a recipe for slow insanity.
But what next? More stories? A novel? Do I have a novel in me? How do I know when I do? I want to write a novel. I think I have the start of one, in a story I wrote in the spring. I'm unsure, though. You know how when you're single and you really want a relationship someone will always come along to tell you that you need to stop looking, because only when you're not looking is when you find love? I feel a little like that, as if my reasons for wanting to try my hand at a novel aren't pure enough. I want to write a novel to teach myself how to write a novel. I want to try because what if I'm like so many other writers, who need to write one that will remain forever in a drawer, before I can write the next (debut) one? What if I'm not a novelist at all? I'd like to find these things out sooner rather than later. But somehow I feel like maybe those aren't the right reasons (even if they are mine).
Yet. I know I haven't written the best stories I can. My sweet little thesis stories are just the beginning. I think I know that. I'd like to write stories I love as fiercely as I love stories other people have written. Maybe that's not possible. But I want to try that, too, and find out. Is that a pure enough intention?
Do I do both?
Anyway. It's all hard and confusing and I know what the cure for a hangover is. Hair of the dog, right? So I need to get back to writing, one way or another, with pure or muddied up intentions.
Monday, September 20, 2010 at 8:30AM
Reader Comments (4)
My thesis stories are mostly in a drawer. I wanted to write a novel to see if I could, so I did. But as for advice, I'd say work on what thrills you most right now. You need the enthusiasm in order to get back into the rhythm of writing. I also agree with your plan not to nitpick stuff you're sending out---I hate that.
Oh, and thanks for the name check and link.
You're welcome, Lori. I'm excited to see how your students (and you!) do with the challenge! And thanks much for the advice. Writing is supposed to be fun, on some level, even when it's awful. It's good to be reminded of that.
Margaret why don't you just expand upon what you just wrote and turn it into a novel.