Problems of Young Writers

This is not the venue for this sort of thing, but no matter. It is a brief essay directed towards young writers, with problems.

I have seemingly been critical of my peers in the past, saying that their writing has often failed to impress or compel me, and that they bring a great amount of seriousness to it, not in content, but in attitude, that they cannot yet justify. I’ve had a deal of trouble articulating what it is that I take issue with and will try to write out, which I suppose is distantly ironic. What validity or significance does my opinion have? Only what you choose to give it.

The simplest problem with a young writer is that they have no sense of what is good and what is bad art, in a very general artistic sense; general by necessity of the trade. Writing workshops are based on this premise, that no one really knows what they’re doing and that good fiction can only emerge once a group of peers read it and critique it. This is a process done at all levels of creative writing, at all institutions with such a program. The highest levels of the department will tell you how necessary it is, and how writing is inherently a social, communal activity. I can disagree with them easily because I am a self-important, opinionated jerk, or something to that effect.

The amendment to their claim towards cooperative writing needs only be that the communal nature of it is essential to new, young writers who don’t have much to build on, and who are trying to understand how the form works, but not to the experienced writer who wants to go beyond what that process offers. The process of understanding can take years, decades, depending on dedication and other more uncontrollable, intrinsic factors. That’s part of why workshops are considered necessary at all levels; the process can be so long that it is not clear when the workshops are no longer needed. Understand that a writer is never finished learning from his work and from the work of others, and that the workshops are training-wheels, essential for only as long as the individual feels they are, and are eventually a limitation.

In workshops, if you do not know, a work in-progress is given to the other writers to read and critique; they make recommendations on how to strengthen the story. This experience is necessary to the young writer because you learn from the stories that don’t work and the ones that do and it’s really quite pleasant. Once you get into it, after a few years, you must learn which advice is good and which advice is bad, and if you don’t learn when to ignore advice, your piece will lose its sense of authorship. Or I suppose you’ll lose your sense of authorship over your piece. Ignoring the wrong advice is essential, and I’ve personally found at the undergraduate level, where writing for many is an occasional, cathartic hobby, that the creative judgment of my peers cannot always be trusted. I will expound on this in a moment.

There’s a fairly specific form of the short story that we are taught to obey, in dealing with orienting the reader’s expectations and guiding them to a specific, surprising peak, at which point they are made to sigh. But it is only an abstract necessity rather than a needed, practical form, and often workshop can force a story into a methodic form, superficially pleasing and pleasing the ‘graders’ of the story. (I certainly don’t mean to downplay the instructors; they are usually very talented, but talent cannot be taught). It is like baking cookies, and holding the notion that all good cookies are circular. Your squiggly-shaped cookie can work just as well, and can perhaps work better if the crevices allow for more chocolate chips, but for practical reasons you are taught that circular cookies are the ‘correct’ cookies. This is not the first time I’ve thought of writing in terms of cookies and professors have never really embraced this mode of discourse.

Occasionally I have seen some very talented people understand that the structure only needs to function on an implicit level, and write some darn good stories. Unfortunately I cannot articulate what the ‘form’ or structure that I’m purporting is advocated in workshops really is, not because we have a code of silence, but because it cannot be generalized and discussed outside the context of each individual story, unless you get into a Hollywood-esque discussion of plot points. The form is useful for inexperienced writers but becomes limiting later on.

Consider Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, which is essentially devoid of plot and so potent in all other inarticulatable things. It fits nowhere into the realm of story-telling that I’ve been taught. I’m no good with the mechanics of it but know that story to be something that succeeds greatly and could not come from a workshop. If it was workshopped, people would make all the wrong recommendations and ruin it, if the writer didn’t know to ignore it, because you cannot just trust the creative of judgment of people willy nilly. I think later on when you’ve invested much of your energy into your writing, and you still like to workshop, like so many published writers do, it might be to elucidate what the weak points of the piece are, to yourself. But because of the nature of our undergraduate workshops, in which we, the inexperienced, make recommendations in order to get credit for the class and to fill the space of a page, the critiques are done haphazardly and excessively. In the Hemingway story, young workshoppers would read it and ask, who are these people? What is their contextual situation? Where are they coming from and where are they going and why are they the way they are? What matters is answered in the story with precise ambiguity and what doesn’t matter is left for you to fill in. I’m half joking, as the story would probably be appreciated for what it is, but I thought I would mention a famous story so as to have an air of class.

Another problem with the young writer’s indecisiveness or ignorance of what is good or bad art, in the context of short stories, is that they do not know whether their own writing is of any sharable quality. This splits the young writers into two groups, not including those who simply don’t care about this sort of thing: those who assume their writing to be of worldly importance, containing profound truths, because no one tells them otherwise, and those who assume nothing of their own writing. The worldly group enjoys sharing their writing and often travels in flocks, and does public readings and that sort of thing, regardless of the quality of what is written. The second, more reserved group shares their writing only when they feel they’ve hit a good note, when the quality might be there. They are both perfectly good groups of people, you understand; the first group just doesn’t know better. A bit of self-advertisement is necessary no matter how humble you are, because a writer has no reason to keep going without readers. It’s a difficult paradox; you need long bouts of solitude to write, and yet afterwards, you desire the largest audience you can acquire for your work.

Trying to produce some good writing can be close to a full-time job, which means that college is a rather unfortunate time to try to make a lasting arrangement of words. You rarely have the opportunity to write because there are too many other deadlines to be concerned with. Of course outside of school, there’s virtually no way, financially, to pursue it as more than an after-hours hobby. I suppose you just have to manage work and play quite well, or consider prison, which would allow for the necessary time and solitude. But then I’ve read some limp manuscripts from incarcerated men as well.

I suspect an additional common flaw among young writers is our ignorance of past writing. This can be considered a flaw of the creative writing focus of this specific university. While reading published material occurs in the workshops, it isn’t much, and it’s usually contemporary stuff. There is a single class in the major devoted to reading short stories. Outside of that, there is no time for most young college student writers to read classic stories, and so we are often, in terms of past writing, blind mice with pens, monkeys with typewriters working at an invisible something. Some people do read a fair amount of modern writers, but using the contemporaries as the sole ingredient in the foundation is the same as walking through a modern art museum and then saying you know the history of art. It depends on what you want to do next, but there’s a bit more to it and it’s best to understand the past before moving on to something new.

In simpler, sparser words, if you are a young writer, read as much as you can and write as much as you can, and only share a bit of it.

If you choose to scoff at the thought I give to these sorts of things, then this essay does not concern you; if you wish to know about me and my own writing, well, I’ve not much to yet share with you, but I’ve some free time coming up.

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Eggs, Envelopes, Et Cetera

I am not in the clear state of mind that is required of focused, topical writing, but I am in many states of mind, and so I will provide you with a list of which the only cohesive factor is me.

1. I hate when someone sitting next to you, or in front of you, yawns and stretches, stretching so fully and satisfyingly that their limbs contort and their toes curl, and they grow nearly an inch; you see, they wave their arms about and smack me in the face. If you are quick, you might be able to dodge the stretching arms, but I am not quick in that way. And when you have been slapped, it is best to pretend that you really don't mind at all, if they offer apology. It isn't a big deal, it isn't. If anything you should have smacked my forehead harder. I was going to anyway, later today I think, so it's good that we got it taken care of.

2. Carrying a tiny umbrella makes me feel effeminate. The kind of mini mini compact umbrellas that are NASA-engineered to fold away into almost nothing, the kind that women carry in their purse. The kind that's in my man purse right now. It's a laptop bag, really, but it rarely carries my laptop.

I imagine real men--- lumber jacks and army rangers--- carry old fashioned three footers, or beach umbrellas, or just trudge through the rain, because it's the closest thing they'll get to a shower. There are easy phallic jokes for you to make. I've set them up for you; giggle with your friends as you please.

But I love toothpick umbrellas. This should not surprise you if you know me well. It should not surprise you if you don't know me well either, because it is not an interesting fact to begin with.

3. I was pointlessly licking a self-adhesive envelope the other day, the kind that has a peel-away sticker across the flap. I hadn't realized; it seemed to me that the glue had aged. I licked furiously. I made out with the envelope to no avail. But just as I was going to ask someone in the office for glue to seal the ancient parcel, or maybe a hot wax stamp, I realized the error of my ways and peeled the tongue-slathered wax paper off the sticker and closed the envelope. All's well that ends well, so long as you don't get a paper cut on your tongue.

4. I don't much like large sunglasses, because they so obscure a person's face that they impede upon vital nonverbal communication. The eyes say so much, but behind excessive designer-brand space goggles, I can't tell if you're scowling at me or just scowling in my general direction.

5. I find it difficult to order eggs at breakfast, or brunch, or whenever you might order eggs. There is an assumption made that you are well-versed in cooked-egg nomenclature, despite the inevitable fact that no one ever teaches you about the different ways to prepare an egg. Poached? I really have no clue what it means to poach something. I though poachers hunt tigers and rhinos; I don't think poached eggs are hunted and sold on the black market. I am not aware of the difference between hard boiling and soft boiling; I did not realize there were different ways to boil. Sunny-side up? What the hell does that mean? Is this what I missed by attending public schools? I suppose the yolk is the "sun," in a sprightly culinary metaphor, and I can picture what 'sunny-side up' might mean. Can you get an egg sunny-side down? Is that a nighttime egg? Can you get an eclipsed egg? A supernova egg? Or is there a limit to the functionality of the metaphor?

It's such nonsense to me that I don't order eggs for the inherent difficulty in it. But I have never been a large fan of eggs. I'm tired of the pro-egg agenda of the breakfascist Denny-stapo and their purported grand slams.


I will leave you with these thoughts, knowing that you face considerable difficulties in your time, and knowing that my head will pop if I don't transcribe my own.

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