I'm getting nervous. In two weeks, I will be in Washington, D.C., at the Association of Writing Programs conference. I'm nervous for several reasons: (1) I'm worried my current wardrobe won't measure up and I'll be caught out by this blogger , who tracks bad fashion at the AWP (2) I'm still a little afraid of flying and (3)I'll once again be among my peers. But as challenging as 1 and 2 could be, it's really #3 I'm worried about.
For the past slightly over a year, I've had the luxury of being able to work on my novel and teach pretty much what I want to, without the scrutiny of other academics. Because I teach at the prison, most people don't care what I teach, as long as I'm engaging the students. Because I'm an adjunct, as long as my evaluations are good, nobody says anything to me, and for that I am very grateful. For so many years, I was scrutinized so much by so many different people, and while some of their criticism was sound, so much of it, I felt, had no bearing on me as either a writer or a teacher. I often felt like people were trying to turn me into something I was not, to make me squeeze inside their dominant and uncontested paradigms.
In two weeks, I'm supposed to present on a panel about bringing in the works of local writers into the creative writing classroom, and my portion of the panel is to talk about how I bring in local writers on the last day of every fiction seminar to discuss the business of writing. You wouldn't think this would be controversial, but it is. After all, D.W. Fenza, the very president of the AWP has the position that "an artist must often stand aloof from crass considerations, or away from the shallows of a spreadsheet" , which makes even addressing the business side of things at all a bit dicey in the creative writing academic community.
But my position is that we have to address it, at least a little bit, and why not bring in local commercial writers to help us do that? The thing is, that as soon as I use the word commercial, I have a feeling that I'm going to ruffle some feathers, so I'm struggling to make my talk acceptable to the academic audience. And yet part of me just wants to go all out and say what I want to say. But it's a hard call, because I'm still undergoing a paradigm shift of sorts myself, and still trying to figure out where I as a writer stand between two very different ways of thinking about writing. In many ways, 2010 was one of the hardest years of my life due to the enormous cognitive shift from sixteen years of graduate school (yes, sixteen years!) to life with one foot in and one foot out of academia. Right now I still straddle the fence. But I know where I want to be and I know where I want to end up, and part of me wishes I could just say it.
I wish I could challenge D. W. Fenza directly, to say that the most creative artists are still able to be creative even with those "crass considerations," and that sometimes deadlines and contracts are a good thing. That agents and editors are not always the dampening of a creative fire, but sometimes the very people who reignite it. That it takes more skill and more analytical ability to plot out a mystery or a thriller than it does to write a piece of literary short fiction. That sometimes, the confines of a genre are not a bad thing, and that the artist can exercise creativity within those confines. In short, I wish I could say that the very business aspects of writing are what finally shook me out of my artistic stupor and actually made me take myself seriously and start working. And being a working artist is not at all bad.
Given the audience, I probably won't say much of this, or even any of it, but I really wish I could. And if I did, I really wish they'd listen.
For the past slightly over a year, I've had the luxury of being able to work on my novel and teach pretty much what I want to, without the scrutiny of other academics. Because I teach at the prison, most people don't care what I teach, as long as I'm engaging the students. Because I'm an adjunct, as long as my evaluations are good, nobody says anything to me, and for that I am very grateful. For so many years, I was scrutinized so much by so many different people, and while some of their criticism was sound, so much of it, I felt, had no bearing on me as either a writer or a teacher. I often felt like people were trying to turn me into something I was not, to make me squeeze inside their dominant and uncontested paradigms.
In two weeks, I'm supposed to present on a panel about bringing in the works of local writers into the creative writing classroom, and my portion of the panel is to talk about how I bring in local writers on the last day of every fiction seminar to discuss the business of writing. You wouldn't think this would be controversial, but it is. After all, D.W. Fenza, the very president of the AWP has the position that "an artist must often stand aloof from crass considerations, or away from the shallows of a spreadsheet" , which makes even addressing the business side of things at all a bit dicey in the creative writing academic community.
But my position is that we have to address it, at least a little bit, and why not bring in local commercial writers to help us do that? The thing is, that as soon as I use the word commercial, I have a feeling that I'm going to ruffle some feathers, so I'm struggling to make my talk acceptable to the academic audience. And yet part of me just wants to go all out and say what I want to say. But it's a hard call, because I'm still undergoing a paradigm shift of sorts myself, and still trying to figure out where I as a writer stand between two very different ways of thinking about writing. In many ways, 2010 was one of the hardest years of my life due to the enormous cognitive shift from sixteen years of graduate school (yes, sixteen years!) to life with one foot in and one foot out of academia. Right now I still straddle the fence. But I know where I want to be and I know where I want to end up, and part of me wishes I could just say it.
I wish I could challenge D. W. Fenza directly, to say that the most creative artists are still able to be creative even with those "crass considerations," and that sometimes deadlines and contracts are a good thing. That agents and editors are not always the dampening of a creative fire, but sometimes the very people who reignite it. That it takes more skill and more analytical ability to plot out a mystery or a thriller than it does to write a piece of literary short fiction. That sometimes, the confines of a genre are not a bad thing, and that the artist can exercise creativity within those confines. In short, I wish I could say that the very business aspects of writing are what finally shook me out of my artistic stupor and actually made me take myself seriously and start working. And being a working artist is not at all bad.
Given the audience, I probably won't say much of this, or even any of it, but I really wish I could. And if I did, I really wish they'd listen.
Comments
LOL. Kidding on that part, but you know me. I do think art and commerce can peacefully coexist.
Good luck with that.
See you after I get back from Paris.
Love,
Joni
There will always be one or two people in the audience who nod their heads and totally get what you are saying, however you say it. They are the ones who will be your friends, colleagues, and mentors for life.
Go get em! Robin