A Writer’s Notebook: writers talk writing

Writer/tattoo artist Michelle Modesto on writing groups and online writing classes

[As you can see, this is another continuation of a long e-mail exchange. This, too, was a terrific conversation, again stemming from critiques, but it also is too long for this blog post. This exchange comes from somewhere in the middle of that long conversation.]

From: Michelle Modesto

Sent: Sunday, May 09, 2010 10:28 AM

To: Sam Snoek-Brown

Subject: RE: My short story

I wanted to pick your brain on something. I’ve learned that unfortunately there are no schools in my area that offer an MFA. Do you know of any reputable ways for me to get something online? A girl I know went through some online university to get a degree in creative writing. We’d meet up and she d ask me to translate for her — obviously it wasn’t a very good school if she s asking me — someone who doesn’t even have a GED — for answers. They were weird questions like, what’s a throughline, or what’s a parallel phrase, which obviously the answer is in the key words, but I thought they were weird questions. How do those things make you a better creative writer? Or is it like normal school where you learn the basics too? What really confused me were her text books. They were books you can buy at Barnes and Noble. If you can buy it in a book store, what’s the point in the school? Then another thing that lost me was the chapters she sent in for grading. I’m not typically one to shit-talk about other writers, but the writing was pretty terrible. They were honest in telling her she wrote in fragments, but still she received a 92%. Then after she asked me what writing in fragments means. I tried to show, and explain what I knew about it, but she doesn’t see them. So all of this happened at the end of her schooling and I don’t feel she’s in any better position than when she first started. This is my fear of writing classes. I think maybe she fell into a scam, though apparently this site was recommended by Writer’s Digest.

I own a business so I can’t leave to go to school, so really my only chance is to do it online, but I want it to be legit. Do you have any suggestions?

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From: Sam Snoek-Brown

Sent: Sunday, May 09, 2010 1:23 PM

To: Michelle Modesto

Subject: RE: My short story

I want to say there are some online writing classes that are legit. There certainly ought to be — I believe in the potential of online instruction and can think of a handful of ways I’d approach teaching such a class myself. But I believe even more in the essential value of face-to-face education, of the kind of intellectual give-and-take that can only happen in a classroom. Online, you can accomplish a lot of good instruction, but instruction is just feeding people information; in my book, education requires dialogue, it requires interaction. And the kind of instruction you’re describing, I’m sad to said, is all too common. My sister, who is back in school trying to finish an associates degree, took an online creative writing class and shared her reactions to it — she described the same kind of low-expectation, term-heavy rote approach you are.

That isn’t to say terminology is unimportant. You’re right that it lays a foundation, if not of skills then at least of terminology, so we writers can all speak the same language when we tear apart each other’s work. It’s the same in any field, really. You can tell me Van Gogh’s stippling is amazing, but unless I know what that refers to, all I see are dots. I can tell you that your throughline has problems, but that’s not going to help you fix your story if you don’t know what a throughline is.

The problems start when people start assuming that the terminology is all there is. That’s where your Barnes & Noble textbooks come into play: They operate on the assumption that if you can define the parts of writing, the act of writing will take care of itself. They act as though, if you understand what a throughline is, you’ll be able to write the next great novel. Which is bullshit. I remember a few years ago I was at a national conference for AWP (the Association of Writers and Writing Programs), and I attended an address from novelist Walter Mosley. Mosley was at the conference shilling his new writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, and his whole address consisted mainly of him reading from his introduction. (I know this because, as a promotional gimmick, his publishers had printed the introduction as a small chapbook, so I was reading along as he spoke.) He ran through the usual tricks and jargon, and then, after about 20 minutes, he read the conclusion to his intro: “Once you read these few pages, I believe that you will be prepared to write a book of your own. From that point on, all you’ll need is the desire and the will to write your novel.”

I wanted to stand up in the huge banquet hall and shout at him: “Are you fucking kidding me!? ALL we need is desire and the will to write? Those are the hardest parts, you ass!”

Instead, I just walked out.

What (good) writing groups and (good) classroom-based coursework give you, and what textbooks and online classes will NEVER be able to fully replicate, is the support of likeminded people and the honesty and immediacy of intimate feedback. Good writing programs are designed to give you more than just tools and tricks — they are supposed to help you discover and develop the will to write and the confidence of knowing what the hell you’re doing.

But I still say there is a way to get this without having to abandon your day job. I still say the low-residency option is the ideal compromise: it gives you the flexibility and independence of an online course with the legitimacy of a professor-student relationship and the (occasional) intimacy of a workshop environment.

Not all programs are created equal, and not are writers are created equal: There are some people who can get more out of an online course than the course itself puts in, for example, and there are certainly people who have no business sitting in a traditional workshop. Likewise, there are programs that exist more for money or status than for their students, just as there are programs that have a LOT to offer students but can’t get the funding to excel.

The best way to find out which will suit you is to decide what sort of writer you want to be. The fact that we’re even having this conversation, though, suggests that you’re more interested in the craft of writing than in the business of writing, which means you’d rather write well than write rich. That means you should stop paying attention to what commercial, for-profit magazines like Writer’s Digest have to say and start looking at the professional magazines like Poets & Writers or, better still, The Writer’s Chronicle (which is published by AWP). They still sell ads to the highest bidder, because they have to stay afloat like everyone else, but they’re primarily supported by people on the craft side of things more than by the commercial side, so their articles are less biased and their classified ads more promising. If you want to find a good writing program — even an online one, if a good one even exists — that’s where you want to start looking.

I’ll nose around there myself (I’m a member of AWP, so I can search their database online) and see if I turn up anything interesting. And in the meantime, head down to your local library and find the back issues of the New Yorker. You’re looking for the issue from June 8 & 15, 2009; on page 106, there’s a brilliant critical article called “Can You Teach Creative Writing?” which answers your questions a hell of a lot better than I just did.

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