Adventures in MFA Land

Before Shaughnessy: basic writing at Yale and Harvard, 1920-1960 by Kelly Ritter Introduction “Imagine, if you will, a first-year program at Equitable University that looks like this: A first-year writing curriculum with a menu of course options for incoming (and transfer) students, each with equal course credit, each with a small course capacity (of twelve to fifteen students), and each with a simple, objective name. One course is called “Writing 1.” The next is called “Writing 2.” The next is called “Writing 3.” Each course is regarded publicly—in all marketing for the institution as well as in communication with prospective students and their parents—as college-level, and incoming students are encouraged to choose, through a process of guided self-placement, which course along the sequence meets their initial needs. No student is called remedial or basic and certainly not precollege.”[i] In Before Shaughnessy: basic writing at Yale and Harvard, 1920-1960 Kelly Ritter propose...

Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is one of those books that people like to talk about, argue over even. I asked five people what Fight Club is “about,” you want to hear what they said? • 19 year-old male: “consumerism and the destruction of the human spirit.” • 41-year old female: “good and bad of a person, person confronting their own reality.” • 49-year-old male: “gay cruising.” • 21-year-old female: “dude who had insomnia and that was how he fell asleep.” • 32-year-old male: “what happens when people go to support groups.” Actually, I asked six. The sixth person, my 16-year-old son. His response, “I don’t know, is there anything to eat? When’s dinner?” Ironic when you consider one of the things people say Fight Club is about is the emasculating effect mothers, who smother their sons by providing too much for them and not allowing them to get tough, have on their sons in post-modern US. Who’s right, you want to know. What do I think the book is about, you ask. Here’s what it’...

--> 1. The writer writes the words. 2. The writer writes the words. 3. The reader reads the words. 4. There are no excuses for not writing. 5. There are no lies in fiction. 6. Trust the reader. These are the rules for write club.  Write club isn’t for everyone. Not everyone can understand what it’s like to put yourself out there, get beat down, and get back up. Every time you get up, someone will be there, ready to take you down. Whether or not you keep getting up, keep fighting, is up to you—but no matter what you have to follow the rules because there is no other way. No other choice. It isn’t publishing that matters, its writing. Writing is everything. It is everything and other people, people who don’t have the courage to write, try to publish, will try to stop you. Because they can’t stand that you are doing it. Getting back up and swinging. But interference won’t be tolerated. How do I know this? Chuck Palahniuk. He wrote Fight Club , t...

I recently read Walter J. Ong’s essay, “The Writer’s Audience is Always a Fiction,” in which he analyzes the concept of audience and the relationship of writer to audience. This essay caught my attention because he applies fiction techniques and concepts to essay writing. While this practice is now common, especially within the genre of creative non-fiction, this article was written thirty-five years ago. Perhaps Ong was among the first wave of academics to introduce fiction techniques into non-fiction writing. As I considered his essay, I wondered, though, if his blending was intentional. The reason I was not convinced that he did indeed mean to bring fiction concepts into non-fiction writing is because he backed his analysis of audience in essay with poetry and fiction examples without later coming back to clarify how or why those examples, from fiction, are reasonably applicable to non-fiction. Even though he did not clarify the connection, it was a meaningful one to me. In particul...