Work Party

Good times at the Queens MFA Professional Development Weekend

I sit in my writing room looking out the window at a light rain falling on Silicon Valley—

Whoops, I’ve just committed one of the many sins of writing I was taught (but apparently never quite learned) during my years in the MFA in Writing Program at Queens University of Charlotte. This sin was labeled “The Weather Report,” and stressed in many a seminar and workshop by Pinckney Benedict, one of the more charismatic instructors in the program, and it goes something like this: Starting a piece with a broad-swath description of the “warm sun,” the “cool rain,” the “whistling wind,” or any other aspect of the natural environment—a.k.a. “the weather”—is cliché. Never, ever do it. Get into the action of the story, and do it fast. Never mind the fact that great writers have used The Weather Report with great success, or the fact that as I wrote that, I actually was sitting in my writing room, and I actually was looking out at the first rainy day of the fall here in Silicon Valley. Because using The Weather Report immediately pegs me as a loafer among modern authors, one who doesn’t have enough confidence in my story to jump right in and start telling it.

So, there you have your mini–writing lesson for the day.

All this is on my mind this morning as I reflect on the fifth or sixth biennial Queens MFA Professional Development Weekend, which I attended a couple weeks ago. The gathering allows graduates and some current students to participate in seminars, workshops, and readings, and to meet with influential editors and agents, and, of course, Queens faculty. I’ve found it to be worth the time and money, but for those who were unable to attend this year, this is the first in a series of blog posts where I’ll share what I thought were useful lessons I learned this time around (as I have done in the past).

But this post isn’t about writing lessons—other than the “Weather Report” lesson above, for which you are very welcome. This post is about the intangibles of an MFA program, and the important people who came into my life during my years at Queens. I entered Queens in 2006 at the age of 46, with ten years of college and two degrees under my belt. During those first two college stints, in my teens and twenties, then again in my mid-thirties, I made no lasting friendships. I held fast to the people close to me: my large family, my best friend / college roommate / best man (all one dude), and my wife. Having little understanding of who I was, let alone the confidence to project myself out into the world, I focused on work and career and social outings that often felt more obligation than celebration. Being a natural introvert who is drained rather than energized by social interaction, and a Virgo with a high bar for closeness, deep friendships were often fleeting or just too demanding for me.

Then I went to Queens, where I met the four people pictured with me here. The primary draw for my trip to Charlotte last week, in fact, was not Professional Development Weekend itself, but a too-long-awaited reunion with these friends and fellow writers. As expected, our rambling, heavily punctuated conversations lasted well into the wee hours without notice, until someone slid their wine glass aside and glanced at a phone clock reading 1:22 a.m. Alone, we’re typical writers, comfortable as ever with a page and a keyboard, but less so with actual people actually looking us in the eye. But together, we move as a five-person dynamo, charging into every situation with the chutzpah of a mob boss, not necessarily dominating the scene, but projecting something intangible that often draws people to us. And then there are even more connections, and more opportunities for all of us to shine as individuals, all because we shine so brightly as a group.

Surprisingly, this relationship with these late-in-life college pals has enhanced my friendships here at home, too. Having the repeated experience now of sitting comfortably for hours and hours discussing, emoting, invoking, exploring, or just plain blurting shit out, has changed me. And it’s carried into all the situations with all the friends I’ve gained along the way: no urgency to speak, or to know, or to be something more than I am, just a simple desire to be there for as long as I can manage it. So, that was weird. What started out as a blog post on writing craft suddenly turned into a declaration of friendship. Whatever. I’m cool with that.

And now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, you can stay tuned for more from Professional Development Weekend, consisting mostly of tips on craft and promotion.