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.

This Morning’s Reading

A clear winner in P&W’s litmag Q&A, and some thoughts on R. T. Smith…

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Looks Like We Should All Look Into n+1

The current issue of Poets & Writers has a one-pager titled “The Journals Agents Are Reading” (pg. 82)—an enticing bit of headline-writing for writers with better submission habits than my own. (Definitely something I need to work on.) Predictably, the agents interviewed, for the most part, demurred at choosing actual “favorites,” but exceptions to that rule produced a clear winner: Three of ten agents actually did choose a favorite, and it was the relatively new journal n+1.

Said Chris Parris-Lamb of the Gernet Company: “That would be n+1. There are other places I turn to first for short fiction, but n+1 is the only magazine I read from cover to cover.”

And Jim Rutman of Sterling Lord Literistic: “I think I will risk minor ridicule for pretension and go with the still young upstart n+1.

And finally, Anna Stein of Aitken Alexander: “I have to say, for now, n+1. They came on the scene only a few years ago, but they’ve introduced the kinds of writers that no one else would go near, and I’m talking about important literary writers who push the envelope (and whom we see six months later in the New Yorker…)

Of course, there are a lot of other great recommendations and insights in the article, but I think it’s safe to say that if you’re as out of it as I am and haven’t yet had a gander at n+1, now might be the time to do so.

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R. T. Smith Serves Up “Straight Shots”

One of my favorite litmags—one of the few I subscribe to and read cover to cover on a regular basis—is The Missouri Review. The current issue features a short piece from a writer I’d never read before, though I expect many of you will know him well: R. T. Smith has been published in Best American and the Pushcart Anthology, and has a number of story collections in print. But it appears his recent works—including this wonderful story, “First Meeting,” in The Missouri Review—have been short monologues from sometimes hateful, sometimes lovable, but always troubled characters. In “First Meeting,” we hear a despicable alcoholic’s lengthy monologue at his first AA meeting:

“Only a fool tries to get between a man and his story. Listen up, I am in constant search for His will on the questions of my future behavior and all other matters. I go down to the Maury’s snake turn, where the old dam left a spillway, and there I stare at the pure white water tumbling and parley with the Man Himself, as I understand Him, and He listens and gives me signs. It was not for nothing He let me be hauled back from the flames of Hell on three occasions, and I can tell by your scoffing looks and righteous sounds that you believe yourselves better than me, more in tune with rescue and the Higher Power, maybe based on some quota of meetings or agreement to forgive each other, though not a one of you has ever put a heel on the other’s neck.”

Smith compares these short pieces to traditional “stories” (even questioning whether they are “stories” at all), and concludes that, if a story is “a full pitcher of plantation punch meant to be savored gradually,” these short pieces are “more akin to straight shots, undiluted, brooking little restraint, down the hatch with full burn.” I would agree with that assessment, and would add that Smith has, with this one at least, achieved the story writer’s ultimate goal of packing a boxcar full of tense intimacy and emotion into an easy flow of words that can easily be consumed in 20 minutes time.