Thoughts on the Creative Process
Published September 27th, 2011 | 
Over the years, I’ve developed a healthy distaste for books about writing — you know, those self-help/how to books on the creative writing process. How to Write a Novel in Two Weeks or Channeling Your Inner Bestseller, or whatever the fuck. They talk about writing as if producing a novel or screenplay is the same as manufacturing industrial bearings. As if there is a single system or method for getting to THE END. It’s bullshit, of course. Every writer has his own process. His own path. And it’s usually more of a non-linear, haphazard journey than a step-by-step process, full of private rituals, personal demons, etc. That being said, those writing books do give young writers hope and a false sense of security that sustains you through the first hundred rejections or so. Eventually, though, we learn to walk the walk without crutches or false wisdom and just learn to get to business on our own.
No Teachee No Writee
Published August 15th, 2011 | There is only one good reason to enroll in a graduate writing program. There are a bunch of bad reasons for enrolling in one. If you want to join the academic writing community and teaching creative writing, that’s a pretty good reason to become a creative writing student. If you want to learn to write, that’s pretty bad reason.
You may think I’m crazy, because the all the enticing literature coming out of Creative writing schools promise that you will be taught certain writerly disciplines that will ultimately make you into a seasoned professional writer.
What actually happens is that you sit around reading the writing of fellow classmates while they read your writing, then you all sit around class critiquing said writing. You will very seldom gain any real insight into your flaws as a writer. In fact, looking to your peers for help is akin to a woman asking on twitter what kind of boyfriend gift to buy. Once you weed out the critics who will never say anything negative about your writing and the ones who never say anything positive, you are left with the guy who’s obsessed with symbolism and the retired school teacher grammar nazi who frets over your spelling or a typo you didn’t catch. Then there is the guy who preferred that you protagonist have a certain color hair or be a smoker or non-smoker or whatever the hell else. The rest of the class will strongly agree or disagree with another student without offering a single independent original thought to back up their reasoning. Ultimately, the prof will play referee and may or may not offer constructive criticism of their own.
What won’t happen is you learning how to write. At best, the professor can only teach you how they write. And your fellow students are just as blind and ignorant as you are. You will exist in that little bubble until you graduate. So unless you are planning to teach or your particularly close to an influential professor who can help you get a literary agent, you will be on your own.
They Send Flowers for Birthdays and Funerals
Published June 21st, 2011 | I wrote a short story about a floral designer one time. It turned out to be one of my better stories despite the fact that I new nothing about custom floral arrangements. The story is set just a few days after 9/11. The main character is a former marine who works for a flower shop as a floral designer. Basically the man is a lonely drunk who spends his days “creating beauty for others even though he has nothing beautiful in his life to call his own.” He is still grieving the recent death of his mother and the end of a brief marriage some years prior to the story. He is trying to decide how to resolve his unrequited love for his next door neighbor, a school nurse somewhat younger than him who shares his feelings, but is frustrated by his lack of action.
When writing this story, I was fascinated by the symbolism of flowers as well as the Japanese art of floral arrangement. I liked the idea of a man who was living a dead life who worked with flowers (flowers being intimately associated with life and death). I also liked using the backdrop of 9/11 and the emotions that day stirred in the American psyche.
