I know, I know. ” Have I got a deal for you!” sounds like a line from a late night TV infomercial. But I do have a deal. I also know that there are lots of wannabe/would be/could be writers out there who want to write and have yet summon enough internal fortitude to put their butts in a chair, their fingers on a keyboard, and START.
My intention here is to be the catalyst that will get some of those folks who have been talking about writing to stop talking and start doing!!! And that’s my deal.
The last two weeks in May, I’ll be leading a writing workshop on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson. You can learn more about the course and find registration information here: http://www.library.arizona.edu/news/entries/view/2852
You may be saying, wait a minute, the U of A. Isn’t that where she wasn’t allowed to TAKE a Creative Writing class, and now she’s going to be TEACHING one? That’s all true, but that ancient history also water under the bridge in a writing career that spans thirty years and now includes my having written more than 50!!! books. I believe it’s safe to say that I’m over it. As you can see, just because that one guy wouldn’t let me into his class didn’t automatically preclude me from becoming a writer.
About ten books into my writing life, I realized there was now a new guy running the U of A’s Creative Writing Program. I called him up, asking if he didn’t want me to come down to Arizona from Seattle to be Writer in Residence for a semester in the sun. His response? Here it is, verbatim: Oh, we don’t do ANYTHING with popular fiction here! We only do LITERARY fiction! (Emphasis his.) By the way, that conversation was the real reason a former professor of Creative Writing from the University of Arizona ended up as the crazed killer in my next book and first hardback, Hour of the Hunter.
Undaunted, I took my non-literary little self back to my computer and continued whaling away at my non-literary but reasonably popular books.
Over the years, I’ve met more than a few folks who have graduated with MFAs in Creative Writing from any number of different schools. What I’ve found shocking is that the vast majority of them are not writing! Rather than encouraging people to write, the unrelenting focus on “literary fiction” strangled their creativity and stifled their ambitions.
And that’s the whole point of my course. I want the people who come to that class to come prepared to WRITE!!! I want them to find something they really care about and then I expect to give them both the permission and focus to actually do it.
In 1982, a woman in my Dale Carnegie class, Carol Erickson, in a single sentence, gave me the impetus to sit down and write my first book. And I’d like my course, The Art and Business of Writing, to do the same thing for people who have always wanted to write but who have yet to give themselves permission to start.
I know that there are almost 300 people in my database with the word “wannabe” in the note section of their records. Even if you’re from out of town or out of state, you might consider coming to Arizona and sending yourself to “summer school” for two weeks. Yes, it’ll be hot in Tucson at the end of May, but a little heat won’t kill you. Besides, with summer coming on, you should be able to find reasonably priced hotel accommodations near the campus.
But wait, there’s more…
For those of you who think you’re “too old” to start now, let me refer you to And Ladies of The Club. That was a mega-bestseller in the mid-eighties written by a first time novelist, Helen Hooven Santmyer who also happened to be in her eighties when her first book was published.
Come to the class. Get to work. How old will you be if you don’t?
Sadly, I am a wannabe that DOES write, but I am terribly sporadic about it. I just let life get in the way too much! I was laid off awhile back and thought I could use that time to finally write and I did manage to bang out about 90 pages, but again….life. I was also primary caregiver for my handicapped mother at the time (I actually volunteered to be laid off because I was needing at least 2 months off for her to have surgery, so why not just lay me off instead of somebody else….did us all a favor). Apparently multiple interruptions per day (I need a drink, I dropped the TV remote, I have to go to the bathroom, is it time for a pain pill, etc.) just mess with my concentration!
Now she’s in assisted living so I need to take all that extra time I now have and GET TO IT. Sadly, no classes for me unless I get laid off again…..oh now that’s a scary thought! (Got my same job back 8 months later, lucky me.) However, this class sounds like a great idea. I never took any kind of writing class, but I know from my college days that a lot of the emphasis has been on “literary” fiction. (I seem to recall reading that Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol because his family was hungry and he thought a Christmas story would sell.) I have never much cared one way of the other if it is literary or popular fiction, or whatever name they want to call it. As far as I’m concerned you write what comes out of your head and if it’s good, it’s good!!!
I have never understood the distinction between popular fiction and literary fiction. All that runs through my mind is, so that means if I were to write something I should hope people wouldn’t read it for fear it might become popular? As in why bother? Even the book selling sites make the distinction between mysteries & thrillers, fiction and literature. Sorry to say I am not a wannabe writer, I would rather let the people with the talent do their thing. I’m the wannabe reader of popular fiction, I guess.
I still love how you turn the nincompoops of your life into bad or dead guys. As I read I am saying, I wonder what he did to tick her off?
I am a fan of and friend to Earlene Fowler, author of the Benni Harper mystery series and some main line novels as well. She recently sent me some correspondence with a quote from Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) :
“Everywhere I go I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.”
Hopefully, those stiflings will be of the literary variety.
Tony Hillerman once told me, “Literary fiction is where not much happens to people you don’t like very much.
I’m going to remember that quote, too! I miss Tony Hillerman.
As I read this I was getting so very excited and mentally placing myself in your classroom. Unfortunately my schedule won’t permit the two weeks at the end of May. I hope you do this again and that I can attend next time. I would love to soak up some of your wisdom and creativity- you already inspire me. 🙂
xox
I have loved to read since I learned how. I read almost everything except romance novels that have a lot of sex scenes (boring) and things written in dialect as I have a hard time figuring it out. Someone suggested to read it aloud, but that hasn’t helped me.
I love how people decide who is good and who isn’t. I can’t remember the writer, but he was world famous after WWII in England. His work was discussed and taught in college classes as a genius. There was one passage that reviewers always cited as being so important. He was asked about it in an interview. He said he didn’t remember it, but at the time he had a lot of bills to pay and had to produce something. I always get a laugh out of that story.
Popular or literary doesn’t really mean much. Being read does. Jance’s books always catch my fancy the first few paragraphs and I’m hooked. Moby Dick didn’t do that for me!
Oh how I wish I could come. I would be there in a heart beat but I am coming off a year long disability. If you come to Arizona State, in Tempe, that would be the one I could attend. PS. I graduated from there. How ever not where i took my Creative Writing course. I had one of the best teachers in high school, Mr. Saggio. I took the course @ Mesa Community College but that wasn’t my best experience either.
I, too, have been writing “sporadically,” but other than a brief stint reporting for the BISBEE OBSERVER have not been published (unless you include various newsletter articles and a couple of book reviews in the HOUSTON CHRONICLE many years ago). Have a short story done but haven’t submitted it.
I so appreciated your answering my email while I was still in Indiana; you are the best! Back in Bisbee now, so I could attend your class, but there are financial concerns.
As a high school English teacher, I asked students to “journal” with the understanding that they could write about anything without fear of correction. Of course we still did essays and such which were graded. A student asked once, “Why did you write ‘frog’ all over my paper?” He’d misread my abbreviation for fragment. The idea of the journal was simply to get them comfortable with writing. I’m still in touch with some of them on Facebook, and they seem to be doing fairly well. Thanks to you and others for all the great quotations!
Will you be doing another creative writing workshop next spring 2015?
Whether I do another class remains to be seen. It was hard work. The students said I was VERY demanding and expected a lot from them. It’s true. I did, and they delivered.
Have been proofreading and editing for years. Currently working on documents and other proofreading documents now.