Back to the Fiction!

Don’t get me wrong, I love my genre. Nonfiction moves me, thrills me, and inspires me. In short, it completes me. Okay, so maybe that was a little over the top, but you get the picture. I’m a big fan of nonfiction.

But, this quarter I’m hanging out in another fiction class and loving it. This form and theory class is looking at point of view and time. The reading list is awesome: To the Lighthouse, Cloud Atlas, A Mercy, As I Lay Dying, The Known World, Pedro Paramo, Runaway, and The Zero. Homegrown author and local hero Jess Walter will be in our last class to discuss his book. I can’t wait. (I just saw him at Auntie’s tonight, reading from his new book The Financial Lives of the Poets, which I bought but am not allowed to devour until all my course work is done.)

Meanwhile, I’m learning so much stuff. I mean, I’ve been reading fiction since I learned my letters, but this class is opening up my eyes to fiction elements I had no idea about. My fellow classmates are super smart and the discussion is enlightening, entertaining, and educational. I’m even looking forward to my struggle through Faulkner (who I’m not a big fan of) just to hear what their insight is.

This is going to be one fun, fun quarter!

Oh, and I’m also working with my thesis advisor on essay, after essay, after essay. I’m a little nervous about this, but more about that later.

-Åsa

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Critique—Helpful or Hurtful?

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with one of the fiction faculty members in my MFA program. Some of the second year nonfiction students have asked to switch advisers—something that sometimes occurs in all genres in our program. The instructor theorized that nonfiction students were more sensitive about their work because it describes actual events—reality—and is therefore more personal. This made me ponder if I react differently to critique of my fiction pieces than I do on my essays. What I found was the opposite of what the faculty member believed.

Our program requires all students to take at least two “out of genre” classes—one workshop and one form and theory. Currently, I’m in a fiction workshop where I read and critique my classmate’s short stories and two of my pieces go through the same treatment during the quarter. Our instructor is someone whose work I admire and he’s known in the program for doling out great tidbits of wisdom in his classes. So far, I’ve enjoyed just about every class.

There’s been a few of them though, where strange undercurrents between the fiction students have left me baffled. This is the third workshop these guys have together; they know each other’s writing extremely well and have studied the craft of fiction far longer than I have. Maybe they’re even a little tired of each other. Sometimes comments about a piece are delivered furiously, or another student’s question is shut down for being something the class has discussed “to death” during previous quarters. At the end of one of those discussions, I leave the classroom with a beginning headache and can’t wait to get home instead of our usual routine of a few beers at a local bar. My nonfiction workshops never seemed to have these strange twinges of anger in them.

 Maybe it’s because of the strange dynamic of my fiction workshop, or maybe it’s because I’m more comfortable with my own nonfiction peeps, but I’ve noticed that I react more emotionally to  the critique I receive of my short stories than my essays. I’ve tried to analyze why this is.

The best I can come up with is that when someone gives me feedback on my nonfiction, I don’t take it personally because I didn’t create the event I’m trying to describe. It actually did happen. If the essay isn’t working, it’s because I’ve done a bad job of focusing the lens on what I’m trying to portray. I’m grateful for any constructive feedback that will help me do a better job in the next draft.

When I write a short story though, I’ve made something new and am controlling the characters on the page much more deliberately. When someone critiques my creation, I react more emotionally because the world and people of my story is a direct extension of me—there’s a little bit of me in each one of them. If a character is said to not be boring or flat I project that to apply directly to me—my personality is also boring and flat.
 
When I talked about my first fiction piece being workshopped to a friend who’s a poetry student, she paraphrased someone whose name I don’t remember (a later internet search revealed that it might have been Tom Clancy): “the difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction has to be believable.” 
 
Maybe that’s why I react more emotionally to when my fiction is critiqued. Maybe I’m actually hearing my fellow students saying: “I don’t believe you.”

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Classes Started

Wow! The time is just flying by as I try to stay on top of teaching, as well as, taking classes. It is painfully obvious that this new schedule is going to require some adjustment. I’m fairly sure that I’m going to have to choose between eating and sleeping because there’s not enough time to do both. I’m also not sure how much actual writing I’m going to get done. At the moment it seems like I’ll be doing a lot of writing about writing, reading about writing, and reading other people’s writing, but not so much of my own writing.

I’m in the non-fiction track of my MFA in creative writing, so I’m learning so much new stuff. Most of my writing so far has been fiction. One of the classes I’m taking this quarter involves learning how to write profiles about other people’s lives. We read a book a week and then try to deconstruct it to learn all of the author’s tricks for making a compelling story. This class is kicking my butt and I’m struggling trying to read books as a writer, in other words, read it to figure out its formula rather than paying attention to its content. I wish I could show you all the essays my brilliant and smart classmates writes every week, but instead, you’ll have to make do with what I come up with. This is also my sneaky way of keeping up with posting something on the blog in-between keeping up with my assignments. So, the next few posts will probably be about brilliant books read in my profile class. Hope you’ll enjoy them if you’ve already read the book and that it will wet your appetite to get the book if you haven’t.

Also, check out the link to my program, Eastern Washington Univeristy’s Inland Northwest Center for Writers.

Posted in Fiction vs. Non Fiction, MFA, Non Fiction Writing | Comments »