How Studying Creative Writing Changed Everything: Part 3

The image above is the culmination...no, that's not quite right...the proof of the fact that I indeed did spend a few years in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, earning my MFA degree in creative writing. And the fact that it's crooked seems appropriate. It was a rough process. Rough and wonderful and one of the best things I've ever done.

At first, I was sure I'd made a huge error in deciding on this particular program, because of its location, because of its location, and because of its location. As it turned out, the train that ran half-a-block from the apartment I shared with fellow student, Angela Jane Fountas, the way it shook our windows every hour or so, the pea-green sky during tornado season, the town and university thick with a history that was hard to stomach—all of these things wound their way into my poetry collection. (The fact that AJ rescued me from a roach-infested apartment across the way, inviting me to live in hers, is a testament to the sort of people that that program attracted...or maybe to Seattle where AJ had recently lived...or to the Greeks who are AJ's people...).

In any case, I could do a little commercial for University of Alabama's MFA program right here (the optional fourth year they offer, the so-cool-you-want-to-eat-it literary magazine the Black Warrior Review, their awesome reading series, the visiting writer's program, and the quality of the other students you are in workshop with), but I won't.

What happened to me at grad school could happen to anyone at any creative writing program;

1) I read novels for homework. And poetry collections. And I wrote papers. And stories. And poems. And essays. (I also got introduced to the work of some writers who changed the way I wrote. Too numerous to mention here in full, but here are a few that come to mind: Janet Kauffman, Alice Notley, Tomaz Salamun, and Larissa Szporluk, to name just a few.)

2) I got to be an editor in chief of a literary magazine (I mean, come on, CHIEF, in my title? It was a dream come true...).

3) I had TIME (this was KEY for me...just the time) to figure out what I liked and why I liked it, and then change my mind.

4) I got to experiment and write badly and even, mid-stream, change genres.

5) I met some people who I have been friends with since and are some of the most important people in my life.

6) I became a teacher!

7) I became a writer.

7a) Graced one semester with a fellowship, I was only required to teach one class, and, being finished with my class credits, I was able to just write. And I wrote daily. I'd never done that before. And I haven't done it since. Not like that. But that laid the foundation, and was the first time I really felt like a writer. First time I wasn't doing it for anyone else, that I wasn't just writing in my journal anymore. I was learning a craft. A craft! I started to enjoy how my mind worked—especially when I was sitting at my desk with my notebook. I started to think: maybe I can do this. For a long time. Maybe forever.

7b) I'm still doing it.

7c) There were some years after grad school that I didn't write at all, and wondered if I ever would. It was when I stopped worrying about being "literary" that I started to write the work that would make me the most proud. But I never would have written that stuff unless I'd had my experience in school to write against.

Self-discovery (the most non-literary word there is) is really what happened. Who I was, my values, my beliefs (about God, love, staying alive or not staying alive), the downfalls in my own character—these all became unseparate from the poetry i was writing. Writing wasn't a thing I was doing. It just was. And is. And ever. And I'm so glad.