Now More Than Ever

I write today from the oldest writing conference in the nation: Bread Loaf. I first visited here as a Waiter in 2016. I met my agent PJ Mark here and made many friends. Now, I’m faculty. It’s amazing to consider how much the world has changed since then, and perhaps one day I’ll break down some of those and changes in a later post. For now, I’ll say the weather is amazing as are the views and the contributors. I have a hard time not fan-boying over my amazing colleagues.

One thing I know is that writers need each other. I’ve traveled all summer to teach (Longleaf, Randolph College, Maine Media, Sewanee, and now here.) Hot teacher summer, indeed. Everyone has done a good job of providing a safe set of interactions in this time of COVID. And I continue to walk away enlightened and inspired.

Speaking of which, my friends at Millsaps College invited me to come talk to some high school students in the McMullen Young Writers Workshop recently. Below are my written comments from that event. However, I used audio-visual elements at the college. Also, I nearly always improvise when I talk in-person.

Oh. And before I forget!

1. I’m teaching my first class with the wildly successful The Work Room. Hundreds have signed up for these sessions in the past. Don’t miss out. You will grow as a writer!

2. My short story collection’s one year anniversary was August 17. I’m so happy for how the work has been embraced by my readers. Get your copy of the paperback with that stunning cover.

3. That book is up for something. You can help me by voting soon.

….

Creative writing is an odd career choice, I must admit. First of all, is it even a career? By definition, a career is something that offers stability, dignity, and status. I’m a former corporate lawyer and can attest that my old career offered heaps of all three conditions. I had an obscene salary by southern standards although my New York and Los Angles based friends would probably have turned their noses up at my pay checks. Some of you are from wealthy families. The rest of you are middle class, which is sometimes code for broke but also code for rich too. And yes, some of you are quite poor, but maybe you don’t know it. In America, a nation of equality, we’re all middle class. The only people who admit being rich are rappers. And we have no word for poverty. Or rather when someone says they’re in poverty, we can’t hear them. Mothers don’t tell their children they’re poor because poverty is a curse in a land built on currency.

White collar jobs, by definition, offer dignity. They require pantsuits and skirt suits and even if the office is business casual your shirt better know what an iron is or you’re not going to last long. But writers are not subject to dress codes. In this line of work, you can wear whatever you want. You write at home or in a coffeeshop. The fashion police don’t have jurisdiction in those venues. The tradeoff is that no one will call you sir or misses or whatever other honorific will likely be out of favor in 10 years.

And what is status but a substitute word for power. If you have the right kind of status, you can enter virtually any room and feel welcomed. Admired. I don’t know. Writers are built different. Yes, we are admired when people know who we are, but lacking a uniform or dress code, they often don’t recognize us. We’re not chefs. We don’t wear funny tall hats. When others do recognize us, sometimes we get tightlipped. After all, writers are observers.

We notice details. And people. We catalogue both. If you chew with your mouth open while we eat dinner, I can guarantee it’ll wind up in a story or poem I’m writing. Sorry. Not sorry.

The other day I saw a post by George Saunders, the acclaimed author and teacher, where he explained that he has to hustle to make it. He teaches at a prestigious university and writes the kind of books that a president like Obama puts on his must reading list. He didn’t make Trump’s list. Sorry to say that name—Obama…And Trump. I know people are sensitive to politics right now. And when I say right now I mean for the last five years, 10 years, 25 years, 100 years. And how can we not be when the world seems to be spinning a little bit faster than it used to?

And that’s what I want to talk about. Your place as a creative person in this world today.

By Saunders own admission, he hustles. He teaches and is beloved by his students as far as I can tell. He writes fantastic books (I use that descriptor advisedly, both in the genre and superlative sense) and receives good advances and royalties for them. He even likes his working life. But admits it can be a lot to do. This talk isn’t about Saunders—whose work I enjoy—but he makes a good stand-in for so many of us who “write for a living.” Writing for a living means we do plenty of other things to live. This is one more reason we’re not like, say, physicians. I don’t know a single vascular surgeon (yes, I know some vascular surgeons) who also teach high school classes or work in libraries or bartend on the side. Imagine you catch an Uber and Snoop is driving it and you’re like “Snoop what’s popping?” and he’s like “I had to cover the insurance on my house in Malibu, homie.”

But that’s the writer’s life. Running from pillar to post. Going to this place and that. That’s me right now. Saying these words to you.  

So what is it that we do that makes it worth it? The hustling? The occasional disrespect (“oh you’re writer! What of yours have I read?”)? The instability?

Let’s ponder a world without stories. You’ve heard of stories. They’re great, right? We’ve been telling stories for a minute. The first people—no, not them. Not them either. I’m talking about the first humans in Africa 200,000 years ago gathered around fires at night to hear stories. Back in my day, like, 5 years ago, everyone went to darkened movie halls so that light could flicker before our eyes, fire-like, as we absorbed a new story. Today, you watch those stories at home, perhaps on the cold fire emanating from the device in your hand. Many of you or getting these words through a screen. You’re no different than your African ancestor in the village back in the year 198,000 BCE.

You start telling your stories as soon as you can talk. (“Mama, there’s a monster under the bed.” Or “At school, teacher told me I did good and look a my grade, I got an A.”) Over time, you develop your own writing aesthetic. Maybe you only write Euphoria fan fiction or Squid Game poetry, but it’s yours and that means something. At some point you discover the power of your writing means something to others. You read a poem and when you finish someone is sitting there, mouth open, wondering how you made those images move in their mind, those emotions move in their chest. Or you read a few pages of your story and when you look up someone is crying.

I finished a book recently called Luster. It’s by Raven Leilani. It came out back in 2020 and I bought it not long after, but only just read it. I’m always behind on my reading. That’s just a fact I accept. I knew the book was great because my friends told me so. I knew Ms. Leilani is a brilliant writer for the same reason. But I only just read it. Boy! What a book. The main character is a young, Black woman living in New York. She’s looking for love, sure, but also herself. The sentences are god-level in their clarity, dexterity, and surprise. This is not a book review. Just thoughts. I’m not a young, Black woman living in New York. My writing concerns are not that similar Raven’s. And yet, I have to tell you, the book made me feel a lot less crazy. The story acknowledged that life is complex, strange, stressful, glowing with possibility. I could say the same about the work of any number of other writers I love like Robert Jones, Deesha Philyaw, Mitchell S. Jackson, Kiese Laymon, Roxanne Gay, etc. But my point is that I felt a connection.

That connection is one that I cannot find on cable news or social media. Honestly, I rarely find it in film, and I’m a film fanatic. (I watch about 90 movies per year.).

The written word is special because of its intimacy. In a world, in which we all walk around with all these thoughts darting around inside our skulls like frightened kittens and in which we can’t beam those thoughts into the minds of others, a good story or poem is as close as we can get.

Stories have a monumental force to them. I’ve seen some of the reading lists of figures like MLK, Toni Morrison, or what have you. They read widely. And not just from their own communities. They read the stories of people who were not like them in order to understand the world.

Your job as a creator is to open a portal of connection. A door that reminds us that we all exist together on this flawed plane. The world explodes into chaos when we forget that we are one.