How to be a GOOD Creative Writing Student...Whatever the Hell That Means

O'er another long hiatus...wait, what hiatus?

I believe I've mentioned not using this space to bitch about writing and stuff, but that inevitably happens anyway, so why are you surprised? Ha, ha.

I did, however, want to pump this out given that it's been bothering me something fierce, and it's an issue I think (though I hope) won't follow me for the rest of my writing career. But maybe it will.

I'm a creative writing student enrolled in a number of "fiction" writing courses at my college. I'm working toward my BA in creative writing, and I'm nearly there, though I can't help but see this problem being one that will plague me no matter how I'm dealing with the written word. Namely: what makes one a good writer? Or a good reader for that matter?

Let's start with the "good reader" aspect first: what's a good reader? By and large, I've been led to believe that a "good" reader is one whom is a serious reader, and by serious I mean reading serious works. So here's where I show my ass a bit: I'd define good works in terms of "classics". Say, Joyce Carol Oates (as I'm currently slogging through her novel "The Accursed"). Or Faulkner. I'm not going to lie--I just had to Wikipedia search whatever the hell Faulkner has written, but he's a "serious" author and he writes "serious stories" and I'm supposed to be all about that shit.

Or how about Lawrence? (whom I'm actually somewhat fond of) or Hemmingway (dear God, Hemmingway) or Flannery O'Connor (another favorite, no lie) or Steinbeck! Or...or..or--

Any of those.  Serious readers read the serious stuff, so they can write serious fiction and that's what you have to do to play the tug and war game of literacy. Good readers don't read Rowling back to front every other year because they're still waiting for their acceptance letters to Hogwarts because OF COURSE twenty-two year olds can still be trained to be wizards (it would be a directed study).

 Good readers don't waste their time with Stephen King, never mind that he's a brilliant writer himself and given this post here a damn "good" reader if I do say so myself, but COME ON. I'm still not up there. I've read the Hunger Games and Game of Thrones and lots of other books that are now major motion movies and hit shows on HBO. For Christ's sake I'm nearly through the TWILIGHT saga, and I've even read Fifty Shades of Grey. FIFTY SHADES OF GREY. There's got to be a crime against that.

Aside from my favorites of the oldies I mentioned above, I don't read the "serious" stuff voraciously. I don't wake up craving Tennessee Williams, nor do I need to go over that one chapter in Atlas Shrugged just to confirm that I think Ayn Rand meant to imply about whatever the fuck the book is about. I get up in the morning and reach for Gone with the Wind (yes, yes I know) and I don't think it's been a bad hour spent re-reading the sex scene from Diana Galbadon's Outlander. 

I suppose I feel at an acute disadvantage in my writing and reading life. In my creative writing classes, I feel this need to "present" the writer I think I should be. Why, yes, of course I've read this short story and that short story, and no I did NOT spend two hours last night on my illicit fanfiction piece, are you kidding me? I can't talk about my love for fantasy or sci-fi or even the occasional smutty romance. I mean, fuck genre period. "Good" writers don't do genre. That's muck stuff.

I can even remember such a long time ago in my freshmen year when my roommate brought an aspiring journalism major to our dorm. We did the introductory "what's your major" greeting tantamount to college socializing, and when he heard that I was a "fiction" writer he bent down to look at my bookshelf and went, "oh, genre. I like non-fiction stuff. Brain food."

I wonder what he thought when I told him "fiction" in the first place, but like I said, "good" fiction is Hemmingway and writing about contemporary people in realistic contemporary places. Maybe even historical fiction is good, but it's got to be historical. By the books. No crossing Henry the VIII with witches or making him travel to the future and meeting his long descended ancestor or something. That's not what good writes do.

So there's the line I straddle: perfect little literary-reading creative writing major by day, twardy, genre peddling bastard by night. The two worlds can't cross. They just can't.

So my writing is no "good" because my reading is "no good" and maybe I'm just fooling myself with this writing thing anyway. There's my dilemma.

Now, see, here's the thing, people: I don't completely believe that. I know that's all utter bunk, and who the fuck are a bunch of hoty-toty, Starbucks double expresso shot chai soy latte dweebs to tell me what to read and what to write? Why can't I be a writer who reads Hemmingway and writes novels about a space-dwelling team of rebels all caught in a political conflict with martial problems? Who said I can't be both things, or that both "things" must be separate in the first place? Who said all genre had to suck?

Who said literary stories don't suck?

I can't name specifics (because I can't remember) but I've come across "serious" stories that were just plain awful. I'm not a fan of Hemmingway, or Virginia Woolf, and I find Sylvia Plath to be depressing even for my sake. These supposed "greats" that lord it overly lowly little genre peasants like myself, aren't my cup of tea. So wha'st the problem here? They're supposed to make me a "good" writer and reader, yet I just can't drink the Kool Aid.

No me gusta.

Look, I think the score is this: there's a sad bias present in the literary world. Genre is dumb. Literary is too serious. Genre isn't serious enough. Literary is too critical. Genre could stand to be more "high" end. There is no middle man--either you stand on one side of the court or the other, and if you happen to find a middle ground, good for you, but why not choose a side? Why not "choose" to just stick with literary fiction and save those prospective publisher the grief of having to CARE about your YA novel about mermaids? You'd be so much happier.

I don't think so. I'm not wholly happy now. I can't even be myself, the writer I am, in class because I'm so afraid of judgement. I'm so afraid my instructor will tell me to forgo the fantastical elements in my piece because there are "stronger" aspects in my story that simply don't need it. Guess what? I have been told that before. Sometimes my instructor was right. Sometimes they were wrong. In the end, I was left with twenty plus pages of something I couldn't feel comfortable with, and instead of working to make it better I watched Netflix all night.

That latter bit might be my own folly, but I fear the day I'm in at a writer's convention, or book fair, and I'm surrounded by all these accomplish folks who stare at me in disgust because I tell them I'm currently writing a 1000+ page fantasy epic. I'm scared they'll instead ask me of my opinion regarding the symbolism in T.S. Elliot's The Invisible Man and my response will be: "four". I'm afraid I'll forever be afraid of my own shadow, especially if that shadow is wearing a black-t shirt that says "genre".

I know it's foolish. Really, to be a "good" writer or "good" reader, one must be simply that. Read everything. Write everything. Your natural sense of criticism, the muscles you build so to speak, in doing this will be your filter to discern what's "good" or not "good". And that's all without someone's prior opinion clouding your own.

It's just sad that I forget that a lot of the time. That I'd rather sit with my lips buttoned, pretending to be someone I'm not, while my heart's work sits on my desk in my computer, having to suffer this bias.

I think it will get better someday. It has to. There are just too many books out there to be read (good or bad) too many stories out there to be written (good or bad) and life's too short to sit around deciding what's right or wrong about that.

I just hope it will all stick one day.