William Bradley – Lit Bits

Reflections During Week 14

With two weeks left in the semester, my students are busy revising creative nonfiction essays for inclusion in their final portfolios. I admit, this is a very relaxing time for me. While many of my colleagues are frantically grading papers and writing exams, I’m showing up to school to listen to students give presentations on their favorite authors and to answer questions during office hours. I’m thinking about getting a hammock for the office, actually.

Of course, portfolios will come in and the days leading up to Christmas will be filled with frantic grading. But I’m enjoying the peace right now, and am reflecting on all of the good work I have read from my students this semester.

Back in August, the students entered the classroom for the first time unsure of what to expect. Everyone knows what fiction and poetry is, but the idea of a “creative nonfiction” workshop is foreign to most of them. Some of these students are in my class because someone recommended me to them. Others are majors who need the course in order to move on to more advanced classes. Others just need to get an arts elective out of the way. Most, though, aren’t taking the class because they already have a deep and abiding love for the essay or literary journalism.

I hope that, over the course of the year, they have grown to love these forms. Not just because I love these forms myself, but because I have seen this group of students come together and understand each other better as a result of sharing their own personal narratives. These 18 and 19 year olds began the semester a little nervous, sometimes reluctant to allow themselves to be too exposed in their writing. But at this point, I think that we have all become friends—or, if not friends, then very supportive colleagues. We have shared family secrets, discussed our private anxieties, and revealed truths that we usually keep hidden when we’re in the dorms, at the bar, or in a department meeting. We’ve established a sense of trust with each other, even though—or, perhaps, because?—we didn’t know each other 14 weeks ago.

Some of these students will go on to study English and creative writing. Some will go on to publish their work. Most will not. But I hope that these students will look back on the experience of taking this class fondly, and I hope they feel like they learned useful things during our time together. Of course, if they find that they’re able to express themselves through writing more effectively, that’s great. But more importantly, I hope that, through reading and writing creative nonfiction, they’ve come to understand that they’re not alone in the universe. I hope they realize that their friends, their classmates, and even their professors struggle with private stresses and anxieties. I hope they have learned that, sometimes, we all feel isolated, or freakish, or terrified. And I hope that they’re able to take this knowledge with them after they leave my classroom, better equipped to try to understand someone else’s point-of-view. This, I think, is the most important reason to study creative nonfiction.

Why Teach or Study Literature?

I was a little nervous to tell my father my plans to major in English with a creative writing emphasis. Though my parents had always emphasized the importance of literature—my mom was a high school English teacher, and my dad would read us Mark Twain and John Steinbeck when we were kids—I felt like my choice would strike him as being completely impractical. Continue reading “Why Teach or Study Literature?”

Relating vs. Resonating: Helping Students Respond with Depth

A few weeks ago, students in my creative nonfiction workshop were discussing a classmate’s essay about her rather eccentric grandmother. It was a good piece of writing, a solid first draft, and I wanted to get my students talking about what made the piece so successful. Continue reading “Relating vs. Resonating: Helping Students Respond with Depth”

Beyond Beginning: Teaching the Contemporary Essay

Most of my LitBits blog posts have been focused on exercises or discussions aimed at motivating or inspiring the beginning writer. I’ve written craft exercises designed to help students mine their memories and interrogate their own lives. I’ve talked about helping student writers get over “writer’s block” and figure out just what they might write about. What I haven’t focused on, so much, is the intermediate or advanced nonfiction writer—the student who already has ideas and knows the basics of the genre, and who is ready to move on from “just getting started.”

In future blog posts, I hope to share some revision exercises, which I think are frequently overlooked when we talk about teaching creative writing (although I’d like to point out that some of the contributors to the recently-released text, Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction offer some really cool exercises designed to help the writer who has already started to refine her writing—and many of these ideas can apply to nonfiction of any length, not just the short-short stuff). First, though, I have to come up with some of these exercises.

Today, though, I thought I’d tell you about a class I’m teaching for the first time this semester. I call it “The Contemporary Essay”—although I had wanted to call it “The 21^st Century Essay” at first, until I realized that a few of the pieces I wanted to teach were first published in the late 90s. In my head, I still call it “The 21^st Century Essay,” historical publication facts be damned.

I began to think of this class several years ago, as it became apparent to me that, over the past few decades, we’ve slowly begun to build a canon of great essays, memoirs, and works of literary journalism. I’d become quite comfortable teaching the works of Joan Didion, George Orwell, James Baldwin, E.B. White, Annie Dillard, Phillip Lopate, Maya Angelou, Tobias Wolff, et al. Comfortable to the point of complacency, I feared. Sure, I could occasionally sneak an essay by the likes of Eula Biss or Ander Monson onto the syllabus, to give my students a sense of where nonfiction seems to be headed, but I felt like I couldn’t really focus on where this genre was going until the students got an idea of where it has been. Continue reading “Beyond Beginning: Teaching the Contemporary Essay”

Attack the Block

The question took me by surprise. We were about halfway through the semester, and I’d finally figured out the rhythm and patterns of my 10:10- 11:40 Techniques of Fiction class. I’d come in just before class started to a roomful of students talking and joking with each other. I’d try to say something pithy to get us started, then remind everyone what we had read for the day—typically, two student stories to workshop and one story by the likes of Faulkner or Cather or Baldwin. I’d say, “Let’s start with the workshop—who’s dying to go first?” The student authors would exchange glances, both shrug slightly, and then one would finally speak: “I’ll go.” This was business-as-usual.

But on this day, I walked into the room and, before I could make any type of witty remark, a student said, “Can I ask a question?”

“Sure,” I replied, settling into my seat.

“What do you do when you have writer’s block?” Continue reading “Attack the Block”

Unpublished, but Non-Perishable

Some of you may have noticed that my author bio reveals that I’ve recently changed my institutional affiliation—I have left Chowan University in North Carolina and accepted a position teaching creative writing and literature at my alma mater, St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. I’ve written before (though not for this blog) about my undergraduate years and the vital role that my professors played in turning me into the writer and thinker I am today, so you can probably understand that I’m quite excited to be back, teaching alongside the scholars and artists who inspired me when I was an 18-year-old, flannel-clad Gen-Xer who had a vague idea that he wanted to be a writer, but didn’t quite know how he was going to get there.

I’ve been thinking a lot about 18-year-old Bradley these past few weeks. Part of me almost expects to run into him, walking across the quad or coming out of the dining hall. Part of me feels like I already have run into him—or run into his doppelganger from 2012, at any rate. I’m teaching two creative writing classes and one literature class this semester, and these students are—for the most part—really enthusiastic about what they’re reading and writing. I’ve taught thoughtful and ambitious students before, of course, but never so many at one time. So it’s been an exhilarating experience.

One thing I’ve noticed about the undergraduate writers I’m teaching this semester is that many of them seem savvier about things like publishing opportunities and grad school programs than I was when I studied here. I’ll be giving a talk later this semester to the students who work on the campus literary magazine, and one thing that the student who organized the talk told me they’d definitely be interested in hearing about was how I got editors to pay attention to my work, and what advice I have to give about getting creative work published. Continue reading “Unpublished, but Non-Perishable”

Web of Truths: 5 Sites for Creative Nonfiction

This is not a proper blog post, I admit, but it seems to me that some teachers of creative nonfiction might not be aware of all the resources that are out there on the web, free of charge, that might be useful in a creative nonfiction classroom. Here are five of my favorites. By all means, include yours in the comments—especially if you edit or read for a magazine with a significant online presence that instructors and students ought to be aware of.

1. Brevity. Edited by Dinty W. Moore, Brevity is an excellent online magazine of brief nonfiction, from some of the best writers in the field. From Brevity’s description:

“For more than a decade now, Brevity has published well-known and emerging writers working in the extremely brief (750 words or less) essay form, along with craft essays and book reviews. Though still committed to the mission of publishing new writers, Brevity has enjoyed an embarrassment of recent riches, including the work of two Pulitzer prize finalists, numerous NEA fellows, Pushcart winners, Best American authors, and writers from India, Egypt, Ireland, Spain, Malaysia, and Japan. Authors published in Brevity include Sherman Alexie, Lia Purpura, Terese Svoboda, John Calderazzo, Steven Barthelme, Mark Yakich, Ander Monson, Caitlin Horrocks, Jon Pineda, Brenda Miller, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Robin Hemley, Lee Martin, Rebecca McClanahan, Robin Behn, Abby Frucht, Barbara Hurd, Bret Lott, Ira Sukrungruang, Rigoberto González, Judith Kitchen, Michael Martone, and Diana Hume George.”

Work from Brevity has been anthologized and reprinted in venues including Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Utne Reader, the Short Takes anthology, the Best Creative Nonfiction anthology from W.W. Norton, and many recent writing textbooks.

2. Brevity Blog. For news and commentary about the form, nothing beats Brevity magazine’s blog, which is updated frequently. Any time there’s a debate in the world of creative nonfiction, you can count on some smart blog posts from a variety of contributors. Continue reading “Web of Truths: 5 Sites for Creative Nonfiction”

The Agony of Defeatism

Part of leading a discussion in a creative writing workshop involves encouraging students to give rigorous feedback and criticism to their classmates, while also fostering an atmosphere of respect and friendship. Hank Devereaux Jr.—the narrator of Richard Russo’s academic satire Straight Man—observed that, in the creative writing classroom, “tough, rigorous criticism is predicated on good, not ill, will.” As teachers, it’s part of our job to create an environment where student writers feel comfortable receiving—and giving—detailed feedback and constructive criticism. The workshop, after all, isn’t going to work if the only thing the student author hears is “great job” or “I really liked the words you used to convey your ideas.”

Creating an environment of friendly and well-intentioned critique is difficult in any creative writing classroom, but it’s particularly difficult in a creative nonfiction classroom. As writers, we’re frequently defensive when it comes to our work, but as creative nonfiction writers, we sometimes wind up feeling defensive about our experiences and ideas as well. Once, as a student in a workshop, I had to listen as a classmate explained that she didn’t like the piece I had written because the “narrator” was so whiney and self-absorbed. And while I like to think that I have thick skin … come on. That hurt.

I try to be particularly conscious of the student author’s feelings and protectiveness of her work even as I ask my students to talk specifically about what isn’t working in a piece. Still, even with my attempts at sensitivity, some students are stressed out and even hurt by the entire workshop experience. Who can blame them? They’ve just revealed themselves—exposed their realest, innermost selves—without the safety net of a fictional narrator or poetic speaker, and now they’re getting criticized for their efforts. That can be disheartening, even infuriating. Continue reading “The Agony of Defeatism”

A Conversation with Maureen P. Stanton

Periodically, I’ll be posting short discussions with writers and teachers of creative nonfiction whom I admire. The first of these discussions is with Maureen P. Stanton, who happens to have been my dissertation director at the University of Missouri-Columbia and whose book Killer Stuff and Tons of Money—now available in paperback—was called “a treasure-trove of a book” by Kirkus Reviews.

William Bradley: What would you say is the most challenging thing about teaching creative nonfiction?

Maureen Stanton: I’d say that the most challenging aspect of teaching CNF is to help students write works that readers will care about, and to understand that it’s not enough to just relate a story—after all, everyone has a story but why should readers choose to read this piece of writing among all the options available? This is not something that I emphasize too much with undergraduates, who are just trying their hands at the genre and gaining practical writing skills, and who generally aren’t ambitious about publishing their work or even thinking about publishing. But with graduate students, it’s difficult to raise this subject because mentioning the “Why should I or anyone care?” question feels like a personal criticism, or at least is sounds harsh. I should add that I don’t express this thought in those blunt terms exactly —“Why should I care what happened to you?”—because that is destructive and difficult criticism to hear about one’s own work. But it is the central question of creative nonfiction, especially memoir, and sometimes it is the only question left to ask in an otherwise accomplished piece of writing. The good news is that there are many ways to make any individual essay or memoir reach beyond being a well-written conveyance of an experience, even though dealing with the “who cares” aspect may also be the most difficult thing to learn as well as to teach.

Continue reading “A Conversation with Maureen P. Stanton”

Ensnared by Memory

The recent announcement that the University of Missouri is closing its academic press has led me to revisit some of the books published by the press over the years. This morning, I’m re-reading parts of Joe David Bellamy’s excellent book Literary Luxuries: American Writing at the End of the Millennium. Bellamy was one of my very first creative writing professors—he taught a fiction workshop at St. Lawrence University. Every Wednesday night from 7 until 10, a group of 12 to 15 students would get together to discuss craft with a man who had once directed the literature program of the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m not sure I recognized what a unique opportunity this was while I was experiencing it.

At the time, I believe Bellamy was most well-known for his fiction, but Literary Luxuries is a great nonfiction book that I think any writer—regardless of genre—would do well to check out. It is equal parts memoir, personal essay, craft guide, and survey of the literary landscape of the late twentieth century.

One of the chapters in the book—a craft essay titled “The Autobiographical Trap”—should be of particular interest to nonfiction writers. The essay’s target audience is fiction writers, but I think the lessons he imparts are important for nonfiction writers to hear as well.

“When one writes from life and memory,” Bellamy writes, “there is always a tendency to become so involved emotionally with the material that the work becomes ‘too thin’ or anorexic. The least suggestion (the slimmest outline or reminder) of the traumatic events you wish to write about causes the floodgates of emotion to open up for you … So it is not difficult at all to persuade yourself that the floodgates will open up for the reader as well.” There’s danger in making such an assumption, though—our readers don’t have our experiences, haven’t perceived the world as we have, and those suggestions, outlines, and reminders that resonate so much with us need to be developed and described in more detail if they are to resonate with the reader. As Bellamy explains, “This means a careful and full rendering of the action, the motivations, and the expository details that are so familiar to the writer that they are easy to overlook.” Continue reading “Ensnared by Memory”