My Hard Drive Died

Many of you already know that I’ve gone back to school. I applied one year ago to various MFA programs–a Master’s degree in Fine Art. Many writers do this straight out of undergraduate school, when they can, upon acceptance, actually move to a new town and begin a standard, in-residency, generally highly competitive three-year program. They can then go on to write books, teach in creative writing programs, or get a job in a bank, a bookstore, a restaurant, anything that pays. Twenty years ago, I opted not to do the former, but did do some of the latter. In my late twenties, I earned a Master’s degree in English, which is not what is called a “terminal degree,” meaning, it is considered a stepping stone to a PhD in English (or something). It does, however, enable one to be hired as an adjunct instructor at various universities, where the pay is quite on par, if not slightly less, than work in a bank, a bookstore, or a restaurant. There are no insurance benefits, if you only teach enough to still allow you time to try to write those books, which I did, and have.

Fast forward to midlife, when one is generally ensconced in raising a family, or has a good, at least well-paying job, or at the very least, likes one’s house. The writer may not want to up and move for a three-year stint in places like Ann Arbor, Michigan, and sit in class with all those writers straight out of the undergraduate programs. Half one’s age. For those types of writers, there is the Low residency MFA, something that’s been around about 30 years, but has really taken off in the past 15 or so, I think because people may be finally realizing that it helps to live a little before digging in on the long arduous process of writing books. I may be wrong on this. I probably am. If I’m honest with myself, I will admit that I didn’t apply to the standard MFA programs when I was twenty-two because: a) I was terrified I wouldn’t get in;  b) I did not think it prudent for a would-be writer to go into any kind of  debt; c) a professor I admired and respected advised against it (giving very few concrete reasons. I remember only, ‘I think you should wait on that.’ For what?). Then there was reason D), the big reason: a sneaking but well-known creative shame. The whole idea felt preposterous, that I might be…have what it takes…er, well, who did I think I was?

This is not regret. Who knows what would have happened to my damaged, fragile ego if I’d gone that route? But as I set out to re-write Wonderland, that novel I sent off eighteen months ago with very unexciting results, I realized I really didn’t know how to do it. My tool box was empty. I knew with sudden and deep conviction I ~gasp~ did not know everything there was to know about the craft of writing. There were ways (surely) of organizing and developing a novel that were beyond me. There might even be ways of thinking about character, tone, scene setting, plot and conflict beyond what I could come up with in my zealous but limited reading life.

I applied to five low residency programs; to my shock and delight, I got in. There was still the matter of tuition and time, but, in short I went for it. I am now committed to two years of school, each semester beginning with what is known as the Residency, a ten-day period in which all students come to roost on campus together, for lectures, classes, workshops,  book discussions, and readings. We meet our advisors for the semester. The next four months are spent working on three-week email deadlines; every deadline includes  up to 40 pages of new or revised work and two or three papers, not quite literary papers, but craft essays. Essentially they are highly focused examinations of a craft element in a chapter, a paragraph, or a story. They are the bane of my existence, and they have taught me more than any of the reading I’ve done in the past twenty years.

And I just got back. It’s been a week and I am still processing my second residency, this one much more sober than the first. Last summer I was giddy and astounded to be there, and it was a hundred degrees in North Carolina. As I’ve chronicled elsewhere (see ” This Neck of the Woods” July 2012 ), the water was too muddy for swimming (snakes!) and the pond on campus was  covered in algae. The only thing for it was cold showers and working naked, in front of a fan.

This time the place felt familiar; the faces were familiar, except for the new students. And there was much more time to notice how much like college-the-first-time-around this whole experience actually was. Here, for example, are a few nuggets:

1. Dorms. The regularly enrolled student body was away for the holiday. Our rooms were thus actually half rooms, the other half being  jammed with their stuff, clothes included. The lonely MFA-er had one closet, one desk and one bed, including plastic-covered mattress and pillow. Showers down the hall. A urinal in the bathroom–why? I don’t know.

2. Cafeteria. That feeling as you stand with a  tray full of food and scan the room: Oh jesus, where  am i gonna sit?

3. The constant vacillation between: Nobody likes me. and I don’t like anyone. Aka: Juvenile posturing masking deep insecurity.

4. Peer pressure. The MFA crowd, even the older ones, like to party. There are numerous social events, dances, a bonfire, a mixer. There is quite a bit of pressure to attend. What! Not going! Aww, you gotta go! This is the best event of the week! Come one now, get dressed! I don’t do well at dances, bonfires or mixers. This is part of the reason I’m a writer in the first place: most of what goes on in the outer world I observe and process violently and privately, through language. I could either go and try not to feel terribly uncomfortable, or stay in my room with a laptop and a chocolate bar, feeling like the fat kid I felt like in so much of my early undergraduate life. There was one other option:  go, beeline for the booze (often someone brought moonshine. It was North Carolina.) and become blotto for the duration of the event. I confess I chose that route more than once at the first residency. Once at this residency. It’s a wearying route.

5. Finally, there is the existential crisis brought on by the Examined Life. This hit me hard as an undergraduate. I discovered how hard this week when I cleaned out my office.

I cleaned out my office for a very specific reason: the day–the very day–I got back from this residency, my hard drive crashed. I was locked out of my work, including the new novel I’ve started in this program. I remained surprisingly calm. I confess to some relief. I couldn’t write! Couldn’t get to those papers that are due at the end of the month–God help me if I was going to pick up a pen.

Instead, I cleaned. I condensed four file drawers to two, which required me to sift through sixty pounds of paper, all of it detritus from twenty years of me casting about trying to recover from this Existential Crisis. I did not, back then, know what to do with myself. From the time I was twenty-two and graduated with that English degree, I was utterly lost. I didn’t want more school. I didn’t want to work in a bookstore or a bank. I didn’t have the social skills to work in a restaurant. That mass of paper reminded me of the absolute blank I drew when I tried to think of my next move. There was a whole lot of stuff I did NOT want to do, but absolutely nothing I did want to do. I wanted to write, of course, but I didn’t know what about, and I was embarrassed of the desire, and my teacher told me not to (at least, that’s what I thought he was saying). Even my dad said writing should be more of a “hobby.” And I didn’t consider myself very interesting. I really wanted to be interesting. A lot of young people today seem to think they are interesting, or at least, they are not crippled with the conviction that they are not, and perhaps may never be. I don’t know what to make of that.

I also wanted to do good. I thought the world was ending; the human race would surely extinguish itself, probably in my lifetime. I never was going to get married or own cars, and certainly not have children. I was in love with the world and I was hurt by it. I really don’t think I can say it any more plainly than that.

What I did was go to work as a volunteer for the government, in Wyoming. That led to work with The Nature Conservancy. Looking at those two sentences right there, it occurs to me that they sound great. Really. The words volunteer and then, The Nature Conservancy, sound so interesting and lively! I could drop that at a party, boy. But the truth was that they did not feel remotely the way they now sound. They were seasonal jobs, one unpaid. In the overhaul of my file folders, I found at least ten pounds of application letters, letters of inquiry, and lists, often hand-written, of contact addresses. I found brochures and articles clipped from magazines, pictures of big ranches and land exchanges, and large, remote preserves. I was seeking more of this type of field work, rather desperately, by the look of it. I don’t remember loving it. I wasn’t a trained scientist and I found field research tedious. But it was something, and it wasn’t in an office.

It also didn’t work out. I moved back home and worked as a hostess in a steak house for the winter. When summer came, I went back to Wyoming to work on a dude ranch, setting up tents and outdoor crappers. When that ended, I got a job at the local newspaper. There was a file folder filled with articles I’d written, and right next to it, file after file of applications to MFA programs and writing retreats, places you can go to write and they will bring you lunch and dinner, not one of which I was accepted to. There was a rejection folder, several inches thick, filled with letters bearing variations of the same simple words:  No thank you, but good luck.

Home from residency, with a dead hard drive, and now  very few files, I called The Mac Mender. He saved the data, but the hard drive was kaput. Sitting amid the office mess that comes with an new-computer overhaul, I had to face what was really bothering me, why this turn of events felt so significant, the timing of it all.

Just before I want to residency I had called  my agent; together we decided that Wonderland still needed work. It was much improved, she said, because my narrator was no longer as irritating (my word). My agent said “She reminded me of the characters in Revolutionary Road, you know, how they really thought they were special, and something special would happen to them, and they would lead a special, extraordinary life. And then it turned out that they were actually quite ordinary.”

Uh huh.

The other piece of it was something from the residency itself, a lecture about how it’s the writer’s job to be ruthless. The lecturer used that word. She said that we must “take a crowbar to the story and pry, pry pry,” meaning, move beyond the surface conflict, on into the complex one, from which there is no easy way out. In this way the world might seem “fragile and terrifying” but also, “entirely new.” Writers who go here are “psychologically brave” because they refuse to look away from what is troubling or unsettling.

It was similar to the arguments I’ve heard over the years, herding  literary writers away from genre, or pulp fiction. Cheap work relies on stereotype and superficial, binary conflicts. Dan Brown is thought of as a hack (sorry to my students who loved The DaVinci Code). In a lot of circles, this kind of attitude is perceived as snobbery, and I’ve always feared being a literary snob. I’d even reassure my honors students that I was no academic; I’d read anything, even Shadow Divers, required reading they found beneath them.

But this lecture at residency reached beyond snobbery. For me, it bled into a discussion on aesthetics, as in, the critical-reflection-on-art-culture-or-nature, sense of the word. I heard this very smart woman use words like relentless, rough-handling, destabilizing, unsparing, and merciless, in terms of how a writer should approach her work. I couldn’t get those words out of my head, namely because I didn’t want to be any of those things. This wasn’t just fear; it was a clarity. What about humor? I kept thinking as I walked around campus. Joy? Pleasure? Was I a hack? Cheap? Would I be better off to make up a detective and write the genre mysteries I’ve loved my whole life?  I tried that once, and it didn’t work, either. Wasn’t she right–life can be hard on us, and it is. But that’s not all it is. If I believed that “relentless” is all we ever get, I’d–well, I did believe that. It’s taken me twenty years to change my mind.

Only complexity endures, said the lecturer. It’s true. An MFA can teach you that. So can failure. Like, my seven-year-old’s weight in obsolete paper work, which that night I stuffed  into a black sack. Dragging it by the red plastic handles out the back door, I cut a wide swath through the snow, where bird seed would collect in the days to come. The back gate popped open due to a pile-up of ice on the hinges, causing a flutter of movement in the dark alley bushes. I bent my knees and lifted it up high, high enough to clear the sides of the trash can. Then I let it drop.