Regarding Genre by John Warner
Traditionally, the approach to genre in the university-based creative writing classroom has been to ban it outright, arguing that as long as we’re pursuing a degree in a traditional academic setting, we should be in the literature business, which is obviously something different from genre writing.
Obviously.
We declare fantasy off limits, but magic realism is okay. Kelly Link is fine, but Ursula K. LeGuin only sometimes. Science fiction is no good, unless its Vonnegut or Philip K. Dick, or some of Ray Bradbury, in which case, right on! Everyone loves Lord of the Rings, or now, Game of Thrones, but don’t do that. Why? Because.
Harry Potter? Probably not. Chronicles of Narnia? You’re good. Twilight? Don’t make me laugh.
These restrictions never felt comfortable to me, particularly when I used to enforce them in my own classroom while devouring Patricia Highsmith novels at night. The core of my teaching philosophy, regardless of subject, is “freedom.” Students learn more when they’re given the latitude to explore the material in the ways they find most interesting and compelling. This has certainly been my experience in my own learning.
Dreams dreaming drone drum ho hum
Look at these cute golden retriever puppies. They’re probably dreaming. That’s cute. I like that.
But this post is not about golden retriever puppies.
Yeah, so last night, I had a dream. I died, but it wasn’t bad. I went to some version of afterlife. I went down an elevator (cliche, anyone?). Someone tried to escape by jumping out at sub-level 8. I don’t know what happened to that person. I think he looked like Mike Kitchell crossed with Adam Jameson. And when I got out of the elevator, I definitely wasn’t in heaven.
Cliché as Necessity (Birthing Innovation)
Not entirely an unexpected situation.
Every time I’ve said something nice about Drive, someone has responded by calling the film “clichéd.” Well, I intend to keep saying nice things about Drive (as well as other artistic genre films), so let’s take some time here and now to address that criticism, demonstrating how even when certain material or situations might be clichéd, the artist can still find occasions for artistic expression. Indeed, I want to go so far as to suggest that clichéd situations often provide artists with some of the best opportunities for innovation.
Little Chris on Writing
thx RAINBOW SATAN for the tweetip
Teaching Creative Writing: Syllabus as Story, Story as Scaffolding
A syllabus tells a story. The story I work to make mine tell is, It all fits together.
When I teach an introductory creative writing course, I try to make every one of the course’s components “belong together.” I try to design and arrange these components so that they’re engaged in “conversation”—so that they not only usefully complement one another, but lead to and precede from each other in ways that model process. I’d like, above all, for my students to become consciously and unconsciously aware of how these components are “aware” of their fellow components.
By “course components,” I mean first-day activities, readings, close reading, freewrites, exercises, workshop/peer review, annotations, presentations, conversations, student-teacher conferences, grading rubrics, teaching persona, and the like—anything a teacher builds, administers, moderates, and is responsible for.
But course components that “belong together,” that “converse,” that are “aware”? You might be thinking, “Joe, that’s vague.” Or, “Duh.”
To ground these metaphors, I’d like to offer a term employed by pedagogical scholars, a term you might already be familiar with: scaffolding.
A Process Post
I’ve been thinking about length a lot. Or numbers, maybe. The number of words in something and how thinking of the number of words in something changes our entire approach to it. It’s just a number, the number of words you put down, and it shifts process. I don’t know why this seems like such a big deal to me, but it does.
When I approach the process of writing a novel, I am slow. It is slow. I take my time. After all, what should be the rush if it will take me months, if not years, to complete? Why hurry to write one page if this one page is a mere fraction of what there is to write? Why rush if this one page will likely be cut in the end? Novels require patience.
FictionSpeak 1
For the next couple of months, I’m going to run this weekly series, FictionSpeak, because, well, I’m a poet trying to write fiction, which seems like it could be worth talking about.
I started writing fiction a few weeks ago. I’m writing this fiction in a square yellow sketchbook. Just like a poet to be writing fucking fiction in a square fucking sketchbook, you say. On top of that, I’m only writing on one side of the page. And I’m only writing in snapshots that will ostensibly form a novel. It’s probably a disgrace to fiction writers everywhere, what I’m doing. I don’t understand things about dialogue or character development. I really don’t understand plot. Zip. Zilcho. I think I’m decent at description and setting and emotional arc, poetical things, so then why am I not writing poems in my new fancy-pants sketchbook. Because I already have a black vinyl, lined notebook for poems, silly.
Originally, this fiction-in-a-sketchbook thing was going to be memoir. Then I read The Chronology of Water the other weekend. Then I picked up Sarah Manguso’s The Two Kinds of Decay, which I’m reading right now, and I thought two things. One, I don’t have the stuff of a memoir yet. Two, these books are great to read if you want to write fiction. For different reasons. Lidia Yuknavitch for voice and fierceness. Manguso for matter-of-factness and snapshot.
Back in grad school at ole Emerson, I’m pretty sure there was a fiction-writing-for-poets course, or maybe a poetry-for-fiction-writers course. I never took either. Navigating fiction makes me feel like I’m walking into a Templar initiation ceremony or something. It’s dark. There are candles. Robes. Dorky music. A guy in a mask with a sword doing degrading things to another guy who poses just the right way to look simultaneously mysterious and mastered.
Umm, nevermind.
My first question is this. Writing fiction forces me to dredge up weird shit from my past and use it with different characters and settings. I mean, I’m raping my life wholesale. Is that normal? Somebody said to me yesterday, “Change the facts enough so your family doesn’t recognize them.” My feeling is that I’ll change them just enough to fit the narrative, just enough to make them work for me. I mean, that’s what poets do…
I Felt Like I Was Part of Something
Last spring I graduated from my MFA program with a degree in fiction and was expelled into the wilds of a Pittsburgh recession with very few—if any!—marketable skills. I drank a lot and watched TV and cooked up elaborate theories about LOST involving a super intelligent ape named Joop mentioned only briefly during a second season viral campaign. Halfway through the summer I lucked into a few teaching gigs and ended up with a section of Intermediate Fiction Workshop. I always had vague notions of one day teaching college, but those were always hazy fantasies set deep in a future where I’d be a distinguished silver fox smoking cigars in some type of hover mansion. I wasn’t a TA during my MFA campaign and had no earthly idea if I was cut out to actually walk into a classroom and explain anything to students, let alone fiction, the thing in the world I care most about. As the summer wound down and I made stab after stab at a syllabus, I’d lie awake at night listening to the trains howl through Pittsburgh while trying not to vomit from crippling anxiety.
Classes began. Fall came and went. I was again unbelievably lucky and landed a section of Advanced Fiction in the spring which many of my Intermediate students signed up for. The process was endlessly humbling, mostly because of the students. I was shocked at how genuinely good so many of them were. I was ready for anything on that first day of class: from manic scribbles on a napkin to thousand page genre opuses. But these students were wonderful. They loved fiction as much as I did, and their enthusiasm hyped me up and I hope vice versa. By the time the academic year drew to a close, many of them were beginning to publish their work in journals I respected, and all of them had shown some pretty big improvements from the first day. And all of this from a workshop. The workshop!
Juggalos on Writing
“It’s a lifestyle, it ain’t only a music choice.”
“Do what you gotta do, don’t gotta hate on people because they’re different.”
“I do whatever the fuck I want and don’t give two fucking shits.”
“I am fucked up on E and vodka.”
“I got fucked up.”
“It was a fucking spectacle and shit and I don’t give a fuck because it was righteous.”
“I can cook like a motherfucker.”
“I’m a happy motherfucker living life day to day.”
“Most people think I’m on drugs because I’m always happy.”
“It’s a puzzle and each and everyone of us is an integral piece.”
“It actually really burns, I’m not going to lie.”
“Keep it trippy. Legalize everything.”
“The gathering don’t stop. You do.”
“It’s the greatest.”
“I’m still fucking here.”
“Life is something special that you can only have one time. Enjoy the shit out of it.”
“We have alcohol and we’ve got explosives.”
“We just drank a little bit. Probably get all stoned, smoke some hash and fucking chill, do it all again the next day.”
“All of us have jobs.”
“Being a juggalo does not mean you’re not fit for society,”
“I’m insane. I like to stab people, know what I mean?”
“I’m showing my titties to everyone.”
“Why am I a juggalo? Because that’s who I am. That’s how I was born.”
‘There is no bigatory in juggaloism.”
“True life is inside your soul.”
“WOO WOO!”
