Wandering through the Words

Why do I write? This is a question I have asked myself with varying degrees of urgency over the past few years. Now is one of those heightened moments. I suppose when I spend the majority of my day writing at work and a good chunk of my free time writing stories on my own, I want to think that there is some value in the exercise. Some greater purpose that will justify the hours.

The value of creative writing is not as immediately discernible as other forms of writing that function primary to convey information. In my case, the ulitity is less clear, and, I think, less important. In any case, it's not ulitity as we typically think of it.

I’ve noticed that Jesus did not speak very often in didactic statements or theologizing or the mere recitation of facts. I’m sure he did on occasion—such words are a necessity at times—but these are not then the words that his followers remembered, that they found imperative to record. What they wrote down were stories. Stories and metaphors. This is how Jesus communicated with the crowds, and this is how the crowds learned.

“There once was a landowner who planted a vineyard,” Jesus said. Here we see a picture in our mind’s eye—a man and his vineyard and the hot sun beating down on the grapes—and this is an image that has shape, that we can metaphorically touch and participate in. And then Jesus goes on with the story, and even if the people on those dry mountain slopes did not understand the meaning of it, as it is clear they often did not, they could still remember it, and they could repeat it to their friends back home, and they could puzzle over it together. And later, perhaps years later, an incident would happen in their life that would bring to mind this story which they did not realize they still remembered and suddenly something would fall into place and their eyes would be opened and it would all finally make sense.

Jesus was a smart man. Stories stick. Stories give words and ideas a handle, so that people can find a point of entry.

But parables for the purpose of teaching are one thing—novels and short stories and memoirs quite another. What’s the point of fiction? some people ask. It’s not real anyway. It never happened. It’s just an escape from the world, an excuse not to engage in what’s happening right in front of you. I admit, I ask myself this question sometimes too. It is a good question to ask, I think: What is the point of fiction? Why have I spent so many hours of my life bent over a book or dreaming up characters to set free in a world of my own creating? I like to think the answer is deeper, more involved, than “it’s fun.” Though it most assuredly is. Sometimes.

The truth is, there are some things that can only be communicated in a round-about way because they are too harsh or brilliant to face head-on. Emily Dickinson wrote a poem about this: “Tell the truth but tell it slant—/Success in circuit lies,” she writes. “Too bright for our infirm Delight/The Truth’s superb surprise.” In stories—and in some other forms of writing—truth slips in through the back door of the mind, almost unnoticed. We couldn’t handle it otherwise; we’d fight it off. But stories—you can’t argue with them. They are what they are.

C.S. Lewis once said that nearly everything of importance he ever learned was communicated through metaphor. He certainly was a master of it himself. Who can forget, having read it, that image of the “ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea”? Everyone can certainly imagine such a scene—and themselves in it. Less people will remember the words, “we are too easily pleased by the world.” Although this communicates essentially the same message, it lacks the heart, and it lacks the handle.

Good writing is like a perfect piece of glass or the stillest, clearest body of water. You look in and you see something so pure and vibrant that you wonder how you never saw it before. And yet, you also realize this is not the first time you’ve caught a glimpse. You see it is something that you’ve always known but have never brought into perfect focus. These are the treasures that metaphor and imagery and story can bring us.

I am no C.S. Lewis. I am a lowly twenty-something with no published works and no Oxford education. My words are not read by many people and may never be. But I still want to weave the web of story that may in the end be the only way to understand the world in all its shades of grey. I write to understand, to elucidate, as I am doing now writing this essay, seeking an answer to my original question. But I also write to confound, to confuse and scramble-up, so that I may know—and others may know it too—that nothing in life is straight-forward and no answers are easy.

We are called to emulate Jesus, and I guess this is the way that makes the most sense to me.

The Death of the White Stag

I realized today that I no longer feel in a stage of transition. It’s taken me a year and half, but I have finally come to define my life as it—not as where it is going or where it has come from. I not just a post-grad, looking back at and feeling nostalgic for my college experience. And I am not merely straining towards the future, single-mindedly pursuing that elusive “career” we all seem to be hunting. I’m beginning to wonder if the creature even exists in all its mythic glory.

This place—it’s a nice place to be.

Hello, Again

It's been quite some time since my last blog post, and even that one was a cop-out (merely pasting a link in a window and adding one or two sentences of explanation). I do think I have a pretty good excuse, though. My first Masters of Fine Arts application was due yesterday at midnight, and nearly all my free time in the past few months has been dedicated to working on my writing portfolio. When you spend all day writing in the office for work and all evening writing at home for school, there isn't a lot of mental energy left over to write for "fun." (Not that working on my portfolio hasn't been fun in its own way. It has been. But also stressful.)

Today is the first day in a long time I haven't felt an urgency to write and edit. My next application is due in two weeks, but most of the grunt work is done at this point and the hardest part is hopefully behind me. And yet, of course, here I am, writing. I guess I don't know what else to do with myself.

Applying for graduate schools---particularly MFA programs, where most schools boast an acceptance rate between one and ten percent---is an extremely exposing process. Rarely in my life have I felt more vulnerable than I do now. Writing is such a personal act, even when writing fiction, and to be judged solely on that standard, to be told either you are or you aren't good enough based on one collection of painfully birthed stories, feels kind of like someone is deciding whether or not to execute your kid. A slight exaggeration, maybe, but it's something close.

It's also scary for another reason. By deciding to apply to programs, I have drawn a line in the sand for myself and for all those who hear about it (aka you). "Here I have decided that writing is the passion to which I want to devote the rest of my life (or at least the next few years), and here is the way I plan to do that." Whenever you verbalize what you want and take steps to attain it, you make yourself vulnerable to disappointment. This is not a bad thing, obviously, but it does mean that the consequences of failure feel higher. The more you want something, the harder it is when you don't get it.

All of this means that I have to hold my plans and my goals loosely. I need to be ok with the idea of not getting into schools this time around and waiting another year or two if necessary. This could be, and I'm not just saying this to convince myself, a very good thing. But I also need to not let fear of failure keep me from trying my absolute best on the remaining eight applications. I need to remember, as has been my constant lesson this past year and half, that life happens and things usually work out ok in the end for those who are patient.

So I'm trying to be patient.

An Interesting Article

It speaks to themes I have addressed on and off in this blog. Potentially a little insulting for members of my generation, but, if nothing else, the graphics are highly entertaining. Recommended reading for anyone between the ages of 18 and 30.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html

Patience, Portfolios, and Piles of Mush

I like quantifiable things. I like things that can be counted, recorded, and later analyzed. For example, the number of miles I have run or biked each day. My grocery reciepts. The times my athletes run in each cross country meet and their splits per mile. The balance of my bank account. My budgets on Mint. I make to-do lists for fun, even when I’m not busy---perhaps especially when I’m not busy---and checking them off brings me pleasure.

So why on earth, I’m beginning to ask myself---why did I chose to pursue writing, of all the fields available to me? Why did I pick the most unquantifiable of endeavors, the most elusive, the most resistant to to-do lists and check marks? Shouldn’t I have gone into statistics or accounting or engineering maybe, rather than this right-brain frustration?

I’m feeling this way because I’m in the process of applying to Master of Fine Arts programs, and, if you couldn’t tell, the portfolio-producing process has not been progressing as smoothly as I hoped. The plan is to produce two flawless and imaginative short stories by November. So far, after nearly three months of sincere effort, my brain has birthed only one pile of mush that may be breathing its last breath. I’m trying not to panic.

Unfortunately for me, when it comes to MFA programs in creative writing, numbers don’t matter. Most schools don’t require a GRE score. The ones that do just want to make sure you’re not stupid. Undergraduate GPAs… well, as long you passed everything, it shouldn’t be a problem. According to a book I have about the MFA application process, 90% of your application rests on the 35-40 page writing sample in your portfolio. In other words, it all comes down to whether or not some professor decides he or she likes my story. One person could dash my hopes on a whim, no matter what my GRE or GPA is.

This is not good news for a person who likes to quantify things.

There is no way to quantify a story. There is no way to know for sure how I stack up against the hundreds of other applicants, each jostling for just a few spots. No average LSAT score, no comparable GPA or recommended extracurriculars. I can’t objectively rate my writing on a scale of 1 to 10 and use that to decide which programs to apply to. I also can’t force my writing to get better, to become more creative, to shape itself into something beautiful and poignant. Time spent does not necessarily translate into quality achieved.

That’s just how writing is, and I better get used to it because I haven’t exactly left myself room for other pursuits. Writing requires a lot of patience---also not one of my natural strengths. “Have patience with the process,” I typed on a sticky note on my laptop desktop after reading it in Story, Robert McKee’s famous book on writing and plot. I have to remind myself of this frequently. Patience. Patience. Patience.

Patience with the process is not an easy thing, in writing or in any other area of life. I like quick results and check marks, and now that I’m a year out of college, I feel like the clock is ticking for me to start producing great things. After all, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise when he was only 23 and W.H. Auden had his first book of poetry published at the same age! It’s a bit ridiculous to be comparing myself to these luminaries, I know, and to be feeling the pressures of time when I’m still a baby in the eyes of a lot of people, but it’s hard not to be frustrated with the slow progression of my writing. It’s hard not to wish for an easy way to quantify my skill level and detail the exact steps I need to take in order to increase it and produce something amazing.

I guess that’s why I’m attempting to go back to school, ultimately. To get better and to find out how to do that. But first I need to get in, and that may very well be the hardest part.

Cooking for One

I improvised a pear crisp today out of three pears, some oatmeal, butter, brown sugar, and a bit of cinnamon. It was pretty good, despite the fact that I didn’t use a recipe or measure anything. Good enough that I decided to make it my dinner.

Cooking for one is a rather motley and scattershot activity. When no one else is eating your meals, you can feel free to eat whatever strange (or easy) food strikes your fancy. Like pear crisp for dinner. Or beans from a can heated in the microwave. Or the egg and broccoli and black beans and tomato scramble thing I made yesterday because that was what I had in the fridge (the eggs turned kind of gray from the black beans, but it actually tasted fine).

It’s not that I don’t know how to cook. I do. At least, well enough not to totally embarrass myself in the kitchen. But sometimes I don’t always feel like putting in much effort or buying those non-essential things at the grocery store that would afford me a little more creativity. Maybe I’m just being lazy. Or cheap. I’ve definitely been accused of that one.

Living on my own again, I feel a little like I’m back in my college days, when I was on a ten-meal-a-week plan at the cafeteria and had about 15 additional dollars to spend on food. I was pretty good then at tracking down free meals---being on a sports team helped. But my non-cafeteria diet still consisted mainly of oatmeal, cheap wheat bread, peanut butter, and whatever cereal I stole from my parents’ house when I was home on break. I have a little more money than that to spend now, thank God, because I’ve only recently been able to bring myself to eat oatmeal again.

Still, it’s hard to summon up the motivation to make anything fancy when I know I’m the only one who is going to be eating it. And I sort of like having the freedom to make weird things and not have to subject anyone else to the risk or the malnutrition. Like improvised pear crisp for dinner.

On Changing the World

I read an article recently on theatlantic.com by Ron Fornier about the difference between my generation, the Millennials, and my parents’ generation, the Baby Boomers. The article focused mainly on the attitude of each generation toward politics and Washington, but a side comment caught my attention.

Fornier noted that Millennials---while often labeled as self-absorbed, egotistical, and entitled (and I’m not saying this isn’t true)---are actually more willing than previous generations to desire careers that further their community rather than their bank account. Millennials are more likely to volunteer, study abroad, and look beyond themselves when envisioning the ideal job. Growing up in a world that is more interconnected than ever, we are more likely to see global problems as our own.

As someone immersed in the culture of the Millennials, I have to say that I find this to be true, at least in my own circles of friends and acquaintances. I have no evidence to support that this desire to be world changers is more pronounced in my generation than in previous ones, as I have only been a 23-year-old in the year 2013 and not in 1973, but the words of my peers certainly suggest a longing for meaning and purpose in their career path.

While in college, we dream of working for non-profits and NGOs. We want to bring social justice to the red light districts of Bangkok, end hunger in Somalia, bring peace to Palestine, fight AIDS in South Africa. We want to be doctors, teachers, child-huggers, social workers, advocates for change. Our goals are lofty. So are our expectations.

The reason so many of us---us post-grad Millennials---are so frustrated, I think, is because there is almost always a lag after college graduation between intense passion and practical capacity. We want so badly to be doing something important and meaningful. But then we realize, to our dismay, that we aren’t actually helpful to anyone yet. We have a college degree but we have no skills, no experience.

We have only student loans and monotonous entry-level jobs (if we’re lucky). As we organize mind-numbing spreadsheets, file back-log data, and make coffee for our superiors, we wonder, how am I going to change the world doing this?

It is after this thought that many decide to go to grad school.

I don’t blame them.

Changing the world is a heck of a lot harder in practice than in theory, particularly, as I’m discovering, when you went to a liberal arts college and got a degree in English writing. I firmly believe that writing can change the world. I have less confidence now that my writing can do that. But I hold onto my passion to make a difference, to be a piece of the change, proudly, fiercely almost, because there is a part of me that worries I am one short step from apathy. One quick slide away from settling for something significantly less than my dreams.

It happens to people. I’ve seen it.

Somewhere along the way, life becomes about survival. We just need to put food in our mouths and a roof over our heads. We need an income. And let’s face it, most of us don’t have the luxury of being too picky about where that comes from. After a while, our dreams or passions fade. At first this bothers us. Then we don’t really care.

Somehow I---we, post-grads, everyone---need to find a new way of looking at what it means to “change the world” and how we can be a part of that. I purposefully won’t use the words “realistic middle ground” because all of them suggest to me compromise and an easy way out. But a little bit of reality and redefinition is required to prevent the majority of people from succombing to disappointment and defeat, I think. Me being one of them.

It is important to hold in tension a healthy fear of apathy and a passion for change with the humble understanding that I am just one person on this earth of 7 billion, living in a tiny window of time that will soon pass and be forgotten. As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in his little book Leaf by Niggle, I’ll be lucky to paint even a single leaf in this giant tree of God’s.

That being said, I still want my one leaf to look amazing.