Michael Steinberg

Note: For those who follow this blog, I have two recommendations.

1) A published anthology. AFTER MONTAIGNE: CONTEMPORARY ESSAYISTS COVER THE ESSAYS Edited by David Lazar and Patrick Madden After Montaige:Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays

After Montaigne essentially is a “greatest hits” collection of impressions and opinions on/about Montaigne’s essays--written by many of the genre’s most well known contemporary writers.

2) In December, Ander Monson’s invaluable blog, Essay Daily, Essay Daily ran a series of essays in celebration of the 30th anniversary of The Best American Essays annual anthology. The pieces, by a variety of writers, editors, and teachers, including one by Robert Atwan, the series founding editor, present opinions and commentary on/about each BAE individual issue, as well as offering an overview of the genre’s unexpected growth and evolution from 1986 up through the present issue. You can find all of the essays in Essay Daily’s November and December archives.
MJS

Blog # 45, SOME THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ON/ABOUT WRITING AND TEACHING CREATIVE NONFICTION, PART 2 BY MICHAEL STEINBERG

This is my second blog entry on/about specific matters of genre, craft, and of writing creative nonfiction in general. You can find The Doctor Is In, Part 1: Some Thoughts About Matters of Craft (Blog # 40), in the June, 2015, Archives

In a July, AWP Spotlight Award interview, AWP Spotlight Award Interview, I was asked several questions. Below are a few answers, along with some recently added thoughts.

AWP: What is the best writing advice that you dispense to your students?

MJS: First, revision/re-seeing is the key to all good writing. At the start, give yourself permission to write badly. Write everything that comes to mind. Reread the (messy) draft, looking for patterns and repetitions. And wherever you find them, cut everything else away and start there. Even when you think a piece is finished, put it away for a few weeks--months, even--and then read it again. If you still think it’s done, send it out.

Second, Robert Frost said, “No surprises for the writer, no surprises for the reader.” Each time you write, you hope to surprise yourself. I’d like to add that, often, my most unexpected surprises, I’ve found, show up in digressions and afterthoughts. Sometimes, those surprises have led me to produce some rich, compelling passages of writing. It’s taken me some time to give myself the permission to cut away most, or even all of the writing, that’s led me to those surprises. Now, when something unexpected, something unbidden, doesn’t show up on the page, it’s a bad writing day.

AWP: What is the best career advice that you dispense to your students?

MJS: When I was a younger writer, I complained a lot to Donald Murray, my mentor, about all the rejection slips I was getting. To which he said: “The acceptances are just as irrational as the rejections.” Murray was right. But I didn’t fully understand what he was getting at until I became an editor of a literary journal.

AWP: Can writing be taught? Why does creative writing belong in the academy?

MJS: Yes, writing can be taught. And yes, it belongs in the academy. But mainly if it’s taught by practicing writers. And if aspiring writers are voracious readers as well. In addition, as teachers and writers, we all know that talent, a predisposition for writing, is important. But we also know that when it comes to our students, we can’t measure or predict the intangibles--things like desire, yearning, passion, curiosity, tenacity, persistence, sheer determination, and hard work. Possessing those qualities--with or without raw talent—is a big piece of what it takes to succeed at writing, or at anything else for that matter.

AWP: Do you feel influenced by your peers to produce a certain type of creative work, or do you feel free to follow your own interests and passions?

MJS: Both. Because I’ve written a lot of pieces where baseball, in one form or another, seems to show up. And so, when peers ask me about that, I often get self conscious and start to worry that maybe I’m destined to become just a “one note” writer,

Also, we’ve all experienced the feeling of believing that we’re neither good nor imaginative enough to become the writer we want to be. Competing and/or comparing ourselves to other writers—peers or the great writers we’ve read--that’s our internal censor talking. A colleague once gave me some advice she tells her students. I’d like to pass it on: “Stop comparing yourself to others,” she said, “you’re the only one who can write this piece.”

There’s also a quote from William Stafford that I use with my students and myself. It goes like this,

"I can imagine a person beginning to feel that he’s not able to write up to that standard he imagines the world has set for him. But to me that’s surrealistic. The only standard I can rationally have is the standard I’m meeting right now…. You should be more willing to forgive yourself. It doesn’t make any difference if you are good or bad today; the assessment of the product is something that happens after you’ve done it."

AWP: What is your favorite thing to do when you should be writing, but just can’t find the motivation?

MJS: Whenever I feel uninspired or unmotivated, I compose emails about writing (especially about matters of craft) and send them to like-minded colleagues and/or former students. I also keep reminding myself that the track record tells me that I’ve done this before and I can do it again.

AWP: What is the greatest compliment that you could ever receive about your writing?

MJS: When someone who’s read my work or heard me read tells me, “Yeah, I’ve felt exactly like that before. Until I read (or heard) your work, I believed I was the only one who thought or felt that way. Read More