MFA Crash Course: Day Eight

***If you are following me AND leave a comment in this thread by 5 PM PST Tuesday, 6/8, you will be entered to win a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card. Plus you will receive one entry each toward the query crit by my agent Laura Bradford and the ten-page crit by writer Eleanor Morse. Full details here.

Workshop: Met with the four writers in my workshop, led by Julie Brickman. We did an in-class writing assignment to play with alternate POVs. Here’s my experiment with second person, and an answer to a challenge a friend made one night while drinking bourbon at the Seelbach Hotel – to try my hand at creative non-fiction.

You thought she was a hypocrite when she wouldn’t let you cut your hair. It fell past your waist in tangles and sometimes you dreamed it braided itself into a brown rope that strangled you. It seemed to get in your way, wrapping around your arm, your throat, your shoulders like creeping vines, and you hated it. Worse, your mother had a pixie haircut and had for as long as you could remember. Her ridiculous insistence that a seventeen-year-old girl should have long hair made you feel invisible. Your wants, your wishes, your womanhood hidden.

So one day you convince your aunt to trim an inch or two off. You look at yourself and see a hint of something you could be. It – the cutting – becomes addictive. You sneak around for the first time in your life, and the song of the scissors hisses through you. Until she confronts you, screaming, “You think I don’t know you’ve been cutting your hair?” And you think the hours of screaming don’t fit the crime – your first rebellion, but then she tells you, “Go ahead and chop it all off. I don’t give a shit,” and you forget the niggling doubt.

Should I? and Would I dare? whisper in your ear. You walk into the bathroom and know you will dare. Scissors in hand, you pull a hank of hair over your breast and snip… Whole inches fall and you are Samson-reversed made stronger with each cut. She finds you like that – scissors cutting away. Your eyes meet in the bathroom mirror. Pause, pause, pause. Without a word, she leaves the room , and you finish up before admiring your new do.

It’s not until weeks later you realize that you cut away some part of her love. You learn how jealous she was of your easy relationship with the aunt who made the first snip, but it’s too late by then.  She shows less interest in your life, and you no longer have a place to hide.

Lunch with Friends

Graduate Student Readings: Three of the graduating students read from their thesis work. Very inspiring.

Lecture: Online Marketing for Writers
Lori A. May, Lecturer
Lori A. May is a writer and Editor-in-Chief of Poets Quarterly and she shared her tips on social media for writers. I’m not going to share everything Lori said since she partly makes a living by sharing this info. Instead I will link you to her site. J   http://loriamay.com/

• Social media is about marketing your writing, networking, and “literary citizenship” (cheering on the arts).
• If you begin your social media strategy after your book is out, it’s too late. It takes time to build up a following, especially as a debut author. Start now even if you don’t have a book out.
• Your web, email, and blog are your online business card/portfolio. Be professional. Also use your name and get your URL set up with your name. This says “I am a writer and I take this very seriously.”
• Blogs should be professional while sharing your personality.
• When deciding which social media sites you want to use, try observing them first to watch the activity. Don’t try to do everything. Decide which ones work for you and put your focus there.
• Reciprocate support of other writers, and be a valued literary citizen.

Lecture: What Makes a Story Matter?
Eleanor Morse, Lecturer
Eleanor Morse discussed what takes a story from entertainment to a work that matters on a deeper level.

• Five elements of stories that “feel significant” include: the creation of something new; they connect us with a humanity beyond the self; they contain honest, intense emotion; there is movement; and the description of the finite introduces us to something immense.
• How should the writer approach a work like this? With a) curiosity and willingness to face the unknown; b) a vulnerability and honest emotional involvement, and c) absence of self-consciousness.
• Loved this quote! “Writing is not looking over itself to see how beautiful it is.”  (Not sure who said this.)

Cross-Genre Assignment  Follow Up: Performances of Elevator Plays
We gathered in groups to perform the elevator plays we’d written, cast and practiced. If something can be excruciating and funny at the same time, this was it.

Dinner with Friend: followed by Homework and More Homework, plus enlightening conversation with same friend