the masochism of writing workshops

there's little difference between an insult and a gift.

Q.

Dear Olivia,

I am applying the second time around for an MFA in poetry. I got rejected from 8 programs last year, and was accepted to 1 Creative Writing MA abroad. While I technically deferred my enrollment for the MA program, they don't have a poetry focus, so I am reapplying to US-based programs because I really want a poetry focused MFA and I want to stay closer to home. But last time I had people read my statement and my portfolio, I received some pretty scathing feedback. It wasn't entirely unwarranted, in hindsight my work was definitely flawed (even after hundreds of hours of work); but when one of my readers went around telling people that my writing was only "5% good" and proceeded to send my essay to people without my permission to make fun of it (and outing me as queer to some mutual connections in the process), it made it harder to trust my ability to judge whether my work is good enough to be considered at all. After all, if someone hated what they read enough to treat me and my work that way, is it possible that I am not meant for this? However, considering that reader was a 30-something white man who hasn't voted in 10 years and still has his mom paying his phone bills while he raves about being a successful up-and-coming filmmaker in LA, I have tried to not let it get to me. However, because I deal with rejection sensitivity, my brain is wired to take feedback, particularly negative feedback, to heart.

Now, with a few more publications under my belt and a better portfolio, I am trying again. But my hubris from last year has worn off completely, and I am simultaneously terrified and numb. I still have a lot of the negative feedback from last year ringing in my ears. I am not as keen about talking about my application process with people anymore, and I am being much more selective with who reads my work and what feedback I integrate. It hurts that I had multiple people tell me I was wasting my time applying for the degree because they thought I was delaying my "destiny" of going to law school (following in the footsteps of my parents). I don't want to be hurt again, but I know as a writer and an artist, that kind of feedback is inevitable.

Yes I do have an option with the MA (and it is an increasingly attractive in the wake of the election). But I really want the MFA. I want to create art and poetry and to share it while encouraging others to get creative too. I want to be an educator and to make change. I want this. I am nervous that I potentially still haven't studied enough craft, or written enough, or accomplished enough to have a place in an MFA program. It doesn't exactly help that my parents are skeptical of what I can even do with an MFA, and are constantly questioning how I will ever make enough money with my ideas.

What advice do you have for writers who have been knocked down by feedback? How do you decide what pieces you put forward into the world, and how do you cope with putting work into other people's hands knowing they might hate it? If they do hate it, how do you balance brushing it off with looking for areas of improvement? How can I take ownership of the title of writer, even when I have a lot of people telling me that it will never amount into anything because I didn't study business or law? How do I prove them wrong?

I would appreciate any advice you can offer. Thank you.

Kindly,

B.Q.

Vesna Bursich

A.

Dear B.Q.,

First things first. I am pretty certain that anyone, no matter how rejection-sensitive or steel-hearted they are, would be left bruised and trembling by the experience you outlined in the first paragraph of your submission. The man in question didn’t just break a cardinal rule of workshop (privacy), he shattered any hope of it against a brick floor. His behavior is so egregious, in fact, that I’m inclined to believe this is a pattern for him, and you, very unfortunately, happened to be at the center this time around. If his inclination when he dislikes a colleague’s writing is to circulate it against their permission for humor’s sake, thus revealing very personal information about them, then his motivation for being in workshop is not growth, curiosity, or the improvement of craft. His motivation is to be a bully. But, there’s a very, very thin line between bullying and encouragement in workshop and your superpower will be learning to tell the difference.

If you were to define workshop to a non-writer by saying, “Oh, you just turn in something extremely vulnerable that you spent many hours working on, and then you sit in complete silence while people you don’t know that well tell you what’s wrong with it,” the non-writer might come to a swift conclusion that you are a masochist and a literary cash-pig who gets off on being hurt. But actually, one of the greatest skills we can attain as writers is knowing what’s an insult and what’s a gift, even if they look exactly the same to the non-writer’s eye. As writers, we know that one offers a pathway toward improvement while the other does not. Let’s take the comment, “Only 5% of your writing is good.” This is an insult because it is a finalized statement. A dead-end. A hopeless diagnosis. But a gift isn’t doing away with the comment altogether. A gift just turns what was once a cul-de-sac into a thoroughfare. A gift is holding up the 5% that is working, explaining why it was effective, and then offering suggestions for how you might be able to emulate that 5% in the other 95% of the piece.

I say all of this to show you that you are not crazy for feeling wildly disoriented and discouraged by this particular piece of “feedback”. But, as you have expressed, you will likely encounter more of it in the future. Your job now is to learn to quickly differentiate an unhelpful insult from productive critique, and move toward the latter without getting too caught up in the former. You cannot be afraid of hate in this industry. People can and will hate your work for all kinds of reasons. The question is which version of that hate is useful to you? Which version of hate can you work with? Which version of hate do you respect?

Artists are often pressured to embody a paradoxical identity: total-ego when creating work and total-humility when sharing it. The world wants ruthlessly confident heroes who will also immediately admit to any and all wrongdoing without protest. But really, we should be (and most naturally, are) existing in some version of the two at all times. When we are creating, we should absolutely believe firmly in what we have to say and why it matters, but we should also hold dearly the hearts of our ideal or larger audience, think empathically about the stories we are telling and where they will land in the world. When we are sharing, we should absolutely offer ourselves up to the critiques of others with a humble awareness that we can sometimes be blinded by our own perspective. But we also must remain steadfast in what we know is true about our work, lest we become doormats and our writing becomes an exquisite corpse.

But this is what makes a great writer. Not a genius. Not a failure. But a person whose genius is their ability to consistently interrogate their failures. This is why we have drafts, this is why we have editors, this is why we have workshops. Because we know that what we initially write has enough good, that it can be imagined as even better.

If you really want an MFA, then get an MFA. What other people call your “destiny” is actually just what they can most readily imagine. It’s no wonder that it’s easier for most people to imagine law school than it is a creative writing degree. But your life is not another person’s imagination. Your life is real.

Remember when I said that the failed-director whose mom pays his phone bill did not have a goal of curiosity, but instead of bullying? I want you to apply that to yourself as well. Your goal for your own self-discovery, your goal for entering an MFA, your goal as a writer, should be curiosity not bullying. Curiosity is asking questions knowing you don’t have the answer to but also knowing you are capable of finding it. Bullying is an answer with no question.

Your life as a writer will be full of ambiguities and unpredictability and insecurity, because there is no one path. Yes, an MFA is a degree but it is not a certification. What makes you certified to be a writer is the act of writing, which you will have to keep earning over and over and over again. But you are drawn to this life for a reason. Probably, because you are naturally curious, investigative, ready to learn and yes, a little bit masochistic.

So. What ideas are you aching to explore in your writing? What are you excited to improve upon? What are you afraid to ask? What are you afraid to answer? What is humor? What is tragedy? What is derivative or gratuitous or saccharine? What is effective? What books and authors do you most admire? How do you want your work to make people feel?

To take ownership over your life as a writer, you must moving forward with questions, your questions, in mind as opposed to other people’s unwarranted answers. That’s not a question, that’s an answer.

My love and luck,

Olivia in a small house