Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously

Paul Lisicky inadvertently broke the ice with our workshop. As usual, we shifted in our seats before the workshop began, nervously making small talk with one another in order to prove we weren’t uncomfortable, wouldn’t try too hard or be dorkily overeager for this year’s Sanders Writer-in-Residence. After launching into the short reading he passed around the room, he realized we hadn’t introduced ourselves.

“Oh my gosh!” he said, bringing his hands to his head. “And now it’s so awkward.”

The week continued like that — valuable literary lessons of how to use small frames to create a narrative, how to use music in writing, delivered with honesty and self-deprecating humor. No posturing or formulaic responses.

Lisicky even seemed to enjoy his time with us. When we would thank him for delivering such thoughtful workshop plans, he’d say, “You’re all energizing me!” He even came out for post-workshop drinks with us, patiently answering questions about MFA programs and agents, putting up with graduate student humor, and posting a picture of our group on his personal Instagram. He shared more time than he was required to, admitted when he didn’t know the answer to a question, and always spoke with joy and energy.

In writing workshops, I learn as much about the leader’s personality as I do about the writing principles they’re teaching.These writing lessons will nudge my poetry and prose a few steps in a new direction, and certainly the sustained, intense concentration on writing for a full week brings me renewed motivation to just sit down each day and write. But I mostly remember how each workshop was led.

Lisicky reminded me about the value of joy, enthusiasm, generosity, and humility. Here is a list of what I’ve learned in grad school:

1. Every time you don’t know something, admit it.
2. Always bring food to 7-10 p.m. classes.
3. If you’re suffering imposter syndrome, know that almost everyone else is, too.
4. Look for the courage to take your writing seriously.
5. While teaching and course work are important, don’t use them as excuses not to write.
6. Enjoy every 2 p.m. grocery shopping trip.
7. When you’re sleep deprived but have a mountain of work, sleep before you work.
8. Physical health is tightly braided with mental health, and both are tied to creativity.
9. Don’t take your writing so seriously that it doesn’t sound like you or makes you afraid to fail.
10. Experiment with your writing for fun.
11. You don’t have to know now what you want to do for a day job.
12. It’s OK to stay home on a Friday night.
13. If you want to be friends with someone, consider making the first move.
14. Read work that inspires you and draws you outside your comfort zone.
15. Enjoy the gift of time to focus on writing.

Kathleen Martin is an MFA candidate at Florida Atlantic University. Her work is forthcoming in Gulf Stream Literary Magazine.

Framing, Compression, Ongoingness

When Paul Lisicky visited our campus in March, we learned to slow words.

The timing was definitely ironic: Paul visited us the week before we launched our first Swamp Ape Review print issue and hosted a panel at AWP Tampa, the week theses were due (for third-year students), and the week before spring break (aka midterms). Adding a daily, 2-hour workshop to the week was, on paper, daunting. Yet to walk into the classroom with Paul on day one was to enter a literary (Vinyasa) yoga class. He’s brilliant, greeted us warmly and spoke with measured words in a way that invited us to pay attention. He is kind, reflective, and a true teacher—someone who is engaged and thinking about how to help his students learn. The way he respected our pieces—really assumed that every choice we'd made was intentional and should be considered—changed the way I will teach in the future, and increased the respect I give to my own work. In the midst of so much feedback from all our classes, and so much self-doubt as writers, he reminded us that what we are doing is a weighty thing, important.

A few days into workshop, several themes emerged for the week: framing, compression, ongoingness. We studied graphic novel excerpts from Thi Bui's memoir, The Best We Could Do, and analyzed photograph-like progressions of prose from D.J. Waldie’s Holy Land. At the end of each discussion, Paul gave us a prompt that generated some of our best work; I have known several of my writing peers for three years now, others for two years, or six months, and I read writing from each of them that was in some way a departure from what they’d done in the past.

That growth is a testament to the energy Paul brought to campus. A workshop like this is a brief encounter... we get 10 hours with this person (though in Paul's case, because he was generous, we also spent long hours at local bars or the Living Room Theatre talking about agents and publishing and craft, relieving our hands of pencils and laptops for sweating glasses of beer). Our teachers instruct us well day in and day out in this program, but the Sanders Writer-in-Residence workshop each spring is by nature a different experience; it feels like a secret society, meeting together in a small group of 10 for the week, our work not privy to our usual classmates and professors. It is a tightly framed experience, a workshop compression.

And compression, as we all know, tends to produce something (diamonds, fossils, overflow...) For me, the compressed energy went into my work. I spent the past year writing my first novel, so attending an intensive, week-long workshop focused on compression was an inversion. Last summer I spent 2-4 hours each day drafting long chapters that I later returned to and whittled down, or removed entirely. In Paul's workshop, we lingered on each word like poetry. The respect he gave to each line, each piece, made me reconsider how flippantly I sometimes write. I wanted to write slowly, lingeringly, because I knew how carefully my words would be attended by him and the writers in that room. I wrote one piece that was only 456 words long. Another that was 224. Yet each was more effective for its length. It was a reminder to me that my verbose style could change—that sometimes a new teacher, a new mind, can show you your range.

There is an ongoingness to writing, I think, in this: I may develop my voice, keep my preoccupations, or gravitate toward one style, but there is always room to encounter a new writer and watch my craft evolve. There is space to slow down, even during the busiest week of the term. And every time we do slow down, slow our words, perhaps that is when we most respect the language we use in service of a story that outlasts us.

Natalie Rowland is a graduating in May with her MFA in fiction and a novel manuscript (following rounds 1 and 2 of emotional drafting and revision). She’ll begin round 3 this summer. Wish her luck. 

Writing Concisely with Paul Lisicky

One of the best things about being in an MFA writing program is the opportunity to get a variety of eyes on your work. And so, when the applications for the Lawrence Sanders Writer-in-Residence workshop with fiction and nonfiction writer Paul Lisicky came out this year, I knew I had to sign up. Inwardly, though, I groaned. How was I expected to devote two hours per day for one straight week in the midst of my regular courseload, the odd jobs I work to make ends meet, and the fact that all staff members for our literary magazine Swamp Ape Review were one week ahead of the 2018 AWP Conference & Bookfair? Regardless, I sucked it up and submitted my application. And I’m so glad I did.

Not only was Paul down-to-Earth, but he created a space in which he challenged participants to reconsider structure, imagery, and form in ways I had never before conceptualized. Our week began with reading short pieces that utilized repetition and scaffolding. We studied writers like Nick Flynn, reading a segment from his memoir The Ticking is the Bomb, paying close attention to the chapters centered around the images presented in their titles. After a lively discussion of the day’s readings, Paul would then challenge us with short writing exercises. The form of the workshop was a welcome introduction to an experience I had never encountered - the chance to apply what we were learning in class in the moment. The week culminated in two days of bringing in short pieces that were image-centered, concise, and cohesively structured. Rather than focusing on critique, Paul created a space in which we expressly emphasized what was working in each of our pieces - a welcome break from the traditional workshop format!

One of the biggest challenges I face as a writer is writing concisely. Too often, I end up over-elaborating and over-explaining every plot detail I am trying to depict. Working with Paul was helpful because he exposed us to pieces in which the writers had the opposite approach. By trimming down the content, the themes of each piece shone through that much more strongly because diction was carefully chosen and frame was considered. It was a lesson I needed to learn and one I will apply to the pieces I currently am generating for my thesis.

Paul was gracious both in class with his feedback and outside of class with his time. His door was always open for those who wanted to meet with him one-on-one and we enjoyed congregating with him after class time, asking questions about the fellowships he’s received, his own experience in his MFA program, and how he approaches teaching creative writing. Our week working with Paul was certainly an influential one and an experience I will remember fondly in the years to come.

Originally a Metro Detroit native, Mary Mattingly now lives in South Florida. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA in fiction at Florida Atlantic University, where she’s experimenting with form and trying (and failing) to keep her bar tabs low. Her work has previously been seen in the literary journal, Arcturus.