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.

AWP and Recovering from Imposter Syndrome

            As I slipped the mask of the Swamp Ape over my head, the mild-mannered poet who says “Excuse me” in crowded bars, nervously checked Waze every five feet between the Air BnB and the Washington Convention Center, and smiled at each visitor who asked, “What the hell is a Swamp Ape?” at our book fair table – that person disappeared. For 15 minutes, I swaggered, photo-bombed, entered literary magazine raffles by signing “SWAMP APE” to the small yellow tickets, and sat down to lunch with strangers who tried not to appear startled at my swampish ghillie suit and gorilla mask.

            This is a convenient anecdote, because it also works as a metaphor for the transformative power large groups can have on an internal perspective. I would never don the Swamp Ape costume in my home (or admit it if I did), but with an audience, it seems natural. Similarly, writing alone can feel self-indulgent. If you write as I do, balancing your laptop on your ripped sweatpants at 2 p.m. with a piece of stale cake on the nightstand, you may see yourself from the outside and wonder if you’re delusional. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the hordes of literary magazines publishing work you admire and wonder whether anyone needs your voice.

The imposter syndrome is common and shared. Thousands of writers, who are stereotyped as being highly sensitive, solitary creatures, trekked again this year to AWP to brave crowded terminals where there are never enough free phone chargers, planes where free snacks are no longer complimentary and one can catch a virus from just unbuckling the seatbelt, trains that make too many stops, Ubers, too-small hotels - these writers walked half a mile through the chilly and strange streets of DC to a convention center full of strangers and projectors that fail just before each panel presentation begins.

            But we went anyway. We went because walking by the brick buildings and art galleries of DC reminded us what it’s like to be in the honeymoon phase of a romance with a city. And we went to the mixer because while writers are terrible dancers, the lack of inhibition by the flailers on the dance floor was inspiring. We saw that thousands of other writers also prioritized their writing enough to make the same trek and don a lanyard.

AWP was a reminder that while the fact that so many writers exist means the market is flooded, it also gives us permission to value writing in our own lives as well. It’s both humbling and energizing to realize that writing, while done in isolation, can also take place in a larger community. And so, though I will likely not don the Swamp Ape costume again, when feeling inadequate or foolish, I can put on the metaphorical costume of a writer making the awkward trek to AWP, remember that far away, others are doing the same with their lanyards tucked in drawers, and for a moment, it seems we do this together.

Kathleen Martin is a second-year MFA and is on staff at Swamp Ape Review. Her digital literacy creation, Between Memories (betweenmemories.com), explores the relationship between memory and memory loss through interviews, surveys, art, and erasure poetry.

Writing Communities of Poetry and Leftover Cake

An occasionally heard complaint from MFA programs is they burden students with so much work that the students are unable to find time for the one thing they unhinged their lives to do – write. At a few weeks into the spring semester, this complaint is far from me.

            

The irony of my writing life, or really my ability to complete any activity besides online shopping and eating banana bread, is that as my free time grows, my motivation declines in close proportion. I had far too much free time between Christmas and the beginning of this semester. This meant I spent many days telling myself 1 p.m. is a reasonable time to shower, that it’s just fine to wear the same pair of sweatpants for many days in a row, and that spreading peanut butter on a stale piece of cake makes a nutritious breakfast. And I wasn’t writing.

           

Enter the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. For one week, A-list poets such as Kevin Young, Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Alan Shapiro gave readings, craft talks, and workshop with a group of poets who have taken many plane rides and pressed “pause” on their daily put their lives to learn from these writers. As an intern, I was able to learn from these people in exchange for tasks such as passing out programs and troubleshooting the cell phone issues of the elderly (well just once).

           

The takeaways from this week are invaluable. Advice ranged from the potential added resonance of repeated words (Thank you, thank you, Mary Szibist) to the potential boons of rethinking simple sentences. This came from Carol Frost, who led the workshop I observed. She asked participants to find as many arrangements as possible of this sentence: Mary swam the river with her red dog.

The river, Mary swam with her red dog.

With her red dog, Mary swam the river.

Mary swam with her red dog in the river.

With her red dog in the river, Mary swam.

Mary, the river with her red dog, swam.

           

As the order of words shifts, each line changes in meaning and tone.  Now when I write, I fight against my instinct of how a sentence works. More possibilities exist than subject-verb.

           

More motivational even than these pieces of wisdom was being in the presence of so many people who love language and poetry. It was an intensified version of the community fostered through an MFA program, and I remembered how fortunate I am to be writing out of the cold. I know this is a temporary state, and that one day I’ll find it much easier to ignore the urge to write and eat banana bread instead. But hopefully when I arrive, I’ll find it harder to give in. I hope to carry these writing communities with me. When my peanut-butter-on-cake-persona forgets why I write, why it’s sometimes impossible to write, I can remember the enormous web of people who are struggling with me, and we will still write.

Kathleen Martin, a fist-year MFA student, is a Kansas native and a journalist turned poet. She owns several socks with hedgehogs on them.