Richard Ford on Writing

            Richard Ford referred to us as “young writers” throughout our hour-long discussion in CU 321. The term seemed apropos given the context of an MFA program, but also appropriate given Ford’s age of seventy-one. He spoke with the grizzled confidence of a man who has put in countless writing hours that have produced seven critically acclaimed novels and four short story collections. His best-known work, Independence Day, won the Pen/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1995. He was kind and generous with his advice, an attribute that, for “young writers,” resulted in a small amount of idolization. “His eyes literally sparkled,” said a friend. “When he smiled,” said one of my colleagues, “it looked like a comedic theatre mask.” And perhaps that grin, an angular, thin-lipped joviality that pressed against his cheeks, betrayed a satisfaction with the work he’d accomplished in his career. When describing an ongoing dispute with his editor at Knopf, he claimed that at this point in his life he didn't care if his new book got published. When we pressed him about possible solutions to the problem (his editor, he claimed, “didn't want to edit”), he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I've written enough books in my life. I don’t need this one.” This statement was, most likely, not entirely truthful—I imagine even Richard Ford longs to see his book in print after writing it—but it’s an interesting thing to explore. It’s a statement that seems to signal a comfort with his legacy. I wondered: what is it like to be a writer in the twilight of a career and have that sort of satisfaction? What does it feel like to look back and feel that you have written enough, that you've said what you wanted to say? What does it take?

            The aspect of writing that Ford seemed most adamant about was the importance of taking the task seriously. He admitted that “marrying well” allowed him to stay at home and write (he suggested we all “marry as well” as he did), but it seems the seriousness with which he approached writing might be what separated him from other authors. He explained that he does not begin to write a word—“not a single word,” he emphasized—until he has done a year of research. This research included detailed notes on narrative structure and character and setting, notes which he said he would study as if he was taking the Bar exam. He was careful to include “thinking” as research, explaining how it was necessary for him to become completely engrossed in his project. The urgency with which he explained his research bolstered his overall message: “take you work seriously,” he told us. “No one else is going to. It’s your work.”

            FAU has had a string of accomplished writers visit us this year: Jo Ann Beard, Phil Klay, Roxane Gay, and now Ford. All of them have spoken about writing with the same dogged determination. Jo Ann Beard explained that she might sit down to write for an eight-hour stretch and not compose a word. Phil Klay spoke about fighting with an editor about a word choice because, “a serious sentence” he said, “contained a syllable count of 3-3-4-3.” “It didn't really matter,” he admitted. “But it mattered to me.” Of course, this isn't the first time we've heard writing discussed in this way. On our own faculty Professor Bucak writes so carefully that she tends to finish just one story a year. Professor McKay wakes up each morning at five and commences to write. Writing hard and meticulously is something that, hopefully, most of us already do. But the MFA provides an atmosphere in which it is easier to take our writing seriously because there is always a deadline approaching. And at the end of that deadline there are peers and professors whose job it is to read our work with careful attention. By virtue of our program, FAU creates an atmosphere in which we are considered serious writers.

            Which is why, after leaving my thesis defense last week, I had a strange mixture of accomplishment and foreboding. It felt wonderful to discuss my work confidently with professors that I have learned under for three years. I did not come into the program with that ability. But at the same time it felt as though I had been dropped from a very high ledge. The final deadline had been met. I passed. And there was no more work to turn in. I was on my own.

            Of course, graduating does not mean that the professional and friendly ties that I've made at FAU are severed, but the end of an MFA does signal a new phase of my development as a writer. I am confident that I will continue to write, but am also wary that the vigor with which I wrote during the MFA will be tempered by life’s complications. I am wary about this because, to a certain extent, I feel the real writing has just begun—the true test lies ahead. The impetus to write hard and long and well must now come solely from within. There is no longer the benefit of artificial deadlines and a community of writers who support my endeavors. It is up to me. And at this moment in my life, the goal is not necessarily to publish eleven books, but I do want to be seventy-one years old and know I have written everything I am capable of writing, to have said what I could say.

            This weekend I was on Highland Beach and saw, probably 100 yards away, a commotion on the shoreline. A crowd of beachgoers gathered and, through the swarm of legs and sea foam, I saw someone performing chest compressions on a motionless body. The tips of the waves flowed up the sand and stopped at the feet of the unconscious man. We all sat in our beach chairs and looked. We were too far away to do anything, but it seemed sacrilegious to smoke a cigarette while I watched someone die. I walked closer to the crowd and asked a woman what had happened. She told me that the man had been caught in the riptide and taken out to sea. Two girls saw him floating beyond the break and swam to retrieve him. “But he’s dead,” she said. “He’s gone.”

            When the paramedics arrived they strapped a machine to his chest, a sort of jacket that performed chest compressions. Lifeguards from Delray came as well, riding down the beach in a four-wheeler. The paramedics lifted the man onto the vehicle and I watched them drive past. One of the paramedics held the man’s limp arm by the wrist, checking for a pulse. The drowned man was old, probably in his seventies: stocky, with a healthy, white beard. When his chest was compressed, his belly shook. And as I watched him being taken away, I couldn't help but wonder if he had said what he wanted to say. I wondered if he had written his books.

Donovan Ortega is graduating this semester with an MFA in fiction.

The Moment Words Unravel

I’m sitting in CU 311 and Ben Parham walks in and we start talking about writing and our conversation takes a right and then a left and now we’re discussing the “zone”.

I say, “And there are moments when you’re just in it and the words are coming from outer space and you’re writing what you’re supposed to write.”

 Parham says, “Yeah, man. I know it. The keys are falling by themselves, man. The words just come.”

“Yes yes yes…”

And we go on like that: in the zone talking about the “zone”.

I know it exists. I know it exists because I’ve felt it. I know it exists because I experience it. I’ll be writing through a piece, struggling with a piece, when suddenly I’ll be struck. The keys will begin to fall. The feeling that is in my head, that is in my heart, will travel through the ether and appear on the page. The little blinking cursor—something I’ve heard Christopher Irving describe as a “virtual heartbeat”—will race across the screen and I will begin to write beyond my capability. In these moments it is as if I have learned to write for the first time. All of my intentions, once shrouded by a cloud of self-consciousness and apprehension, can now announce themselves. It is not a question of their existence—the message was always there. It is just a matter of relieving the constipation of words. Sometimes the space we write through becomes alarmingly narrow.

I know this phenomenon exists. I know it exists because my peers describe it: Katrina Gersie is pacing her little West Boca bedroom and muttering to no one. So enthralled by her argument, she discusses it with herself before rushing back to the keys so that they can type themselves. Ben Parham sees a scene in his mind. He has the characters and he has the situation and even though he does not know the scene’s importance, he begins to type it and the scene comes; the scene types itself. It is only weeks later that he finds that he has been writing toward that very scene for months. Brittany Ackerman describes it like this: “It’s like runner’s high. It’s like going on a very long run. Like hitting a stride in the last mile.”

Perhaps I am too content to mystify the writing process. Some might think me infinitely naïve to assign such magical properties to writing that, as we certainly contend in our MFA program, can be taught. But I know what I know. And there are moments when the words come without struggle, without thought of rules or form. I also know that when I submit a story to workshop in which this mysterious phenomenon has occurred, my peers almost invariably receive my story well. In these instances, though, I am less confident in my product. It is as if I do not really know what I have done. What have I written? What is this thing?

This is why, in workshop, I always get more out of positive feedback because, perhaps without knowing it, my peers are identifying the moments in which I have written from the “zone”. They are like archaeologists identifying the fossilized remnants of my communication with the fourth dimension. Their critiques only bolster my belief in the mysteriousness of writing. I have no choice. I must believe. My best writing seems to come from the “zone”.

It is this reason that I think the workshop should be the space that we work to recognize the moments that our peers have entered the “zone”. Visiting writer Nick Flynn referred to these portions of text as “moments of energy”. It is these instances that writers should be encouraged to embrace. Our job in the workshop should be to inspire confidence in the intangible element that makes a writer’s words sing. That is not to say the workshop should be devoid of criticism. But I think we can admit that our criticism, however precise or confident, is probably not going to be the catalyst for a successful piece if it leaves the writer doubting the natural ability that got them a seat in AH 104.  

It is helpful, of course, to be directed to the problem areas in a text. Yet, it seems it would be more helpful to point out areas in the text in which the writer has tapped into some greater pool of knowledge. Without this emphasis, the workshop can be too hard a pill to swallow—the writer’s mind is such a self-defeating place that it is tempting to look at an unsuccessful 5,000 word essay or story as a waste. But I think that, sometimes, one has to write 5,000 words to get to the next 5,000 words. The workshop should contain enough generosity and graciousness to instill the confidence necessary to attack the next piece. The workshop should act as a kind of rallying point for our written explorations.

            Because all of us have to sit down at our desks and stare at our little virtual heartbeats and attempt to unclog the words bottlenecked in the narrow space between our souls and brains. And we will continue to pound the keys in a desperate hope that we will be transported into the place where the keys fall by themselves. It is in this world that the words unravel in perfect, unexpected threads.

Donovan Ortega is a second year MFA who, despite not having health insurance, is pretty sure everything is going to be OK. He is currently training to be a professional swimmer (he can do forty laps in a small, community pool) and plans to represent the United States of America in Tokyo during the 2020 Olympics. He is brushing up on his Japanese by watching Mushi-Shi, a contemplative Manga series adapted for television. He has yet to stay awake for an entire episode.

Jelly Packets

On the first day of class Nick Flynn told us a story about his daughter. She had said something funny that morning about the hotel pool. It was poetry, he claimed, from a four year-old. Initially, this annoyed me. Doesn’t every father think what his kid says is poetry? However, it was soon clear that he had the same kind of wide-eyed love for everyone’s work. After we read our poetry aloud he always seemed to find something uniquely satisfying in it. He always seemed to be able to pinpoint the “energy” of the piece. What I found surprising in this was that I actually believed him. His comments were genuine. His appreciation was sincere.

As a result of this, I felt a distinct freedom to write whatever came to mind. In the Nick Flynn workshop, I had the liberty to write carelessly. “Write faster than you can think,” Flynn told us during an in-class writing assignment. He claimed that the images that appeared from this type of quick writing were the images that would become novels, memoirs, and poetry collections. Our hurried scribbles were given power. So it seems that when students are given the freedom to write “badly,” it might also give them the freedom to write well.

This observation offers an invigorating paradox. No doubt, writers are often told to write recklessly, but when are they given the chance? And even after writing something that pushes the envelope of clarity or good taste, how often are they admonished for these attempts? In this way, perhaps the fiction and poetry that enters the graduate and undergraduate workshops is subconsciously edited for literary palatability. Like it or not, there is a certain sense of intimidation when a writer sits down to write knowing that twelve of his peers will be reviewing his work with itchy trigger fingers.  In order to avoid this, as critics of our peers’ work, we should strive to make the workshop less of a place in which “literary rules” are enforced—a practice that might result in safe, quiet, ‘oh so precious’ literary output—and more of a space in which artists are given the leeway to fail. We might not see as many adequate workshop stories, but we might be able to witness art in its most natural, triumphant form.

All week long, Flynn was ingratiated with his daughter’s love of jelly packets. In our free writing sessions, he wrote about them often. “Jelly packets, little jelly packets,” he would say. “Haven’t seen them in years, those little jelly packets.” In his writing that week the jelly packets turned into coffins. From their peel-able tops sprung angels. He never worried about us thinking him trite. He wasn’t worried about the red pen of the workshop. And we took his word for it.  By the end of the week, I thought jelly packets absolutely profound. 

Donovan Ortega is a first year MFA student at FAU.  He lives in Boca Raton with a cat named Og Mandino. He's pretty sure everything's going to work out.