Stealing Lisa Bullard’s idea, the View’s editorial team asked Loft teaching artists what they wish for in the new year; what they think is a gift concerning their writing. How lucky are View readers to have these words of wisdom, such responsive creativity in our midst? The Loft’s teaching artists are a tremendous gift to this literary community. Check out their bios on the Loft’s website. Happy New Year one and all!

Another Winter
—Carol Pearce Bjorlie

Visions of snow suits, snow plows, and snow shovels swirl in my head. O, Holy Muse, I plead that I may survive once more to poke my curls above ground in May and find the world intact, at peace, full of sap and silken air.

Give Me Coal for Christmas
—Maureen Gibbon

As I write this, a pumpkin BNSF GEVO pulls 116 gondolas of subbituminous about 100 yards from my window. A pusher brings up the end.

Did that make any sense to you? It wouldn’t have made any to me a year and a half ago, but in 2008 I moved right next to the railroad tracks in Bemidji, Minnesota and began seeing orange Burlington Northern/Santa Fe locomotives push and pull long strings of coal cars. These trains start their journey somewhere in Wyoming or Montana and head for Duluth. They pass so close they make the house shake. When they blow their horns, they wake me up at night or scare the living lights out of me in the day.

And I’m grateful for it. (Ok, maybe not so grateful for the horns, but still.)

The trains remind me of the distance of the country, but also how we’re all connected: in a day of hard driving, I can be in eastern Montana or on the battlefield of the Little Bighorn, also known as the Greasy Grass. The trains remind me that plenty of people work jobs that don’t involve a desk. And fears about global warming and pollution aside, I like to see the black coal mounded in the cars. The jet heaps make me think of growing up in Pennsylvania and my Grandpa Gibb, who earned $5.74 for one day of work at the Kingston Coal Company in 1939, and my great-grandfather David Gibbon, who also worked in a mine and was union president of the Edwardsville charter of the United Mine Workers of America in 1900.

I’ve mined my life and the world for my writing. Once I finish a piece and send it out, it has to generate enough heat and light that someone wants to stay near. So this year for Christmas, put me down for black stuff in my stocking. Or get me a coal train with a heavy load and a horn that says, I’m coming through.

The Best Gift
—Linda Back McKay

Being a writer is the best. To weave caterpillars and whip-grasses with the knack of breathing and the musical tink of metal—a motorcycle engine cooling in the garage. To create what you have yet to discover. The time you have now. This is the best.

Being a teaching artist is also the best. To begin anew, dream, scratch away, dust off, define deeply, bring forth, turn inside out, recognize, realize and “burst into blossom.” To embrace it all. This is the best.

(By the way, how would you describe the exact color of your mother’s eyes? Include a simile, a smell and a vivid image from childhood.)

New Year’s Resolution
—Laura Purdie Salas

my new year’s resolution for
my writing is to cut loose
let words fly like snow flurries
flung by winter and wind

my new year’s resolution for
my writing is to make noise
let it sing, shout, chirp, and cry
let it echo off the pages into real life

my new year’s resolution for
my writing is to reveal myself
peel back skin and politeness
expose every hidden fear and want

Wishes, Minnows, and Words
—Bill Meissner

I wish for words. I wish for surprising, imaginative words that swim through the deep waters like a school of minnows in a lake. I wish for hundreds of them, thousands, millions. I wish for so many word-minnows that, as they dart and flicker, their glistening silver bodies make the bottom of the lake shimmer.

I wish that everyone—writers and readers alike—could have their own lake, their own school of endless minnows, circling down there, lighting up the dark waters like fireflies in a jar. Then, even on the coldest winter days, when the lake freezes over with a thick layer of ice, we would never be lost. We could—as I often do—brush the snow away from the ice and peer down at them like a small child peers at the world through his or her first magnifying glass.

TUSEN TAKK
—Heidi Grosch

Norway’s winters boast starlight as it can only be in a winter sky. Darkness embraces us for most of the day, yet lights in the windows and candles burning in every store, home and office remind us that there is always hope—and that the light will return. I think that gift—the gift of hope—is the one thing that keeps writers going. Hope to finish that next thought or sentence. Hope that the story or thought finds its way to paper or computer screen. Hope that someone else will catch that spark and also be inspired to read. It is easy to get discouraged in the ever present darkness. Lack of creativity. A distant muse. A pile of rejections. But the light will return. Light a candle and hope.

But there is also a second gift I wish for all of us who write, and that is forgiveness. Forgiveness especially for oneself. If today you don’t write, that’s ok. If you write something that is less than worthy, that’s ok. If you say that something else is, at the moment, more important—then that’s ok too. Light that candle and know that the light will return, but that for the moment, it’s ok to celebrate the darkness as well.

One Wish
—Sun Yung Shin

Sun Yung Shin’s one wish is for “a culture that value(s) educating our children of color at an equal level to our white children.”

“If I could ask for one gift as a writer, the thing that would be most helpful to me, it would be
silent winter mornings when everyone else is asleep, the ideas pour in, and I have time and space to dream with them.”

A New Year’s Resolution
—Mary Carroll Moore

“My new year’s resolution for my writing is
take time to celebrate my new novel and relax about the next one.”

And in this season of introspection, John Lehman shares these thoughts in his poem “Lost Treasure.”

Lost Treasure
—John Lehman

Think about that stash of college
stories hidden in the basement—

Too embarrassing for your wife
to find, too good to toss out. Or

contact that publisher you know.
The one you sent a manuscript

of poems to who agreed she might
consider them but hasn’t said yes

or no. Lost masterpieces. The Holy
Grail. Promises better than the catch.

And you? You’re a writer, like a Coon
Hound, howling on their scent.

My Gift
—Dave Walbridge

My gift to writers is to begin.
Start your project, book, poem, play. . .
Do not read another instructional book, buy a new pen or wait for inspiration.
Simply begin.

Write.
every.
day.

 

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by Scott Edelstein

Writing is, by nature, a solitary activity. Yet to become better writers, most of us want more than just endless hours of solitary practice. We also want some form of communion with other writers: classes, workshops, conferences, writers’ groups, mentoring, and so on.

Today, technology enables us to commune in more ways than ever before. We can speak to each other voice-to-voice, keyboard-to-keyboard, and now face-to-face via live video streaming, even though we’re many miles apart. Educational theorists tell us that this has created a revolution in learning, and that we’re entering a brave and wondrous new world.

I respectfully disagree. Distance learning can certainly be brave and wondrous, just as any learning can be. But is it new? Hardly. We writers have been using distance learning very effectively for hundreds of years.
Writers have long mentored other writers, and read and responded to each other’s work, through the medium we now call snail mail. Some of the best of this epistolary mentoring has been published in book form (for example, Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, which first appeared in 1929).

Let’s also not forget the Famous Writers School, founded by Bennett Cerf in the early 1960s, which taught creative writing and business writing by correspondence. Students were given assignments by mail; they mailed their completed assignments to instructors; and the instructors wrote back with comments. In 1969, the Famous Writers School took in $48,000,000 in revenue. Today it still survives in a much humbler form. A competitor, Palmer Writers School, operated out of Minneapolis until the 1980s.

Over the past decade or so, the correspondence class morphed—though not that much—into the online writing classes offered by Gotham Writers’ Workshop and many colleges and universities. This model simply replaces snail mail with e-mail, though it also typically enables students to post public comments on a class bulletin board and to communicate on a live chat screen during scheduled times.

An even more successful model of distance learning has been the low-residency master of fine arts degree in writing, which began at Goddard College in the 1970s. This model essentially combines writers’ conferences with the approach of the Famous Writers School. MFA students and their instructors come together in a central location two or three times a year for mini-classes, readings, schmoozing, and one-to-one instruction; in between these conclaves, writers work with their instructors via snail mail, e-mail, and phone. Today more than 40 colleges and universities offer low-residency MFA programs (with more to open shortly). Goddard College now offers a low-residency BFA in creative writing as well, and low-residency DFA programs will probably appear in a few years.

Now there’s another new form of distance learning—and it’s offered right here at the Loft. Beginning in February 2010, I’ll offer the following classes and workshops in a unique live distance-learning format:
• 100 Things Every Writer Needs to Know
Tuesday evenings, February 23, March 2, and March 9
• Money Matters for Writers
Thursday evening, February 25
• The Truth about Literary Agents
Wednesday evenings, March 3 and 10

All three offerings will be taught live online, and will be accessible to anyone with a standard high-speed Internet connection. Simply type in the code that the Loft will provide and you’ll enter a live virtual classroom. The left side of your screen will have a live video feed of me; the right side will have a chat room for asking real-time questions. This arrangement provides much of the same face-to-face contact, and some of the same real-time interaction, normally found in in-person classes. (You can also ask questions after any session by calling a Q&A phone line or via e-mail.)

If you prefer, you can attend these offerings in another way: by phone. You’ll be able to dial a toll-free number and get a live audio feed of any class or workshop listed above. This will enable you to take part in a session even when you don’t have computer access—while you’re traveling, walking, lying in bed, and so on.

Either way, you’ll be able to participate in live Loft classes and workshops without leaving your living room, or your hammock on a Florida beach—and while wearing your pajamas, or your swimsuit, or (if you’re at home) nothing at all.

For more details on any of these offerings, go to www.loft.org and type the class or workshop title in the search box in the upper right of your screen.

The Loft is the first literary center to offer this new form of distance learning. However, these three offerings are just the beginning. Over time, the Loft plans to offer more such classes and workshops taught by many different teaching artists.

Consider this your invitation to commune with me in cyberspace.

Scott Edelstein has been inspiring, educating, and mentoring local writers for years. Now he’s doing the same thing globally. Catch his classes at the Loft in person or via your choice of technology and at www.helpingwriters.com.

* This article will also appear in modified form in Extra Innings, December 2009.

 

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by Fred Amram

When J. C. Hallman takes the stage at the Loft December 4 to read from his works, he will bring his vast experience as a fiction and nonfiction writer and as a polished public reader. His unique, sometimes counterintuitive insights are delivered without excess language and often with a sharp wit. Despite his careful and artistic use of language, Hallman enjoys friendly and informal encounters. He prefers to be called Chris.

On Public Readings
Has Hallman chosen what to read? “I may not choose until the day of the event. Overplanned readings can backfire, as it’s a dynamic experience. It will probably depend on what I’m thinking about, based on the conversations we’ve been having at the Loft.”

In school we were all taught to practice, practice, practice. Apparently Hallman hasn’t started rehearsals yet—or has he? “Writing, for me, is actually a form of rehearsal. I read my work out loud to myself. A lot.” He models what he teaches. Hallman consistently encourages his students to read aloud, listening for ideas and sentence structure, and for the music of their prose.

How does Hallman build his program? “This varies. Sometimes it might be determined by a challenge I’d like to present to a particular audience; other times I might choose something that I suspect will go over well. I’m not a fan of reading excerpts. A reading ought to set out to offer a whole experience—a whole story, a whole essay, or, if possible, an excerpt that can become a kind of whole unto itself in some way.”

Hallman likes to read in public. “It’s kind of a disembodying experience because by the time I’m reading my work in public I know it so well I can’t possibly experience it as the audience does. I’m curious about how certain lines will go over, but I’m always surprised by that—and I hope that my paying attention never shows. I largely think of reading in public as an opportunity to get out of the way of the work and bear witness to a rawness of reaction I can only imagine otherwise.”

On Writing
Beginning writers often struggle with the question, “What should I write about?” Midcareer writers learn to trust their instincts. Professionals such as Hallman go with the flow. How does he decide on his next theme? “I don’t ‘decide’ it, I think. I find myself fascinated by something, and trust my curiosity. Most often, when I realize I want to write about something, I discover a number of odd threads or connections in my thinking that go back quite a way. It’s not entirely a conscious process.”

And yet, Hallman, like most writers, combines intuition with discipline. When asked to describe his creative process, he tersely answered, “Methodical, varying in efficacy.” Does that reflect a nose-to-the-grindstone kind of guy? “When I’m writing, I write every day—no breaks until I reach the end of a story or essay or chapter. In working on books, there may be small breaks between sections, but that’s always dangerous. Momentum in writing can’t be overvalued, and ought not to be squandered. I don’t make writing plans.”

Beginning writers often ask what motivates someone to write. How does one stay motivated? Hallman provides an eloquent insight: “Writing to me seems like the only reasonable response to an absurd and mysterious world. I remain motivated because I know that if I don’t come up with some kind of response I’ll slowly go insane.”

Hallman began his career as a fiction writer. “I started out writing about my childhood, as many people do. I more or less set out to mythologize that childhood, to turn it into a past full of stories. All writers do this, to some extent, I think.”

Then came The Chess Artist and The Devil Is a Gentleman, and soon In Utopia will hit the bookstores. What turned Hallman toward nonfiction? “Before I started writing nonfiction, I don’t know if I would have believed that you could be as artistically ambitious in nonfiction as you can be in fiction. But of course you can. I was provincial at first, and I think growing up a bit opened up intellectual possibilities for me. As well, I’d had some experiences that needed to be recorded, and I wasn’t going to be content detailing them in fiction. That it was real suddenly made a difference.”

As we learn to raise our prose to a level of art, some of us struggle to distinguish between the two crafts, fiction and nonfiction. Hallman observes, “For me, they [fiction and nonfiction] are similar in the tools one uses to execute them, different in their purposes. Nonfiction needs to be true as to matter; it needs to have a direct correspondence to the world we actually live in. Fiction transcends that. Fiction still has a correspondence to the real world, but it can be indirect and abstract.”

Most of the stories in Hospital for Bad Poets ring true, and those who know the author guess that there is an autobiographical element in many of the stories. Should they be classified as fiction or nonfiction? Where is the boundary? Hallman dismisses the question quite simply. “Stories are stories—they’re fiction. There really isn’t a good boundary between fiction and nonfiction—and there probably shouldn’t be.” At least that’s true for Hallman’s stories.

We wonder, then, does a prolific writer such as Hallman find different satisfactions in writing short stories in contrast to long books? “Yes, there are different satisfactions. My fiction, as you point out, is more directly about me, which maybe means it’s satisfyingly narcissistic. In nonfiction—at least the kind I practice—I’m generally sharing the ‘stage’ with something else, some subject. That provides the satisfaction of learning widely, and of escaping ego.”

On Mentoring
Hallman is one of six mentors, all established authors, giving intensive guidance to emerging writers in the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose. I’m one of the fortunate few selected to be part of the program. Hallman is currently my mentor, guiding me through a thicket of writing challenges. His reading assignments are frequent and often difficult. He provides a closer reading of my work than I’ve ever had in graduate school. Clearly, Chris works at his mentoring assignment at least as hard as do his protégés.

Why put in all this work as a mentor when he could be at home writing more books, essays, and stories? “There’s an obligation, I think, in the writing life, to pass along artistic and practical wisdom—at least what one has of it. I can never pay back, in kind, those people who mentored me (teachers like Chuck Kinder and Frank Conroy, and friends like Tom Grimes and Charlie D’Ambrosio), but I can act as the next link in the chain. It’s something I do even when I’m not employed as a teacher, and I think it’s essential to the literary community.”

I asked Chris if he has had mentors whom he never met in real life. “I would argue that to read, as a writer, is to actively seek out literary influence, to search for those you can usefully emulate. That, certainly, is a form of mentoring.” The lesson is clear—a writer must read.

And Chris underlined this lesson when I asked, “Writing aside, what in life is most important to you?” His response: “Reading.”

On Poverty
J. C. Hallman was a 2009 winner of the prestigious McKnight Artist Fellowship for Writers. I asked him, “Does winning the McKnight launch you into the BIG TIME?”

“It launched me into THE BLACK. For once.”

 

The Loft’s 2009-2010 Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose begins its series of readings on Friday, December 4, at 7 pm with nonfiction mentor J.C. Hallman reading from his work (photo © Migliorino). Also reading will be program participants Michael J. Opperman (poetry) and Kim Teeple (fiction).

Fred Amram is a 2009 – 2010 Lopft Mentor series winner in nonfiction. He is a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Germany who has recently been writing about the Holocaust experience and about his coming to America. He is a retired Professor of Creativity and Communication from the University of Minnesota. His scholarly essays and articles have appeared in numerous journals. He left academia to work at creative nonfiction and to leave footnotes behind.

 

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