Writers’ conference: Authors and AU faculty reflect on writing, creative process, and new book

My answer to this question changes every year, as my own attitude toward writing and reading (which always go together in my mind) evolve. The most obvious help that classes provide to an aspiring writer comes in terms of structure, motivation, recommended reading, and deadlines. Never underestimate the value of a deadline!

The most useful teaching, I believe, comes in the form of direct feedback on written work. That one-on-one mentorship can be invaluable. I can help writers see their strengths so they know how to let them shine. I can direct my writing students toward like-minded published writers and books that do similar things to what they’re trying to accomplish so they’re aware of the conversations already going on about certain topics or in certain forms or voices. Then they can figure out how to insert themselves into that conversation in an original way. I can highlight where an aspiring writer’s work is already original and fresh so they can lean into that originality. In those ways, at a university, we can teach most elements involved in writing: characterization, setting, point of view, style, plotting, theme, and so on.

Ideally the students are motivated and learn what they can from the assigned readings and from drafting and redrafting and then the actual teaching comes as personalized one-on-one mentorship.

This is a great question and made me laugh because you saw in my book that I really do (sometimes!) go up the wrong side of a mountain, figuratively and literally. Yes, you’re right I tend to learn from experience first and then reflect on that experience in my writing second. I very much agree with your idea of life as “evolutionary process” and the role of risk, though this is an understanding that I’ve arrived at relatively recently.

At the same time as I value experience and personal reflection, I also can credit many mentors who’ve saved me a bumpy journey, or at least guided me through the bumps. Often these are other writers—deep-thinking, reflective people—who are friends so the mentorship comes through personal conversation and through their books. Steven Heighton is one such friend writer and his recent Athabasca University Press book, The Virtues of Disillusionment, for example, helped me feel very content and accepting of my writing career as I age. That long essay puts issues of ego and writing and striving for success into perspective succinctly and clearly, which speeds me along to a point of good understanding and saves me some of the grunt work. I appreciate that “map of the trail” —as you put it— that comes in a clear-thinking, honest book. As well as appreciating the understanding offered, I also value the companionship such books provide (the “I’m not the only one who feels this way” or “I’m not the only one who has had this struggle”)—not having to go the hike alone, to extend our metaphor.

Yes, part of me would love to walk away from social media forever. I fantasize almost every day about becoming invisible online—I don’t like how much of my life it takes and its ever-present nature. The fact that I dream about shutting it down so much tells me I really do need to be vigilant about the role it has in my life. That said, I agree it’s not realistic for writers—or aspiring writers—to think they can be invisible online. Much of book promotion falls to the authors and social media is the easiest and first point of access to potential readers and book buyers. I recently asked my editor if it’s really necessary for writers to be on social media. I had deluded myself that she might say, “No, Angie, don’t worry about it. Close down everything. Be free!” Her response, of course, was without hesitation: “Yes, it’s absolutely necessary, more now than ever, for writers to be on social media.”

So, that’s the world we live in. We can’t escape it. We have to learn how to live in it, how to manage it. I make a habit of leaving my phone at home whenever I can (whether I’m heading out in nature for some activity or heading downtown for dinner with my husband). Taking breaks is key. I listen to my body; when I’m scrolling through a feed and I start to feel bad (whether it’s despair at the negative news, professional envy, a sense of exclusion, a feeling that I’ve missed out, or any negative feeling at all), I put the phone away, look up a the mountains, and feel grateful for the real world, which always needs to take precedence over the virtual one. That’s a start. I know I need to do more to manage my online time. I’d like to take scheduled breaks, make more use of out-of-office messages, and set a precedent of not being always available and not being bound to breakneck turnaround. I’m always trying to figure out how to treat the iPhone and the social media platforms as useful tools without giving them too much power over my life, mood, and well being.

I always learn so much from you because we approach writing and reading differently. You give me new ways to think about these activities that I’ve done my whole life. Yes, ego construction and deconstruction sounds like exactly what I’m doing. The “why?” and the “what does it accomplish?” are interesting questions too. I am compelled to write; I can’t seem to help myself. I would say it comes out of a thirst for meaning and the desire to not waste my life, to live it as well as I can. Writing is the only way I know to arrive at that deeper understanding and sense of meaning.

I was very curious about the whole Knausgaard project and about other auto-fiction writers like Rachel Cusk, who approaches writing the self very differently but also draws heavily on her life and shares uncomfortably personal truths. The honesty and the deeply personal nature of the writing resonate with me. The raw vulnerability and the willingness to expose oneself in that way to get to some truth about human existence feels important to me—maybe because we live in an age where “truth” is so slippery and people constantly curate and filter their lives for social media. Because I was drawn to those types of books, I wanted to enter into that kind of conversation with my own book. I always think of writing and reading as an ongoing conversation and want to write what I like to read. I do suppose I drew courage from Knausgaard just in terms of thinking, “This is part of the writing life—being honest and living with the consequences.”

Thank you, Reinekke. Because of my academic training and career, I sometimes feel restricted from being honest about spiritual matters or stories, feelings, or ideas that someone might dismiss as “too flakey” or “too hokey.” My poet friend Christian Bök likes to advise writers to “lean into the weird” and I think of his advice when I find myself leaning back from describing an event like my tree experience. I agree with everything you say above. There’s an incredible arrogance in thinking that we can know, understand, or classify everything about human life and the wider universe—that all can be explained by—and contained within—human reason and logic. As I get older, I’m more interested in exploring what exists beyond that.

That’s exactly it. You remind me that a good reader can often explain a book and its ideas better than a writer. If I could explain it so succinctly and easily, I might not have felt so compelled to write the book. That’s the lesson I learned through the writing—working, parenting, living with souplesse (a word I just now learned from you). I am going to write, “Don’t go to the music, let the music come to you,” at my desk as a reminder. It’s perfect. Thank you.