I had the sausage sampler with two fried eggs. Afterwards I felt, imagine, awfully fat. This is not so far from the truth. I have, as of late, started going to the gym but I think I'm going to curtail all food I like if I expect the gym visits to add up to anything. I say this publicly in the hope that I may actually change my eating habits. But I also say that this is more a dream than a sure-fire thing that's going to happen. Oh me. Oh my.
As many of you know I've been having some troublesome interactions with the professor I'm having one on one meetings about my writing with. I actually opted (requested) to do these meetings through email because the first one went so shakily. The email correspondences are good because I can digest and respond to the things he says without having to worry about eye contact or losing my shit. Our latest correspondence included him telling me I should investigate my inner life, that my writing showed I had issues with men and women (perhaps true in the sense that I may have problems with people of all genders) and then there was his attempt at complimenting me I will paraphrase:You shouldn't think I'm always dissing your writing. You're smart. In fact in your emails you show that you're pretty intelligent, more intelligent than your writing. Not to say that your writing's dumb or anything, though it kind of is...etc...So basically he said that he thinks I'm smarter than my writing. And then the very last email I received, just moments ago, informed me of how much fun he's having, that my discourse is 'springy and lithe'. Must admit I'm not having all that much fun.
It's made me think about who exactly my reader is (oh my goodness!). There are many flaws with the stories I'm working on, I know this...but the flaws this guy points out, to me, are not really the ones I see or wish to to deal with. So the questions become: what are the problems I want to work on, is this guy totally not my reader, am I being over-sensitive and why talk about this on a blog about food?
He's not the first to say that my non-creative writing seems more full bodied than my fiction.
Hmmm.
Things to ponder.
6 comments:
oh vay.
i get the nonfiction/fiction shit too. it's just that making crap up involves so much imaginative footwork, whereas nonfiction involves acute observation first and foremost.
i feel a rant coming on. i'll probably put it on my own blog, but you should think "fuck that shit" and keep on developing your fiction. i like your fiction. i like your blog too. had i a choice, i'd read both.
hope the next thing goes better.
well, i'm not in a writing program, but i too am struggling with my writing and my professors' reaction to it. i have a big meeting with my adviser tomorrow, and i think he's going to tell me something along the lines of "this draft is very weak." i'm hoping he will add something encouraging like "with these changes i'm suggesting, it could be a strong paper," but he might also say something like "this is not up to the standards of the history department. get the fuck out. i'm embarassed by you. you are a disappointment." that's kind of what i'm expecting.
This is the second time I've heard about someone's advisor telling them they need to examine their inner life. The other person's advisor actually told him he was depressed and needed therapy. This enrages me to no end. When you're putting your work out there, and when it's in such an intimate setting as advising is, how dare they treat it like a cry for help?
Listen: you see how excited our novel prof is about your novel. Compare and contrast that with your assholish advisor, who I've heard is an assholy asshole.
P.S. If your stuff was perfect and didn't need fine-tuning, why the fuck are you in a writing program? Your advisor is supposed to help you with the fine-tuning, not get all Dr. Phil on you.
This shit kills me. Revolution!
?
Yeah it does seem like, for the most part, I should disregard the brunt of his criticism...I must remember all those who have said relatively positive things etc etc. I was talking to a so and so yesterday about this and it came down to me saying:
"Okay if he's not my reader then what do I hope to accomplish in these meetings?"
It's a tough question. He constantly informs me that the reader must be entertained, so I guess I could work on making things more entertaining? No I think the main thing he's been saying that I want to argue with but simultaneously see some validity in, is the relative passivity of my characters. I don't want to make them into complete different characters but he's right, they could have a tiny itsy bitsy bit more dimension.
Though I'm not having fun I do enjoy being called 'lithe and spring' oh yeah and 'tough'...I feel anything but tough but eh. Point: I'm not sure he means to be such a jerk.
next time response, "i have no inner life."
I'm not a writer (as you'll no doubt deduce from the clumsiness of this comment--I'm a little shy about commenting where so many "real" writers are likely to tread), but I did go through graduate school in the arts (specifically, I'm a musician).
I think that probably, at some point, everyone has to go through this issue with her advisor: What, exactly, are our advisors for? I wondered for months, what is the point of these hours in which sometimes the only thing my advisor said was "Why can't you play that?" It's true that sometimes what your advisor tells you will be abrasive, unwanted, and even wrong. I think graduate school is like adolescence--you don't need the constant guidance that an undergraduate would need, but by your own admission you aren't ready to go out in the world with no support system at all (as another commenter noted, otherwise you wouldn't bother with the graduate school). I think that one of the big things that graduate school is about is learning to process what seem like useless comments from your advisor (whom you chose, hopefully, because of his expertise and experience) and take what you need from them, which may be nothing. If your advisor is doing his job in good faith, he doesn't want to make you a clone of him. He doesn't even want to see you follow all of his advice. He's going to give you deeply human, honest and flawed feedback and wait and see what you do with it. He's got to give you space for your craft.
On the other hand, the psychobabble bullshit is out of line, and my advisor fell into this trap with me as well--thinking that if he could "solve" me it would make me a better musician. He was wrong.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I just wanted to say that I think you're going through one of the necessary issues of graduate school in a creative field.
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