Tom Robbins said his big knock on MFA programs, and academics teaching writing in general, is that the approach reduces the art of writing to a specified set of rules, and according to Robbins, "In fiction, there are no rules. Whatever works, works."
This scientific quantification of writing is what the current bestselling authors do. There's no art in the art of writing anymore. These charlatans know the plot needs a certain number of characters, that there are certain tricks and techniques to creating suspense, like a ticking time-bomb, and that at a certain point the plot must have a climax and then resolution. Writing like this takes the magic out if, and reduces it to a technical trade. There's no inspiration, no invention, no art.
The typists who "write" like this aren't the ones who are hit with an idea while watching a hummingbird hover, or while walking through the woods, or watching the waves of the ocean roll in. They aren't madly possessed and enthralled with a new idea, and they will never feel the thrill that comes with finding just the right word to "make a sentence sing," as Robbins puts it. No, these types are merely thinking of the bigger new house they can buy, the social ascendancy that wealth brings, the fraudulent fame that they will have.
But then again, no one will be reading them in 100 years. They are a flash in the modern media pan, and although they have sucked all the air out of the literary space, surely their rewards will be temporary and short-lived.
Some apt quotes by writers on writing:
"A writer is working when he's staring out of the window." Burton Rascoe
"Use the right word and not its second cousin. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Mark Twain
"Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write." Robert Penn Warren
"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining…researching…talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing." E.L. Doctorow
"…therein is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident." H.L. Mencken
"Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory." Chateaubriand
"You must write for yourself, above all. That is [your] only hope of creating something beautiful." Gustave Flaubert
"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make." Truman Capote
1 comment:
Teaching young writers to turn out potboilers and get on the best seller list doesn’t seem like a very noble aim for college MFA programs, and my own undergraduate fiction writing classes many years ago were nothing like that at all.
On the other hand, there is nothing inherently bad about using a formula. The screen plays of classic Hollywood films had one, so do a twelve bar blues, a thirty-two bar Tin Pan Alley standard, or a Baroque fugue. It just takes a great artist to breathe life into a formula. A few hundred years ago, writing sonnets was the pastime of the fops of European courts, until Shakespeare came along and did something great with it.
On the other hand, one would expect post-graduate writing education for look into some of the real innovation in fiction writing of the last century, and writers often create sometime great by changing the formula. Case in point: One of the most enjoyable books by a popular author I have read this year is "Jesus Out To Sea", by James Lee Burke—short stories by an author best known for mystery novels. Somehow the tales are more compelling because you don’t have to figure out whodunit.
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