There is a brilliant writing workshop this weekend by the incredible Craig Clevenger, register here
Craig holds these free, virtual sessions once a month. Usually, he hosts a fellow author. This time it’s his own lesson, which I’ve heard before and cannot recommend enough. If you’re unfortunate enough to not have read Craig Clevenger’s work, you can find several of his stories at craigclevenger.com and you can get a sense of his instructor skills through his incredible essays hosted at Litreactor.com; his essay Devil in the Details is probably the one I revisit most.
Through his workshop, he introduced me to the work of Sara Gran, who is now one of my favorite authors. I highly recommend starting with her novel, Come Closer and continuing on to her Claire DeWitt mysteries. She has a new novel coming out this month that I’ve already pre-ordered.
While I’ve not written much these past couple months (holidays, travel, Covid, planning another move, etc.), I’ve gotten a lot of reading done and discovered the joys of audiobooks.
Maybe more on that later.
When I told my grandmother that I wanted to write, she told me, “That’s fine. Just don’t write bullshit. There’s too much bullshit in the world. Too many people write bullshit.” In my memory she said this shortly before she died, holding my hand from her hospital bed; but I think, in truth, she said it a few months before, or maybe even a couple of years prior, when I had spent a couple weeks with her the summer before high school. At any rate, I was too young to ask for examples. But her opinion mattered.1 This is the same grandmother who convinced me our family were werewolves as a child when she corrected my growling technique.
When I was a Resident Assistant in college, I would meet weekly with my Hall Director2 to discuss my upcoming hall programs, any ongoing roommate conflicts, and chat about life.3 He once told me that my writing4 would be a blessing and a curse. He said, “You’re honest. Not a lot of people are honest. You’re going to help strangers. They’re going to love reading what you have to say. But because you’re honest, you’re going to hurt those closest to you. Your writing will bless strangers, but it’s going to crush the ones you love.”
I’ve mentioned that I started this Substack to create an online presence when submitting stories for publication. I thought I would discuss the process, highlight successes, and shrug off rejections. Then, that I’ve reconsidered and decided reading about writing is tiresome and this space would be better used to creatively detail stories from my life, David Sedaris-like; thinking that if nothing else, some day maybe my kids will grow up and get a kick out of reading the selective telling of their dad’s most memorable moments. But I’m haunted by the above quotes5 - in that the best stories can’t be told without hurting those I care/cared about. And that to make the stories interesting, details will need to be shaped to fit a theme that probably wasn’t present at the time, some things that I’ve forgotten will need to be newly invented, there’ll be a preference for the distant past where the actors involved will have had many years for the story to no longer be “raw,” in other words - the stories won’t be false, but will they be bullshit?6
In other literary news, I’m very slowly working on some longer fiction, having shrugged off flash fiction for now.
Much Health and Happiness,
Wil
Chuck Palahniuk recently wrote about the support his grandfather showed when he shared his writing dreams with him, which reminded me I’ve been meaning to discuss these things that people who’ve mattered to me have said about my writing and how it haunts my hopes.
Eventually, I would hold this position (at a different university!) and hold my own weekly one-on-one meetings with college students to discuss their job performance as Resident Assistants and hopefully encourage their various personal ambitions. Hopefully, I occasionally said something as meaningful to my students as my Hall Director used to say to me.
He was also a part-time Presbyterian pastor and enrolled in my school’s Divinity program. He once told me that when he would study the doctrine of predestination, he would ask himself, “What would Wil say about this?” (Because I would insist on a more Wesleyan/Sartre-ian/Terminator 2ish conception of free will). Obviously, his overvaluing my reasoning skills increased my love and respect for him. Here was this adult/supervisor/mentor/teacher, years and books and relationships ahead of me, who actively sought to learn from me?!?!)
He read my mass emails (decades before Substack!), which tended to alternate between paraphrasing C.S. Lewis’ non-fiction and detailing the failed pursuit of that month’s crush.
Initially, I planned to list more meaningful comments I’ve gotten over the years regarding writing, but these two are the only ones that really still matter to me.
I’ll still write them! I’ll still write about writing, too! But, know that these two quotes whisper to me from the periphery whenever I sit down to type.
Your grandmother rocks, may she RIP