“I worked the night shift for a dating/matchmaking service before it was done by computers. Had to go to the homes and apartments of depressed and lonely people who called at 2 in the morning and wanted to find out how to meet a mate. Had to keep calling in to the main office so they knew I hadn’t been ravaged. Never would tell me if they actually had matches for the women. I didn’t interview any men that would have been dateworthy. Quit as soon as I sold a short story.”
“Singing birthday/anniversary/congratulation tunes to total strangers in a gorilla suit. (The only way it could have been worse was if they’d made me wear the Tarzan loincloth, but I didn’t have the abs for it.)”
I just taught creative writing for a summer session to a group of very bright and talented 11th and 12th graders. It was a very intensive program, a five-day-a-week gig for three weeks, in which the students studied and wrote poetry, short fiction, dramatic scenes, and long prose (both fiction and nonfiction).
It was very rewarding but also absolutely exhausting.
I got to teach the students a variety of forms, which reminded me that I need not pigeonhole myself only as a nonfiction writer (I started a short story yesterday!). I also got young writers excited by new genres and authors (they loved the idea of prose poetry!). That was totally gratifying.
I would love to teach creative writing at the high school or university level as a career in the future. However, this teaching position took up all my time even though I was only teaching for about an hour a day. My personal projects got pushed to the backburner. I was tired after leading class and trying to remain energetic all the time and then prepping for the next session each afternoon.
This got me thinking about the future again. Since I’m going to need a day job after I finish graduate school (no $200,000 book deals in my future), why not teach creative writing and do journalism to keep my mind involved in writing-related tasks and exercise my writing muscle? Read more »
The smallest literary magazine ever? Matchbook Story is a lit mag published inside, you guessed it, a book of matches, with only enough room for a 300-character story.
Jennifer Schuessler’s essay in the New York Times on the disappearance of actual work from literary fiction made me wonder if anybody is really, truly interested in the day-to-day minutiae in a corporate world where most of it could be summarized as “read emails” and “responded to emails.”
For example, Moby-Dick’s ridiculous number of chapters devoted to whale anatomy could actually be more interesting than reading in detail about the number of times I read an email, talked to our accounting department, responded to first email, and read the next email.
Google Lit Trips, my new favorite timesink, maps out the plots and character travels from classic and popular books, like The Grapes of Wrath (above), The Odyssey, and The Kite Runner.
Aaaand to give you reason for solemn thought and introspection this Saint Patrick’s day, here’s a nifty graph you can use to determine if your life either a) sucks or b) blows: Read more »
For the majority of us who majored in something that made our parents shift uncomfortably in their seats – or worse yet, acquired a graduate degree in that field, the reality of every day life is indeed a heavy one. Most of us won’t be discovered at an early age and catapulted to fame before we can mentally or emotionally handle it. Hell, most of us won’t even see the first letter in the word fame. But what we will see: bills, long hours at sucky jobs, and more reports about how today’s artists are having a hard time making a living.
I know plenty of talented writers who have settled into lives of little consequence (teaching, working 40 hours a week as editors and proofreaders, transcribing Japanese manuals into English…) because they got too damn tired of walking the poverty line. They fought the good fight as long as they could, but time eventually claimed its victory. They no longer cared if their masterpiece was ever published or garnered lavish acclaim, they just wanted to buy groceries without coupons and own a DVR. Read more »
Even when he was designing bugspray ads, Dr. Seuss' creativity seeped in to his work
We all secretly believe that we’re geniuses. Come on. Yes we do. The problem is that the rest of the world doesn’t always acknowledge our brilliance, and as a result many of us have been forced into taking menial jobs, where we push our creativity deep down inside ourselves, hiding it away so we can get through the day. The thing about creativity though is that, much like severe heartburn, it’s not easily suppressed; I’ve always believed that if you are truly, inherently creative, your weirdness will come bubbling out into whatever job you have, whether you want it to or not.
The perfect example of this is Dr. Seuss. During the Great Depression, Seuss supported himself and his young wife by drawing advertisements for companies like General Electric, Ford, Standard Oil and NBC. We’re not talking about selling the Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitzer here; Seuss’ early ads were for more “practical” things like Ajax Cups, General Electric Convenience Outlets, Essomarine Oil, and Flit Insect Repellent. And yet, despite the mundane nature of these products, Seuss produced some incredibly creative ads, pieces that displayed just as much imagination as his later, more famous work. For example, in one of his more surreal inserts, a man roasting in the pits of hell informs Satan that if he really wanted to turn up the heat down there, he should contact GE and install electricity, while in another ad, a colorful parade of germs declare “Down With Ajax Cups” as they march into a common drinking glass. Despite it’s decidedly odd nature, Seuss’ work was quite popular; his ads for Flit Insect Repellent, which contained images of people being menaced by sinister, whimsical insects, became a cultural phenomenon long before he was famous for writing children’s books.
Imagine you are a doctor. Let’s say you have known you wanted to be a doctor ever since you were a little kid, attended many years of school to become a doctor, and experience the greatest possible level of joy and fulfillment in your life when you are practicing medicine. However, let’s say that the society in which you live expects doctors to work for free. Occasionally doctors can secure gigs that pay, but it’s normal for doctors to hold down other jobs so that they can support themselves enough to practice medicine. As such, a typical day for a doctor could include: getting up early, enduring a long commute, spending 8 hours in an office working a job that consumes energy yet doesn’t stimulate intellectually, grabbing some dinner after work, and THEN performing open heart surgery at night.
This is what it can feel like to be an artist, especially in New York City.
Of course we need doctors and they perform a very important job…but so do artists. And we need artists, too. Yet it has become the accepted norm that most artists must work a support job in order to survive. This reality can be frustrating, depressing, and is something I think about a lot when I realize that yet another week has passed and I have poured far more energy into my “support job” than I have into my writing. I recently ran across a great article by Emily St. John Mandel on The Millions that explores this very topic.
I just taught creative writing for a summer session to a group of very bright and talented 11th and 12th graders. It was a very intensive program, a five-day-a-week gig for three weeks, in which the students studied and wrote poetry, short fiction, dramatic scenes, and long prose (both fiction and nonfiction).
In news that isn’t really news, 
Imagine you are a doctor. Let’s say you have known you wanted to be a doctor ever since you were a little kid, attended many years of school to become a doctor, and experience the greatest possible level of joy and fulfillment in your life when you are practicing medicine. However, let’s say that the society in which you live expects doctors to work for free. Occasionally doctors can secure gigs that pay, but it’s normal for doctors to hold down other jobs so that they can support themselves enough to practice medicine. As such, a typical day for a doctor could include: getting up early, enduring a long commute, spending 8 hours in an office working a job that consumes energy yet doesn’t stimulate intellectually, grabbing some dinner after work, and THEN performing open heart surgery at night.
