It's Snowing, It's Beautiful

It isn’t so much that I think a degree in creative writing is worthless----I sometimes look at the thing hanging on my wall and think, “well, I have a bachelor’s degree”----and that’s it. I have it.

Without going into a primer of trying to make it as a writer (and I certainly have not made it as a writer) there are two things you have to do: write a lot and read a lot. That’s it. No degree; no amount of Dummies books; no exercises; no nothing are going to overtake those two simple activities to bolster your chance to make it as a writer.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that I did gather some useful tidbits during my time at Hunter College finishing my stop-and-start degree that was spaced out over 16 years. Creative writing courses didn’t do much for my writing, but they did introduce me to people about whom I can tell stories.

One such case was a very tall and admittedly somewhat able would-be writer who is quite possibly the most pompous human being I’ve ever met in my life. What made it worse was that he covered up the pomposity with borderline condescension and a faux personality that was designed to be a canned creation for his future fame as the next James Joyce; a career that, five years since, has yet to come to pass as far as I know.

I’m not expecting it to anytime soon and nor should you.

Creative writing workshops are torture. You have to sit there amongst all the other students and critique their work ostensibly to try and help them; in almost 100% of the cases, the only thing that would help them is the “writing genie” to show up, wave his magic wand and provide them with some talent. So, you read and and suggest and try yo be nice and realize that there’s no one here who can come up with anything at all that’s worthwhile or even salvageable.

Such as it was, I was in no position to say anything untoward because A) I wasn’t then and am not now in a position to tell anyone with any degree of certainty that they were or weren’t going to make it; and B) I can’t say that someone will or won’t make it based on talent anyway because it has nothing to do with being a successful and well-compensated writer in any context.

It’s not within my or anyone else’s domain to step on another’s dreams, as misguided as they may be. Plus, making it in the industry has nothing to do with talent. Look at the utterly inept Nick McDonnell who has carved himself a career as a novelist based on nothing other than his father being a big shot editor at Sports Illustrated and that industry connections paved the way for his crap----and that's what it is----to be published. That also assists in blurbs and reviews. It’s not about the work. There are plenty of clueless writers rich and famous today; maybe you could be one too!!! Or maybe I could!!!

There are dozens of writers----respected and not----who fit into this category. I read Jonathan Safran Foer and can sense that he’s not writing as much as he’s thinking what’s going to make him seem unique. It’s obvious and it’s painful.

My problem with the workshops was more than my basic template of misanthropy. The professor of the last class I took (and my individual tutor), Donna, told me that when I was critiquing someone else’s work, it wasn’t what I was saying that was coming through, but what I wasn’t saying. Apparently it was clear that every suggestion I made was prefaced with the phrase, “Listen you idiot, don’t do it this way, do it THAT way.”

That may have come through so clearly because I was saying it without saying it.

Most of the stories were pedestrian, dull and without much imagination. A few showed promise. Mine of course were, on the whole, generally disturbing. In that class alone, there was one in which the main character----told in the first person----was a contestant on The Apprentice and responded to his inevitable firing by launching himself across the table at Donald Trump and biting several chunks out of his face; another was a heartwarming tale of an individual (also in the first person) trying to better the world through scripture and finding people who were living public lives of blasphemy and sin and converting them to the word of the Lord....by bashing them over the head with his Bible until they were lying a pool of their own blood.

Now that I think of it, in the prior workshop class I took, I wrote one story that got the class to applaud and there was not a touch of violence!!! Maybe I'll publish it here one day.

One classmate asked me, “Do you have some sort of anger issue?” I told her, “Oh, this stuff is nothing...”

Regarding my pompous friend, we’ll call him Jimmy since he was such an avid fan of James Joyce. I have trouble remembering when the “personality conflict” as Donna called it began to manifest itself. (“Personality conflict!!!” I exclaimed. “The guy’s a fucking asshole!!!”----this was said in the sanctity of Donna’s office; she was mum but agreed.)

That was quite the interesting class. Donna had a certain amount of affection for me although (and I’ve told this story before) saying to me verbatim, with her teeth clenched and hands separated by inches, “Y’know Paul, sometimes I just wanna STRANGLE you!”

I couldn’t blame her.

In addition to that, Donna was friends with the famous author Walter Mosley and he came to speak to us late in the term. I had him sign a copy of Devil In A Blue Dress (which, to be honest, I never read; I did see the movie starring Denzel Washington); the inscription was interesting. He wrote, “To Paul, good luck writing your first book”. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’d already written it, it’d been published four years before and all the luck in the world wasn’t going to help it or me one way or the other.

Anyway, when anyone submitted a story, Jimmy would come up with a critique that was based on rhythm, iambic pentameter or other meaningless crud to build into what he seemed to feel constituted “good” writing. Jimmy suggested to another student that he go to the Basquiat exhibit to experience foundation.

No. I dunno what that means.

He wasn’t mean, but his tone was dripping with his superiority complex that he knew something others didn’t. “Banal” was one of his favorite words. I used the word “fervency” in a story and he wrote in the margin, “stop using this word”; naturally, I found a way to work it into the next story I submitted. For a brief moment----brief say I----I wondered how the word would look on his tombstone after his unfortunate suicide leaping off the roof of the school to be splattered onto Lexington Avenue.

Suicide say I.

When he submitted his “short” story, he couldn’t do what everyone else did and give in a little bitty thing of 6-8 pages.

No.

He gave out a story that was....26 pages long!!!

I read the first page and it was like reading the thesaurus. A convoluted story about a father and son or something and how rap music connected them in ways that they never imagined, blah, blah, blah. Complete with rap lyrics amongst the drivel, I barely read the first five pages and skimmed the rest. It was painful. The next class, I whispered to Jennifer, another classmate, “Is this guy fucking kidding?”

He politely listened to the critiques of his story, which I find difficult to believe anyone read, and could see in his eyes that he couldn’t have cared less what anyone else said about his brilliance. He was going to be the next James Joyce. Presumably, he was one of the few non Joycean scholars in the world who actually read Joyce’s writing rather than the SparkNotes or whatever someone else came up with in terms of analysis on the internet, he knew; he simply knew.

Yah.

Let me tell you right now that the garbage he wrote is never, ever, ever going to get published. Nor is anyone going to read it if he publishes it himself. If he sent it to a publishing house or agent, not only would they not consider it, they wouldn’t read it. He’d receive the perfunctory form rejection letter that I know all too well.

The second story he submitted was set in Ireland (coincidence!!!!) and had the same type of quirkiness that
...............................................Joyce
............................himself
..........................................used
.............................. in
............................................................his
.......................writing.

Why?

I dunno.

But this was indicative of the canned pretentiousness that he exemplified and led me to want to leap across the table and jam a pen into his eye.

If he was writing based on what was popping out organically, then fine; but there was a crafted persona that he thought was going to be salable once his genius was recognized by the upper crust of society and important critics who tell people what’s good and not.

He had writing ability. He was just an annoying, arrogant asshole.

In another instance, Donna had the class on the outdoor deck of the main building and as the class trudged upstairs, he went downstairs....to go to a florist and get a flower to put on one of the tables.

This is not fiction.

It was all a way to show some sensuality and only made his phoniness move self-evident and this was a main factor in my distaste for him in any and all aspects.

I wanted to take the flower and jam it into his eye.

The one instant that could possibly have ended his life----if I was a different type of person without any IMPULSE CONTROL!!!----was during a snowstorm. Now, at the time I drove a delivery truck overnight and the bane of my existence (aside from the people I had to deal with) was the snow. I could deal with rain, cold, wind, heat, whatever; but the snow was the one thing that truly affected my day and cost me at least an extra hour to an hour and a half at work.

I did not want to see, hear or know about the snow.

So, it was snowing and Jimmy looks out the window and said, “OH!” in a tone as if he had someone’s tongue in his anus and followed up with, “It’s snowing, it’s beauteeful!”

How I resisted my earlier urge to leap across the desk and jam a pen into his eye that time is still beyond me.

I’ve done web searches of Jimmy’s full name to see if he’s made it was a writer or anything else and he has yet to do so. Perhaps he’s doing the Joycean thing and writing very, very, very s-l-o-w-l-y. It’s better that way. Less frequency of rejection letters.

Presumably he’s still alive, but if he’s not I had nothing to do with it even if the cause of death was a pen in the eye. Or a flower in his eye. Or a fall from a tall building. Or getting beaten over the head with hardcover copy of Ulysses by...James Joyce.