Melvin Jules Bukiet

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” poet John Keats said. He’s right that those are the two main qualities to which art aspires, but they’re not as identical as his statement implies. Maybe we can think of truth as content and beauty as form. Good writing requires both. In this class, we will seek those qualities as displayed by student stories and perceived by student critiques. You write what you want—or need—to write, and together we consider it. That process makes your writing better. There’s the goal.

You write. I read. We talk. Honestly, that’s all there is. But I’m expected to say more, so here goes. Each week, two students distribute copies of their work. The next week, that work is discussed in class. Everyone in the room addresses every story on the table. The aim, using practice and analysis, is to help students move toward becoming the kind of writer they want to be.

Some people say, “Can writing be taught?”—but what they really mean is, “Can inspiration be taught?” The answer is, as the skeptics smugly assume, “No.” Yet habits that help serve inspiration are within our control. Frankly, those habits are pretty simple. Here’s one for free: Don’t touch the “send” button until a manuscript is as good as you can make it. After you write it, read it. After you read it, revise it. Then do that again. And again. Until you vomit. Easy to say. Not so easy to do. You have to build strong literary muscles. There are dozens of similar principles that are not a matter of abstract knowledge but of specific practice. That’s why I don’t believe that students are empty vessels to be filled. Instead, I think of them as lumps of wet clay to be molded and fired by themselves—with the help of faculty—into whatever shape vessel they wish. If you enjoy story and enjoy language and have a hide as tough as a petrified rhinoceros, you might wish to take this class. We will have weekly conferences until October, then biweekly.

Teachers run workshops, but students determine the content of the workshops and the tenor of their discourse. That’s because stories can pursue either personal concerns or public issues. Stories may be psychological or philosophical. A few emerge from history, others from science. Though nearly every academic discipline can be represented within fiction, M. H. Abrams famously divided the arts into two categories: those that aim to replicate the world by using a mirror and those that aim to illuminate the world by using a lamp. So amidst a complex range of subjects and perspectives, how is fiction approached in this class? It’s simple. You write. I read. We talk.