This term, in addition to fumbling through columns for this newspaper, I've been working on writing short stories for English 82, the fiction course. Each time I sit down to a session at the word processor (just after I crack my knuckles and rip out clods of hair) I can't help but ask myself all of those philosophical and rhetorical questions that go along with being a writer, such as "What is good literature?" or "What makes one writer great as opposed to another?" and, most importantly, "How the hell am I going to make this story work?" Usually within an hour my fingertips begin to fire away. Soon, I have a humble offering for critique in class.
Sometimes, when the Muse just hasn't struck, I run a hand over the authors' and poets' names on my bookshelf: Boccaccio-Vonnegut-Goethe-Bronte-Mann-Voltaire-Emerson-Donne-Hemingway-Shakespeare-Holderlin-Balzac-Forster-Boll. What makes these names great? What is their significance? Who really cares about what they have to say? Why? After some more reflection, it dawns on me. These people are in print. They all got something right. What they write strikes chords in people. As I ponder this, my fondness for things literary tends to grow a bit. I suddenly imagine myself the busy book editor, devouring new work each day, making friendships with and boosting the spirits of budding authors. Or I might see myself behind the table at a book signing. People in turtlenecks and tortoiseshell eyeglasses will buy their mochaccinos to sip with my latest novel and sit in the bookstore cafe as some jazz or acoustic act provides the soundtrack, and they'll all read it intently on subways, in their living rooms and in their beds before going to sleep. And they'll want to read it again after discussing it with the other turtlenecks on the block.
Okay, so perhaps that's a bit of a pipe dream ... or a pipe and smoking jacket dream. However, I've realized that there are few things more rewarding in life than to be published. It's a physical representation of your hardest work. Just think of having the power to reach out from the page and draw someone, a complete stranger, into your thoughts (take now, for instance) and teach that person something, or relate something new and different -- placing your own mark on the world. My stories right now may not be of the highest caliber (The New Yorker is hardly pounding on the door just yet), but I know that I'm finally confident enough to toss things out into the arena. Perhaps this is why I love the creative writing courses here so much; it's an opportunity to constantly be reading brand-new work, a chance to get feedback on my own progress and overall, a chance to help spark the minds of other peer writers.
With all of this incredible optimism in my head, I began going to meetings for The Stonefence Review. I had a few friends that used to contribute to Stonefence, which is the campus literary magazine, and was always curious myself about it; but, alas, there was never a Monday evening I had had free during any previous term. Let me inform you of this: there is hardly a campus organization I can think of that is more fascinating. If you were ever a bookworm, or ever read on the sly with a flashlight, or have gone outdoors with friends and read poetry together or ever read your own poetry in some coffeehouse, you ought to come to the meetings, too. There is always something new and yet-unpublished to read and discuss.
Understandably, I appeal to a small number of students; our student body has a wide variety of interests, and there are not many that would consider a literary discussion to be a real zinger of an evening. But my final plea is for submissions! Deep down inside, several people are writers, or they think like writers or poets. I know tons of students that write things privately, little snippets of things in their journals, what-have-you. If you're ever once inspired to see your work in print, though, revise it and blitz it to Stonefence Review. Take a chance on your best poem or on your best narrative. Polish it. It can speak to people. We all read books and study them. What will our children study? Who will write the literature of tomorrow?
