This past weekend I gave my first ever craft talk. It was part of the Storyboard residence where I was teaching, where my duties including leading four generative workshops, a panel discussion, a few manuscript consultations, and a one hour craft lecture. For as much work was on my plate, it was invigorating to be around so many dedicated and passionate writers, with so many eye-opening ideas they wanted to explore, talking about the art of the written word (and offering a refuge as the news continued piling on the despair).
But it was, as I said, the first craft talk I’ve ever given in my career—people don’t tend to call on me for talking about writing as a writer, since my subject matter delves into the political. As part of Hunter’s curriculum, I taught a craft course for the past five years, but I don’t have craft lecture in my back pocket to break out at any time. I wasn’t sure what to talk about.
It so happened that my talk was scheduled for June 14, which this year marked the ninth anniversary of the publication of my first book, Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching. I haven’t picked up that book in a while; I have the relationship to my old work that I believe most writers do, in that if I were to look too closely at it now I’d cringe and wish for a do-over (especially around the Kanye West material, how poorly that has aged). But it’s still my first book, I still love it for all that it was, all that it meant, all it took to get there.
And that’s what I spoke about in my craft talk—the journey to that first book. I won’t rehash the entire thing here, but I started in my college days as a writer/editor for the school newspaper who was a bit lonely and anti-social, to my major depressive episode which prevented me from graduating, to living at home while my parents separated, to forging a freelance writing career out of connections made on Twitter and incredibly low pay, to becoming a blogger for The Nation magazine, to my first feature, to my book proposal, to writing a whole-ass book.
In telling that story, I was able to clarify for myself what is my guiding principle when it comes to craft. The question always comes up when people want to debate the merits of things like MFAs and writing courses and such: can you teach writing? Of course, what people mean when they ask that question isn’t whether you can teach the mechanics of writing; we’re all expected to learn how to put the noun before the verb, or what punctuation to use at the end of a sentence. In U.S. schools, you’re even taught the basic five paragraph essay format. The mechanics are there. What people want to get as is are we able to teach good writing, as in the kind of writing that has style, that stirs the soul, that sings on the page, or whatever other cliché you’d like to employ. In short: can we teach the kind of writing that people want to read?
Sorta. As a teacher, I can’t give anyone style, but I can help them develop it. I can do that by getting them to ask new questions of themselves, of their work, by reframing their understanding of what the page demands. Because for me, craft begins before the sentence—it generates from the texture of the life you live. It’s informed by the things you know about yourself and the things you don’t, and it’s up to each individual to decide which parts they would like to tap into. It’s the rhythm of the conversations you’ve had, the streets you’ve walked, the vices you indulge, the music you return to, the memories you’ve held, the exes you regret, the books you get lost in, the jokes that make you belly laugh. Every bit of it points you toward the sentences you wish to write, whether you’re conscious of it or not. The various aspects of your life collide into a sense of how a sentence should bend, break, or fold into meaning.
When I’m teaching craft, I’m less interested (though not wholly uninterested) in identifying narrative arc, or mixing longer and shorter sentences, whether or not you should braid an essay, or if it should be written in first or second person. I want them to press up against themselves and ask meaningful questions about where and who they have been, to become more curious about how and why they’ve found themselves staring at a blank page asking it to reveal something to them.
It’s an ongoing process—the texture of my life is much different now, working on my third book, than it was during the first. Then, I was single, in my 20s, new to Brooklyn; now I’m middle-aged, partnered, a father, and contemplating a life beyond the city. And those are just the bullet points. They don’t account for the trash TV I’ve watched, the late nights closing down a bar with friends, the broken relationships and situationships, the new and evolving challenges of grief, the book I wrote last time, the living under an authoritarian regime. But it’ll all be in the new sentences, should I let it.
Thanks for coming to my craft talk.