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Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
Published by:
Pif, LLC
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MG: I love being around writers in other genres. I love to hear the poets read and lecture. And I soak up other people’s ideas about teaching, writing exercises – that sort of thing.
MA: One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that my best teachers – present company included – seem to have a certain generosity of spirit. So that even if a student hands in garbage, the teacher is still able to find something redeeming about it. I’m wondering if that’s something that comes naturally or if it’s something you’ve had to cultivate. Is it hard to maintain? I mean, do you ever have the urge to tell a student, "Please stop. You’ve wasted enough paper. God had something else in mind for you."
SS: Oh, less and less.
MA: Less and less? Really?
SS: I don’t know about Mary, but I’ve seen how wrong I’ve been about all kinds of stuff – like I said, it’s hard to predict what will become of someone. I gave somebody a really hard time about eight or nine years ago when she first came here [to Cleveland State]. Now she’s published her first novel to all sorts of acclaim, and her second novel is coming out soon. Meanwhile, I’m casting about desperately for an agent for my novel (laughs without bitterness).
MA: What happened with that student exactly?
SS: I nailed her on some scene; something got under my skin about it. She had a scene set in Coventry (the center of Cleveland’s counterculture, such as it is), and I told her I didn’t like her characterization of hippies. I just went off on her. She's a wonderful writer, and afterwards I remember thinking, "What has gotten into me? Why on earth would I do such a thing?" I think now that I tend to do that to the best writers in my classes; I guess because I think that they could be more if only they wouldn’t indulge this or that idiosyncrasy. But it’s almost always the wrong thing to do.
MG: I do that, too. I think it’s easier to be critical in a detailed way about something that’s already pretty good. It’s much harder to offer cogent criticism on the worst stories. And this goes back to what we talked about before – a writer at 19 or 20 may undergo an amazing transformation over the next five years.
SS: I used to see that among my freshman composition students. Maybe you said one thing to them and it took.
MA: Let me ask you to generalize. Have your students changed over the years? Are they less well-read? Are they more motivated?
MG: I’ve only been teaching for ten years – I’m not sure that’s long enough to really say. Students can’t have changed that much, can they?
SS: I agree. I’m not sure you can generalize.
MA: What, if anything, do you say to your students about publishing?
SS: I tell them that it’s unpredictable and not necessarily the best measure of success. For me, it’s the part of the process I like the least because I have no control over it – it’s arbitrary. Once they understand that, I tell them to go to a writer’s conference and make connections.
Artistic purity is a nice sentiment, but it’s an illusion. People who do well [at publishing] usually have a mentor. Editors and agents can be fickle and don’t always trust their own instincts, so it helps to have an ally. An agent can help, too.
MG: I try to answer their direct questions helpfully and honestly, although I always stress my relative ignorance. I give them practical advice about sending things out, how manuscripts should look, whether to send a cover letter, what a "good" rejection means. I tell them they ought to expect to be rejected often and learn not to take it personally...to learn – if they can – to ignore it! And I do encourage them to send things out – I mean, why not try? As long as you're not banking your identity and worth as a writer on whether or not something is accepted.
MA: In the big picture, how do you feel about teaching? Is it something that you do merely to subsidize your writing, or do you feel drawn to it? If you didn’t have to teach, would you?
MG: I like teaching. I like the dynamic of the classroom, and working with students. I like the excitement of what students come up with in free writing, and I'm excited myself when someone has a breakthrough and writes an amazing story, or revises a story in a visionary way.But, having said that, if I didn't have to teach, I wouldn't do it full-time because teaching full-time in a university makes demands beyond teaching – administrative duties and the like; those things I can live without.
SS: In a perfect world, I might teach one semester a year. I think that would be the best arrangement. I wouldn’t give it up, though. It’s stimulating. You learn a lot from your students – they will do stuff they don’t know they can’t do! Of course, as Mary says, teaching’s also very time-consuming. Still, it makes the other part [of your writing life] meaningful – you get out of your own brain. And I find that having to explain writing to someone else forces me to clarify the process for myself. Besides that, the people who take classes are mostly lovely people, even if they’re not destined to be writers. And interesting – if nothing else, you meet characters in your classes.
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Misha Angrist is a writer based in Cleveland, Ohio. Currently, he is completing an MFA in fiction at Bennington College, where he has studied with Lynn Freed, Alice Mattison and Amy Hempel.