Now for all the reading

Whenever I tell people I'm teaching a novel writing class, the first question that inevitably comes up is, "Does this mean you have to read all your students' novels?"  Well, truth is, different teachers have different approaches to such a class, and so they each will have their own stories to tell--which is why I'm hoping that an AWP panel on this subject, one that has been proposed for the 2014 Seattle conference by fearless novel writing instructor Cathy Day, gets accepted--but the long and short of it is: Yes, that's exactly what it means.  For me, at least, this is what it means.  I don't think it's fair to ask a student to commit to such an ambitious project like finishing the complete a draft of a novel without also offering to read it and give her feedback.  After all, the students are making one heck of an investment of time and personal energy for your class; it's the least you can do for them.  Even if that means extending the spring semester into your summer.

Our spring semester has been over for three weeks, so lately I've been delving into the tall stack of my students's novels.  (Btw, I offered to let them post their novels to our class web site instead of actually giving me a paper copy, but nearly every single one of them preferred to just give me the paper copy.  One student, after she printed out her novel, felt strongly that the next time I teach the class I must insist on them printing out paper copies.  She said doing so was a powerful experience for her.  She hadn't quite understood her accomplishment until she saw how thick was her printed novel.)  As I've noted in the past, it was a mixed group of graduate students and undergrads in the class.  So far, I've read three of the graduate students' novels and four of the undergrads.  (Although two of those undergrad novels I had read mostly while the semester was on, because they were in a peer review group with me.)  As much as I love to read and do read it's a sad fact that I'm not a very fast reader.  This is a great quality to have when one reads poetry--you want to fully and slowly ingest a poem's images and its rhythms--but a bad quality for someone who needs to get through, and comment on, over a dozen books.  And hopefully before the summer is done!  To complicate matters even more, I have to get ready to teach a summer semester course--it begins one week from today--and I need to prepare a study abroad proposal for the summer of 2014.  The good news is that I'm finding, as I found the last time I taught the course, that reading my students' novels seems to go faster than reading other novels.  Of course, they are relatively short novels; but more importantly, I think it matters that I know all the authors and even the conditions under which the novels were written.  That ups the intrinsic interest and allows me to move faster.

So far, just like the last time I taught the course, the results are a fascinating mix.  First, the ranges of styles and subjects is perfectly intriguing.  So far I've encountered a near-future sci-fi story; a fantasy story; a highly literary murder/suspense story set in Little Rock; a coming of age novel about a group of college-aged guys in small town Pennsylvania; a YA novel that details a culture clash between a transgendered protagonist and the bible belt town he lives in; a story about a senior in high school who tries to find her bearings as she negotiates the infamous warfare of friendships and boyfriends; and a historical novel, set in 1930s Arkansas,  about the tragically bad choice one woman makes in husbands.  This kind of variety makes the reading burden much lighter,  and I know that the remaining novels I have yet to read are just as various.  The other thing I'm noting about the novels so far is their overall quality.  You'd think that having to write a draft of a novel in one semester would lead to some mighty bad prose as well as some ridiculous, untenable premises.  While I can't say my students' writing has been error free--this is to be expected in a first draft, after all--I've also encountered some passages of evocative description and many stretches of effective dialogue.  More to the point, except for maybe one of them, none of the books has collapsed under the impossibility of its hurriedly thrown together story.  All three of the novels from my graduate students are quite good and quite well-structured.  Amazingly well-structured, actually, given the furnace of activity in which they were composed, and given how busy the lives of those students are.  But my undergraduates' novels have also evidenced some inventive descriptions as well as very deft plotting.  Even in the one undergraduate novel that evidenced crippling structural issues I saw the author aptly play with situations so that the dramatic tension was usefully ramped up in key scenes, so that the protagonist found herself in hotter and hotter water.  That was very smart fiction writing--and, again, that's in the novel that I thought was the least successful of all I've read so far.

I'm just past the halfway mark with my students' novels, and so I can't yet offer any conclusive take.  But I can tell you that I'm honestly enjoying the experience of reading through them.  It doesn't feel like a burden as much as a chance to get know even better all these interesting people who filled up my classroom this spring.  To get to know them, that is, from the inside.  To get to know their imaginations.  I can also tell you that reading these books gives me hope for the future of novel writing.  One student who eventually soured on the course told me that he thought it was a terrible idea to insist on a draft in one semester; he said that any monkey could type out 55,000 words if  you let it type long enough.  (Yes, that's actually the metaphor he used.)  He was certain that my students' drafts would amount to nothing much better than monkey typing: long enough but artistically wtihout merit.  So far, that has definitively not been the case.  So far I can fairly say that I had some talented novelists in class this semester, people who understood how to form an affecting story over 55-60,000 words.  They are showing that to me every day I read, every page I turn.

The students speak up

Over the last several days, I've been going over final folders turned in by my various creative writing classes at UCA.  The contents of the folders vary according to the class.  My novel writing students had to turn in reflective statements about the semester and about their peer review experiences.  It's been gratifying to see exactly how much the students got out of the semester, but also eye-opening to see what worked and what didn't (which varied from student to student of course); and thrilling to see some students offer really interesting ideas for future renditions of the class.  Not all the ideas are tenable, but many are intriguing.  One student suggested that instead of having two novels that the whole class reads, have one shared novel and then one novel that each peer review group picks--a book that models the kind of novels that group is working on.  That's a fantastic idea--and would have worked well with the peer group that student was in--but not every group included students who were writing the same kinds of novels.  A more workable version of this idea would be to have each student select a model novel for himself/herself and anayze that one.  Many students wanted more frequent contact with their peer groups, which I can certainly understand and may very well do next time, although I also think it's important too to have time away from those groups.  Many students also wished they could have had more contact with the novels of the students not in their peer groups.  But without instituting full class workshops I'm not sure how to put that into practice.  One student suggested switching up the peer groups in the middle of the semester, but I think it's crucial that your review group have followed your novel from the start.  Having to play catch up with a new group's novels might, I fear, overwhelm the students with work.

Almost every student complained about No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty, our basic textbook.  Although it has some fine craft ideas embedded in it, it's essentially a motivational book.  While I think it's extremely entertaining, and it takes no time to read, some of the students didn't appreciate Baty's sense of humor; others they felt that what he was saying was too obvious.  One glaring issue with the book is that it's designed for people trying to complete NaNoWriMo, in which you draft a novel in a month; we were drafting a novel in a semester, so some of the urgency of his message didn't directly apply.  I guess I'll drop the book for next time, but I fear what will happen is that the students then will long for the kind of motivational speeches Baty can give, and in his rather unique style.   Most students really appeciated having so much writing time afforded in class each week; others felt that they didn't need it or want it.  (I have to say, though, that the differing opinions reflected how disciplined the students were or were not in making use of that time.)  One student thought we should read more novels; some thought two was plenty; some thought we should discuss the model novels differently (something I agree with and will have to change for next time); a couple thought we should not read any model novels at all.  Well, I can't accept that.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that if one gripes about having to read novels one should not be enrolled in a novel writing class.

Except for a single person, every student was seriously appreciative of the weekly word count deadlines and the fact that they were expected to finish a draft by the end of the semester.  Having taught this class another way--in which student started novels and workshopped chapters, but didn't even get halfway through--I can tell you I'm never doing it that way again.  Because 99% of them never worked a second more on their novels after the semester ended.  They never understood what it meant to follow a story all the way through.  That's a powerful experience; it's an educational experience.  One can learn some things from craft books; one can learn a great deal from reading other writers' novels.  But one learns the most about novel writing by actually writing a novel.  And then another one.  And then another one.  That's what my students have done, and I'm not denying them that experience the next time.  Here are some of their comments on what completing a full draft means:

What's important to accept is that I wrote over 55,000 words this semester. . .  Many of my friends are in shock and awe at what I've done.  Personally, I don't feel like I've actually done any work.  But I guess if you love what you're doing it doesn't really seem like labor.  Before this semester, I didn't truly define myself as a writer.  I was just a student doing writing assignments.  This class has made me realize that it's okay to be passionate about something, and it's okay to be confident in who you are.  I now say that I am a writer.  And I am damn good at what I do. --Colleen Hathaway, graduating senior

After printing out my novel, I'm honestly amazed.  I look at the huge stack of papers, and I can't believe that I wrote all of that--in a semester.  I keep showing all of my friends because I'm just so proud of myself.  Antoher thing that amazes me is how ready I am to write another novel.  During the process, I was quite honestly done with the whole novel writing idea.  I didn't want to do it again, and it seemed that my dreams of becoming an author were slowing being put on the backburner.  I can't explain it, but there's something so invigorating about actually finishing a draft.  Sure it needs work.  And sure, that work is going to take a while, but I'm just ready to feel that exhilaration again.-- Taylor Neal, graduating senior

I am grateful for many attributes of this class: that it was offered to the MFA students, that it was offered when it was, and this it was structured around a goal of completing a full draft of a novel.  I have started two other novels, but I have never gotten beyond 20 pages, so I thought of it as somehting I didn't know how to stick with.  This class changed how I think of myself and my abilities as a writer so much for the better, and for that I am so very grateful.--Stacey Margaret Jones, graduate student

Some changes are definitely in store for the next time I teach the course--assuming it's me that teaches it and not another professor--but the requirement to complete a draft is one thing I ain't changing!  Just like Taylor, I can't wait.

Results are in!

At the beginning of this semester, fifteen students--ten undergraduates and five graduate students--gathered in Thompson Hall on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas with one goal in mind: to finish a complete draft of a novel in less than four months and even while taking other courses.  To say nothing of all the other life matters they needed to tend to.  Indeed, several of the undergraduates were on the staff of our student-run campus literary magazine, which features both print and online editions, and necessitated not only the reading of submissions but regular late night, sometimes contentious, meetings.  Many of the students had other on-campus responsibilities and off-campus hobbies.  Some of them had spouses.  Three of the graduate students worked full-time jobs on top of taking a full graduate student load.  One had a child.  In spite of all that they knew was in front of them, and some that they couldn't anticipate, every student gathered that cold January night for Novel Writing Workshop professed to be ready to take on the challenge: 55,000 words of original fiction writing in one semester.  And not just any old fiction writing, but writing that developed a plot and characters over a single book-length work and that eventually found its way to a denoument.  55,000 words.  For those who don't understand what a challenge that is, I'll say that while on the short side for a novel, 55,000 words is roughly 10 times the amount of original writing typically asked for in a creative writing course.  10 times.

Well, last Wednesday we held our final class meeting of the semester (not counting our "exam" period), and so I figure it's time to release a semester report.  How did they do?  First, I'm happy to report that of the original fifteen students thirteen stuck with the class until the finish.  And of the two students who dropped, one was dropped by me; not because she was not able to keep up with her novel and not because she did not want to continue with the course, but because she almost never came to class, a violation that gets you dropped in my book.  Only one student--a single one--dropped herself because she found the assignment of composing a draft of a novel in one semester too imposing.  And it's a fact of life that no matter what the college class, students drop. There's nary a course offered at any college any semester in which someone, or several ones, don't choose to drop.  (For example, in one of my other creative writing courses this semster, three students dropped.)  In other words, the droppage rate for Novel Writing Workshop was at worst typical, and maybe even less than typical, for a university class.  Astounding.  As I told the group week after week, when I was an undergraduate I would never have dreamed of trying to write a novel in one semester--or even before I graduated!  None of the other creative writing students I knew would have dreamed of it either.   And yet this group--not without some occasional, and not very surprising, bouts of despair--took up the challenge and soldiered on, as if it were the most normal enterprise in the world.

Okay, okay, I hear  you saying, give us the results--numerical results!  Here they are:

The winner among the graduate students is Lynne Landis, a first year MFA student who, while working a full time job as a nurse and taking two other classes, wrote 79,841 words.  79,000!  Said another way, that's almost 300 pages of original work.  In one semester!  

The winner among the undergraduates is Chelsea Callantine, who wrote 57, 830 words.

Every other student in class, every single one, met the 55,000 word count requirement.  Most went over by several dozen or several hundred words.  These students are:


Darby Riales
Michelle Cates
Karen Cockrum
Colleen Hathaway
Taylor Hicks
Taylor Neal
Sarah Wilson
Jasmine Jobe
Stacey Margaret Jones
Louie Land

and

John Mitchel 

John Mitchel, I must note,  earned the unique distinction of hitting 55,000 words exactly.  This isn't so surprising, though, because John had a habit of writing exactly up to the word count requirement most weeks: not a single word more.  That's fine, John.  You got it done, after all.

And what I find most admirable is that these folks didn't merely pump out words, although I know it felt like that to them at times, but they wrote complete drafts.  Not one of them simply stopped at the word count goal.  They stopped when they had finished their stories.  Congratulations to all.  You have earned yourselves a week off.    

Mind sets and noveling

As anyone who has run a long road race--or simply trained for one--knows, how tired you feel isn't only a function of your conditioning; it's also a function of your mind.  You can be dragging through the middle of a workout or a race, wondering how you'll make it through the next mile, and yet miles later you suddenly are enjoying a vigorous spring in your step, a surge of enthusiasm, a new certainty that you can polish off the race or the workout in good speed.  What's changed isn't your body--except that you've only added more mileage to it--but your attitude.  This is the subject of a really interesting article in this month's Runner's World magazine.   The author, Michelle Hamilton--who, coincidentally, runs a lot faster than I ever will--describes how her mental reactions during races and workouts were blocking her from making any real progress.  Fundamentally pessimistic in her outloook, she was constantly criticizing herself--regardless of whether she was running faster or slower than planned--as well as playing other self-defeating mind games: telling herself she was more tired than she really was, losing heart in races and essentially--albeit not literally--quitting on them when it appeared that she wouldn't reach her mile-pace goals, writing off "bad" races as failures and accusing herself of being a failure as a result of having run them.

Well, not surprisingly, Hamilton eventually decided she needed to reorient herself mentally and even hired a "mental-game coach" to help her in this effort.  In the article, Hamilton shares many of the approaches and lessons she learned from her coach.  One that really struck me was the difference between being "results-oriented" and being "process-oriented."  The former, which describes Hamilton before she started revamping her mental game, is essentially negative.  The latter is more positive.  "Mentally tough athletes are positive and process-oriented," Hamilton writes.  She quotes sports psychologist Stan Beecham: "If you focus on results, you take yourself out of the now.  And it's the now that allows for results later."  By beating herself up so badly for not reaching a certain, predetermined result, rather than seeing the "failure" as part of a process that could eventually lead to success, Hamilton kept herself from learning what the race could teach her; even more immediately, she caused the result of that specific race to be far worse than it might otherwise be, because she would buckle as soon as she ran into a performance obstacle (e.g., failure to reach a certain mid-point or three-quarter time; failure to meet the pace she wanted for her previous mile).

As soon as I read that paragraph, my head came up and I thought, That's just how it is with novelists.  Or, rather, some novelists.   I've been shocked and disheartened this semester, as I teach novel writing to a mixed group of undergraduates and graduates, at how down on themselves some of my students get.  The reason?  Their budding novels--which they drafting in one semester, for gosh sakes--strike them as being really bad.  So bad they can't stand it.  So bad they want to give up.  (Now, let me emphasize that several students feel exactly the oppositie.  They are perfectly pleased with their books.  And some of these, I'm happy to report, are students who once were beating themselves up but found a way through.)  Here, the lesson of Hamilton's article applies precisely.  If you look at the result of the most recent chapter or three in the first draft of your first ever novel, chances are you are going to find several glariing weaknesses in it.  How could anyone reasonably expect anything else?  A results-oriented thinker says to himself or herself, Well, if such is the result of this project, this project must be a failure.  So I might as well quit now.  (By their own admission, a few of my students told themselves this very thing.)  The problem with this thinking is that a draft is just that: it's part of a process.  What matters isn't what it looks like now; what matters is keeping the process of novel-writing going.  At least until one finishes the draft.  At that point, if one is a shrewd enough and intuitive enough and careful enough and patient enough rewriter, one can make something quite nice of that draft.  Perhaps something almost entirely different.  Perhaps something several dozen--or several thousand--people will want to read.  But that is the then that is only realized because one did the work of the now now.   It only happens then because one refuses to abandon the now.

This is not to say that every rough first draft eventually turns into a beautiful published novel.  Just about every successful novelist has a few manuscripts in his drawer or on his computer that finally proved unsalvageable.  But here's the rub, even those manuscripts have their value.  They might represent the first attempts at some subject matter that was better realized in a later work; and/or their weaknesses may contain vital lessons about how not to handle some specific aspect of fiction writing craft (e.g., description, characterization, back story, action); and/or maybe they might have simply enabled the writer to get something off his chest that he needed to express before he could move on to some other, more valuable type of expression.  Just like every race has something to teach its runner, every book has something to teach its author; even the books that don't turn out well.  So while some of my students might want to give up, they really shouldn't.  Even if their novels turn out to be the classic first unpublished novels that will forever be locked up in a boxes or in an attics and read by nobody (and I'm sure that will not be the case for some of them), those novels are serving crucial purposes for their authors.   They are stepping stones to whatever these young authors will write next.  But to get to the there, they have to first satisfy the now.  And that means finishing.    

Novel class update #2

 It continues to be a nourishing semester in my Novel Writing Workshop at UCA.  We've been on Spring Break this past week, but I can tell from various Facebook posts my students have put up--early on, they established a Facebook page for the class--that many of them have been keeping their noses to the grindstone.  (They have to.  Two weeks worth of word count are due when next we meet.)  Some of them are still encountering plot and character breakthroughs; one student just realized her novel will have to be a trilogy (she seems excited rather than depressed); another student, Taylor Neal, warmed my heart with some philosophical musings the other day: a list of ten truths about novel writing which, for me, only reinforced why offering this class is so important.  (Are you listening, creative writing professors and curriculum committees?)  Of course, many of Taylor's "truths" deal with how hard novel writing can be--and who says it isn't?--but at the same time I was glad to see comments like this one: As frustrating as the lows are, the highs are 100 times more sweet. There's an exhilaration from writing a good scene, even a good sentence. It's like a peace that settles over you. It keeps you going, and reminds you that this can be done.  And this one: When you're writing, there are a million other things you would rather be doing. When you can't write, there's nothing you would rather be doing than writing.  And this one: Nothing is impossible (cheesy, but true. There were times when I was convinced I would never write a book, and look at me now, almost 40,000 words in). 

Perhaps her most important comment, given that the framework for Taylor's novel writing this semester has been our class, and a crucial component of the class is small peer review groups, is the following: Writing a novel is truly a group effort. There's a reason it never really worked out when I was going at it alone. Critique partners are indispensable when it comes to feedback, encouragement, and ranting about your novel.  You have no idea how good that made me feel to read.  Because it means the class is working precisely as, and why, it should.  I would never deny that writing a novel--or any book--is fundamentally a tussle with your own soul, your own knowledge, your own wisdom, your own discipline (or lack thereof), but it's an age-old truth that writers have always needed to share their work and receive feedback on that work.  In my very first semester of graduate school, the then-MFA director, Peter Klappert, who was also my poetry professor, preached this gospel non-stop, probably because of an anti-MFA sentiment that was already breeding in some writing circles and still abides today.  Workshop or no workshop, writers have always shared their work with someone; they've needed to; they've sought it out.  Pulitizer Prize winners have their beta readers, for heaven's sakes.  Some of them belong to writing groups.  (Just ask Jennifer Egan.) The image of the lonely writer in the candlelit garret really should be gone by now, and especially should be gone from the minds of young, budding novelists--that is, if they ever hope to accomplish anything.  What a novel writing class can provide for student authors is a place and a process.  It provides a classroom to bring questions to as well as new discoveries and bitchy, self-loathing complaints.  It provides regular fixed deadlines.  And, perhaps best of all, it provides (or should provide) intelligent, sympathetic, practiced readers.  (By sympathetic, I don't mean they are going to approve of everything that you do, but that they understand what it is you are attempting.  They are informed novel readers, at least more so than your boyfriend or the manager at your bank job.)  At least this was my hope when I established the outlines for Novel Writing Workshop, and, for some of the students at least, it appears to be working exactly as planned.  And I can only hope that the lessons my students learn about novel-writing from having to draft an entire book this semester will carry over to the next time they want to write a novel, but won't have a Novel Writing Workshop to join.  Hopefully, they'll be able to find their own workable substitute.

Last time I wrote about this class, I joked that, given how well many of them were doing, maybe I was being too easy on them this semester.  Maybe I should up the work count next time.  (55,000 words, after all, does make for a fairly short novel.)  When I mentioned this in class, several said No, No, No, this is about as much work as we can handle.  But the truth is, except for one student, everyone has kept up with word count and several are ahead.  A couple students informed me that they intended to finish their drafts over spring break and then edit for the rest of the semester.  I'm astonished and delighted at this continuing state of affairs.  So, why not encourage future classes to get closer to the 80-100K average for a published novel in this country?  (Closer, I'm saying, you realize.  I would never ask undergraduates to write 80K.)  Alternatively, I am considering assigning another model novel or two for them to read.  (Short novels.)  I find it very instructive to read a novel while thinking about how the writer handles the various elements of craft in the span of the book that you yourself are working through.  In other words, while developing the first third of your book, to look at what the author of the model novel establishes in the first third of hers.  And so on.  I've tried to do some of that with the two novels I've assigned this semester, but I would need to assign at least one more to create a perfect bridge for the arc of the students' drafts. 

In short, it's been a fun, productive semester in Novel Writing.  And it almost always works out that way.  (Note to self: There's probably a paper to be written on why that's true.)  My semester novel?  I kind of sort of finished my draft two days ago, although not surprisingly there are several serious matters that need to be tended to before I can really regard it as a done first draft.  My own word count is at 73,700.  (Even I'm writing more than I did last time I taught the class!)         

Novel class check-in

We're about a month into Novel Writing Workshop at UCA, and so far I'm impressed and also a little amused.  It's the most unusual class I teach, in that it's structured so differently than the rest of my courses: no full class workshops, a much heavier production goal, and less of an emphasis on reading (even though they are reading three books for me).  Unlike the last time I taught the course, everyone who registered for it knew the deal going in: we weren't just going to talk about novel writing; we were all going to write complete novels.  So I've gotten no pushback about that--and no one has dropped the course.  And they've almost all met the word count goal every week.  What has surprised me is how quickly some of them ran into the mid-book blues, or,  as writer Chris Baty defines it, "the second week doldrums."  Baty is the founder of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and his very entertaining book No Plot? No Problem! serves as kind of a primer and motivational message for those attempting to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.  My students are writing 55,000 word novels in one semester, so we are reading Baty intermittently, applying his First Week-Second Week-Third Week-Fourth Week lessons over broader time spans.  The chapter we discussed last week was all about how and why to defeat the doubts, boredom, and malaise that inevitably infects a novelist after the initial heady, giddy, optimistic starting period of her book has passed.  Well, wouldn't you know it, in the days leading up to last week's class, I starting seeing Facebook messages from my students--they've created a Facebook page for the group--saying how they were utterly stalled or utterly bored or utterly out of ideas or convinced they'd made the wrong choice of novel to work on.   A couple were certain they should start new novels.

I tried to respond to my students' worries and ennui with words of encouragement and a few kicks in the butt.  Some of them, I could tell, needed to expand/complicate their plots and points of view; others needed to think harder about the characters they had already invented and the settings they had already established.      They needed to decide on back story, character identities, and physical appearances.  And some of that thinking needed to find its way into their novels as what I call "fill-in work."  Not only would this increase your word count, I told them, but more importantly it would give you a clearer sense of who and what you're writing about, which will allow you to proceed into future chapters with more confidence.  I echoed Baty's sentiments that despite being tempted to, they should not just dump their books: because then they'd just find themselves, a few weeks down the road, wanting to dump the new one.  Self-loathing is part of the novel writing game; there's no magical escape.  I told them about Heather Sellers's concept of the Sexy New Book and exactly how dangerous that Sexy New Book can be.   I told them about Sellers's strategy for dealing with the Sexy New Book.   First, she insists that the Sexy New Book is almost always a siren's call that will only take you away from what you really should be working on; that is, your current book.  Her answer: At all costs, ignore the call of the Sexy New Book.  On the other hand, she admits that sometimes the call of the Sexy New Book is simply too powerful to resist; also sometimes the Sexy New Book idea can actually be a good one.  So solution number two, as Sellers explains it in her book Chapter After Chapter, is to take the Sexy New Book out on a date.  That is, for one day allow yourself to think about it, plan it, do research for it, maybe even start drafting it.  That is, give yourself one full day to find out if this new book really is worth pursuing.  Most of the time, she says, you will realize that it is not.  Occasionally, you might decide that it is.  And then--but only then--you go ahead and give in to the siren call.   (This has worked out for her in practice.  She admits that her bestselling memoir on face blindness, You Don't Look Like Anyone I know, started as a Sexy New Book idea.)    In the case of one student this semester (because I knew I could trust her), I permitted her to follow a Sexy New Book idea, but I insisted she had to be fully up to the week's required work count by the time class time came.  (Amazingly, she pulled it off.)

I could be wrong, but it seems to me this "I-hate-my-novel" reaction came a lot of quicker and a lot harder to this group than to the group I taught last time.  Perhaps this is a function of their earlier, anticipatory, much more hyped-up optimism?  In any case, they are bravely soldiering on, finding ways to make the word count.  And I should clarify that more than a few of them are perfectly happy with the current states of their novels.   This seems especially true of my graduate students.  I guess that's not so surprising.  Their extra years worth of writing experience should give them more pluck and confidence and determination.  Yes, as I mentioned in an earlier post, it's one of the curious aspects of this semester's course that I'm teaching it to both graduate and undergraduate students.  I can't deny there's something of a "grad contingent" and an "undergrad contigent" feeling to the classroom, but for the most part the groups get along; the main difference is how more sanguine the graduate students are with their budding books.  Amazingly, this holds true for three out of the five who do not define themselves as fiction writers and who have never tried to write novels!

Despite their "second week doldurms," I really am impressed by my students' output this semester.  Thinking back to my own experiences in creative writing classrooms--both undergraduate and graduate--I can swear to you that no one ever asked anything of me like a 55,000 word draft in one semester.  Not even close.  And yet my students have more or less happily accepted my word count goals as a matter of course.  I think this represents a sea change in the landscape of creative writing instruction.  Without doubt, NaNoWriMo--which several UCA undergraduates do every year, in addition to their course work--has made longer projects seem like not the impossible dreams they once were.  This is a real and powerful contribution.   And of course it doesn't hurt that more and more creative writing programs, grad and undergrad, are offering novel writing courses.  That is, my students are not isolated lab rats suffering through an experiment of my own design.  They know they are part of a nationwide phenomenon, and they are reveling in it, even when they are stuck in the doldrums.  I was inspired to teach the course this way after attending an AWP session several years ago on the subject of "allowing novels in fiction workshops."  Of the three people who spoke, only one actually taught a specific  Novel Writing Workshop, and her students were all graduate students.  I asked a question to the panel about teaching such a course to undergraduates.  I remember the ascerbic look one of the panelists gave me when he said, "What do think your undergrads would say when you tell them they have to write a novel in one semester?"  Well, so far, both times I've taught the course, they've been more grateful than anything else.  And now, given that they all keep meeting it, I'm thinking that 55,000 might be too tepid a word count goal.  While there are several examples of good, successful, and even famous short novels--we're reading a couple this semester--the average length for a novel published in this country is 80,000-100,000 words.  It's what agents, and the marketplace, seem to expect.   I'm wondering if I should have them aiming for something closer to that goal.  So, maybe 75,000 words next time?

 Don't worry, students!  Just kidding!  Or am I?


(FYI, I'm writing along with my students, and my budding novel is at 32,000 words.  I'm certainly ahead of schedule, but that's good, given all the looms for me later in the semester.)