I traveled to Indianapolis to attend this one-day conference and participate in a workshop with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Robert Olen Butler (ROB). Many of you may be familiar with his new book on writing called From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction. In it, Mr. Butler has articulated some of his epiphanies about writing which he expounded on in his keynote address. In fact, he said that "Everything I know is in that book, I don’t know anything else." In a word, it all has to do with yearning. In fact, this word is so central to any lecture, conversation or, I imagine, phone call to the man that I dare you to play a drinking game to any talk he may give. Take a swig or shot every time he says yearning and I guarantee that you will hit the floor with your face before he is done. That being said, I do believe that ROB is onto something. He believes that literary fiction is art and that, as artists, we must access something deeper than the mind to write. We must seek out that ‘white hot center of our unconscious’ and plumb those depths in order to create art. We must never avert our eyes. And, of course, our characters must yearn for something. They must yearn to know who they are in this world, they must yearn for love, truth, honor. He discounts the mind and, several times, told us that even talking about writing this way was dangerous because we were processing with our minds so it would be better to forget everything he said as soon as we could. It was at that point that I yearned for an Advil.
The morning started off with ROB’s keynote address, then was followed by a selection of concurrent sessions to choose from like: ‘The Scent of Memory,’ or ‘Word Painting: Bring Your Fiction to Life.’ I ended up going to an engaging session on how to focus a memoir or personal essay. Two morning sessions were followed by lunch where a panel discussed ‘Writing Outside the Academy,’ a lively discussion about getting an MFA versus how to develop as a writer outside a structured learning environment.
Vickie and I then spent most of the afternoon in a small workshop led by ROB (who had warned us that our writing would suck and that he would tell us it sucked because—you guessed it—there would be no yearning). The afternoon was filled with more concurrent sessions for writers not in the workshop.
The thing that immediately strikes you when you first see ROB is the all-black outfit: black shoes, socks, pants, shirt, black leather ‘biker’ jacket. It’s the artist’s outfit taken to extreme. Even his shirt had stitching on it, black-on-black. At one point, I wondered if maybe he was colorblind and this just simplified his life so that he would have more time for plumbing the depths of his unconscious for more yearning.
Workshop got off to a rousing start when ROB talked about the sensory world and how we needed that in our stories and I brought up some examples where there was so much visceral sensory information that the reader gets overwhelmed (Adam Haslett’s You are Not a Stranger Here was one example I gave and, later, thought that Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine was probably another). I asked if it wasn’t the writer’s job to move in and out of these moments instead of bludgeoning the reader. ROB’s response: "No. It can never be too much. If it’s too much, then it’s the fault of the reader." Later in the discussion, he discounted the second person POV completely saying that it should never be used because it ‘removes the writer from the experience.’ When I pointed out that it allowed the reader to insert themselves in the story, he said that was wrong. It should never be used.
Maybe one should not argue with a Pulizer Prize-winning author, but, hey, I had paid to be in the workshop so I did. The bulk of the time with ROB was spent with him pointing out the lack of yearning in our two-page writing samples. It was instructive and he was generous enough to say that while all of our writing did not measure up, that there was talent in the room.
All in all, the Writers’ Center of Indiana does a nice one-day program with plenty of sessions to choose from (including the opportunity—for an additional fee—to pitch your novel to an agent). In addition to this annual ‘Gathering’ conference, the center also helps to facilitate writers’ groups and has regularly scheduled workshops, classes, readings and open mic nights. It seems like a great place to belong (they have a membership option that then gives you discounts) and a place to be around other writers. It made me wish I lived a little closer to Indianapolis.
Vickie Weaver’s Input:
At noon I enjoyed a box lunch while listening to a panel discussion regarding writing outside the structure of formal education. There were varied opinions on the value of an MFA. One panelist said that he was still "recovering from" his MFA experience—and I felt sorry about that.
I also took part in the workshop with Robert Olen Butler (ROB). I absolutely respect ROB as a writer, and his book, Severance, is a favorite of mine. He was not unkind in workshop, and I am glad for the experience. But it seemed to me that he was obsessively proposing a way of writing a literary work as if it were the only way. To my mind, there is rarely only one way to do anything.
When Loreen politely argued with ROB about the use of second person POV, I think I must have looked at her like she had just jumped off a Carnival cruise ship and into the ocean. However, because she is my friend, and I, too, disagreed with ROB, I grabbed two life jackets and jumped in after her, supporting her point. ROB did concede that perhaps a genius could make use of second person (we in workshop were most likely not those geniuses), but I’m not sure he believed that himself.
ROB discounted the value of peer critique—we each had submitted two pages to the workshop, and he alone critiqued. He also advised us to write within our own demographic. Those were opinions I did not agree with, but as I age, I’m becoming quite disagreeable.
The weather was great, and the Writers’ Center, though in the city, has a rustic, welcoming setting—just what you’d expect of the term Hoosier Hospitality.
