Articles

What have you been up to since graduating?
I've been up to a lot of teaching. I teach composition at the University of Wisconsin--River Falls. It's about forty minutes away, so I live in Minnesota and work in Wisconsin, which is a little weird. I teach a lot: I taught three classes last semester and I'm teaching four this semester. Plus this semester I'm also teaching two classes at The Loft. Essentially, my life is teaching, teaching, teaching, hanging out, and teaching.

So with all that teaching, how's your writing going?
Well it's this really strange dichotomy in that I have been doing pretty much zero writing, which would make feel me more down-hearted except that my professional progress is further along than it's ever been. I was really lucky to have had a story published in American Short Fiction this past fall, and because of that I've been in touch with some agents. So I'm further along in the agent search than I expected to be, but at the same time I'm not really doing any writing, so it's this weird thing where I feel like people are professionally interested in my writing but I could not be spending less time on my writing.

That is weird! Are you talking to agents about your thesis?
Yes. My MFA thesis was a novel. At the end of the program, I really wanted to be graduated and feel like, "It's done! Take it, agents!" But since then, I've thought about the feedback I got from my professors and some of my peers, and want to do one more revision. I'm hoping to save some money and take the summer to do a revision. Then hopefully the agents I've talked to will like it. And then onward to fame and fortune! Of course, no guarantees.

No, I think it's pretty much a guarantee.
Yes, you're right.

Do you miss school? Your lifestyle has changed so drastically.
Well, It hasn't really. I have this anxiety like, oughtn't my lifestyle have changed more? But I live in the same apartment; I do similar work as the work I did in grad school, just more of it; and I hang out with a lot of my lovely friends who are still in the MFA program. I occasionally feel like the creepy old guy hanging out with high school chicks, buying them beer, but that's that.

That's great that you have a real job and you don't think it sucks.
Yeah, I'm working full time and I don't hate it, and I never expected both of those things. And I'm very happy about that. We sort of grouse a bit in the MFA program, wondering what we can really expect out of it, but it's true that it has enabled me to actually do a job that I like.

So the MFA degree will provide for our future!
It does. It might not give you fame and fortune right away, but it does qualify you to do something, which I think we sometimes forget.

How did school change your writing?
I think it changed it for the better.

I certainly hope so.
The big thing was not changing the way that I wrote, but just giving me confidence in myself as a writer. It's really easy not to take yourself seriously as a writer. You feel really stupid: yeah, you write things, but no one's publishing you, no one's reading you, and you're reading all this amazing stuff, and you feel like, "How can I call myself a writer?" But having other people reading my stuff seriously and carefully really forced me to take myself seriously as a writer, and that was really important, just to get over myself and write.

I also learned stuff about form. Julie Schumacher pointed out that my writing was just infested with commas and that I needed to learn the rules of comma usage. She was totally right: I was just putting commas wherever I felt like putting commas. So learning the rules of comma usage improved my writing about five million percent. Having really attentive readers who know a lot about how writing works can help you shed some of your annoying tics--then your work becomes more polished and confident and clear.

So, graduate school taught you how to use commas.
Yes. I don't know if this reflects well on graduate school or poorly on me, or the other way around...

Or positively on everyone!
Yes, I've learned comma usage. Which I thought I knew beforehand, but I did not.

Read anything good lately?
I just finished rereading this Balzac novel called Lost Illusions. It was really enjoyable. It's basically about how if you want to be a writer it's not going to work out for you and everything is really terrible and you have to give up all your illusions and become really cynical and jaded.

Sounds enjoyable!
Maybe it's not uplifting, but I really liked it. I try to appreciate his observations about literary life, which I think still kind of hold true, without becoming too jaded.

Yeah, you got to hold on to your delusions.
Yes! Delusions are really useful things.

Because how else can you go on? You can't go on without your delusions.
I totally agree. The moral of the Balzac book seems to be that you have to renounce ambition and live a modest, good life or basically become really cynical and use people in order to be successful. And I do believe--I mean, I hold on to the illusion that there's got to be a middle way.

For more on Laura, visit her website: http://lauracjowen.weebly.com/