We Learn as We Go, And Keep Going.
Writing. Writing. Reading. Writing.
In the mid 1990s when I completed my MFA, as part of the process we were required to print out our manuscript and have it bound. We submitted a copy to our MFA advisor for approval, and then that copy also went into the archives of the University of Arizona.
I was down in the Sonoran desert, learning about rattlesnakes, low burning wild fires and how many black widows could live in a Goodwill oak desk drawer, hatching out again and again. The air smelled sweet at night, like actual incense, like a silent festival. The writers were tightly coiled but kind, everyone wanting more. The days were too hot, concrete was punishing, but lemons were free where they grew along the roadside, and olive trees were everywhere.
Writing is a long process. The author Elizabeth Evans took time to write carefully considered notes throughout my manuscript. Feedback from a published author was the gold. She saw the possibility of a novel in my collection and offered insights into how to weave the stories together.
Ours was a three-year program. In workshop over those years we looked at stories and essays. We didn’t talk enough about novels, except as readers in the lit classes.
I couldn’t hand that manuscript to the archives until I sorted it all out—how to revise. Then I won an awesome short story award, moved out of town, life kept going.
About six months ago I received an email from the U of A, asking—Hey! Where’s your MFA Thesis! Ha!
Oh, archivists! Ha! I’ve been one, too. They keep thesis work in the archives of the University of Arizona Poetry Center.
I love that somebody thought of me and my work and those days so long ago and the reason I’d been in Arizona to begin with.
I went out through our soggy Oregon backyard, walking in the rain, so far from that desert. I found my thesis on a shelf out in the barn. Squirrels ran on the joists and rafters overhead. I’ll send it to the U of A next week. Mine can join the ranks of thesis work by all the other grads. David Foster Wallace graduated from the U of A in 1987. His thesis is archived through the Poetry Center, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.
Infinite Jest came out almost ten years later, in 1996. That’s time, as an ingredient, I’d say.
We write, revise, reconsider, put it away, take another look and ask, Who was that voice, that person, who wrote these words?
Hope you’re doing well.
Write your stories while you can! I mean it.
Love,
M
Also—Room for a few more in workshop, starting this coming Sunday morning. Join? It might be the last time I offer workshop in this way—low cost, one-to-one, close reading, careful, supportive.
March 1st-March 29th.
Five Weeks.
10:30-Noon, PST
This five-week, online Zoom-based workshop has a focus on looking at your writing and offering ways to revise, to make your work-in-progress as strong as it can be.
Long live those UA archives - and your addition to them, Monica. When I was 27 I entered a Short Short Story contest (Montana Institute of the Arts) and took 3rd place and got a check for $5. The next year I entered again, and again took 3rd and won another fiver. Then friends started asking how many folks were entering the contest. I had no idea and hoped it was more than 3. I didn't write another story for about 35 years. Have now written a novel, book of short stories and book of poems, but no longer taking 3rd. Damn.
Great post, Monica. Bless the U of A. I think I told you my great-grandfather Selim Franklin made an excoriating speech to the 13th Territorial Legislature where he told them that unless they endowed a university they would only be remembered for their graft and corruption.
“We have been called the Fighting Thirteenth, the Bloody Thirteenth and the Thieving Thirteenth. We have deserved these names and we know it. Here is an opportunity to wash away our sins. Let us establish an institution of learning, where for all time to come the youth of the land may learn to become better citizens than we are, and all our shortcomings will be forgotten in a misty past and we will be remembered for this one great achievement.”
The act created a land‑grant university at Tucson with a modest territorial appropriation (about 25,000 dollars), which became the University of Arizona. They wanted the capital or asylum, so this was a booby prize that relegated Tucson to second city status (thank god). SM Frankin's father-in-law was William Herring, the territory's first attorney general (and subject of my short story The Colonel Goes West, currently looking for a home somewhere).
My dad taught there forty years, so I was able to get a free education. That resulted in me neither valuing it nor taking it seriously. I dropped out after a few years of auditing classes and then not showing up, never getting my BA. It was embarrassing. My brother started his dance career there under Jory Hancock and George Zoritch, so that redeemed us somewhat.
I would love to do your workshop, by my new novel is nowhere near ready for it, seeing as it's in the draft stage. Maybe I'll circle back with you when it's more finished and see if I can engage you more directly. Probably at least a year.
Thanks again for all you do. You are always an inspiration!