Reflecting on the Leap

The pandemic made me do it. 

The pandemic prompted me to take the leap—which is to say, it took the world turning inside out for me to take my writing seriously. I’d always wanted to, but I told myself devoting myself to writing—focusing on it, shelling out money to study it, possibly even quitting my job in order to do it—wasn’t practical. I struggled to justify it (which is silly, given that in undergrad I double-majored in Biblical studies and French). 

But focusing on my writing didn’t feel just silly, it felt scary: it was vulnerable. Biblical studies and French were entities outside myself. To insist that writing was valuable was to insist that MY writing—my creative acts, things I had to say—was valuable, which is a much more terrifying leap. 

But when covid hit, and the world did turn inside-out, I found myself shuffling around my apartment and struggling to raise money for online arts criticism, and suddenly that occupation was no longer justifiable—at least, it wasn’t any more justifiable than taking the risk of committing myself to my writing. 

Technically I finished my Masters in January. My final graduate presentation analyzed the implicit story structure of the evangelical testimony—an essay I hope to publish, once I’ve revised it a few more times (stay tuned!)—and then I did a reading from my favorite piece I’ve written, titled “I Heart Hardcore Christian Boys.” 

My graduate program, through Pacific University, is what’s called a low-residency MFA, meaning that each semester starts with a residency—ten days (typically in person), during which you workshop drafts with a cohort and attend craft talks and readings—followed by a semester’s worth of online correspondence with a faculty advisor. One of the major advantages about pursuing an MFA in writing through a low-res program is that when you graduate, the format of the program already mirrored what a writer’s life often looks like: a passion that you pursue alongside whatever else makes up your life. Many students have full-time jobs and families. Low-residency is ideal for individuals unable to move for graduate study, but it’s also ideal for people who want to begin practicing the routine of incorporating writing into their pre-existing lives. 

When I finished in January, my friends and I toasted with champagne and danced our hearts out and then I flew back to Colorado, and my life proceeded much as it had before January: writing, zoom meetings with other writers, working my part-time job at the liquor store, reading books and magazines. 

This past week, Michael and I flew together to Portland to attend Pacific MFA’s once-a-year graduation ceremony. We stayed up late drinking cheap beer in the dorm rooms, talking short stories and lit mags and story structure and rejection. 

“There are so many different ways to be a writer,” Michael observed to me one morning, over a breakfast of biscuits and eggs. There’s a handful of folks at Pacific who came right after undergrad, but for the most part, the cohort is people who are out in the world: a father of two who teaches high school English in Singapore; an obstetrician; a restauranteur; an architect who grew up in an apocalyptic cult. Retirees, empty-nesters, librarians. 

Particularly in the nonfiction department, I got to look around at all these women (almost exclusively women) and see how much they’ve grown into themselves over the two years we’ve been working together. And I can feel it too: how I’ve become more myself, because of this program. I think it’s something about nonfiction in particular—how it compels you to look critically at the stories you’ve been telling yourself, to assess if they’re really true, or if they’re lies you’ve been hiding inside. Like the lie that my writing wasn’t worth taking seriously, that I didn’t have anything particular to say. 

Even though I know I’ll stay in touch with all the people who matter to me, I got emotional after graduation. This program has given me so much, and I feel the loss in finishing it, even if it means I’m moving on to a different stage. What I would give for more student readings, more impassioned craft discussions over lunch, more nights of drinking beer in Itaya’s dorm room. 

Guess I’ll have to start my own writing conference. 

For posterity’s sake, here’s what I said in my commencement address: 

Several months ago, my partner Michael and I went on a trip to Massachusetts, to visit the campus where I attended undergrad. I viewed the trip as a reconnaissance mission: basically one long, drawn-out writing prompt. In our hotel room at night, I wrote drafts about my angsty, twenty-year-old self, and Michael scrolled Reddit. At the time, it was unclear if NATO would get involved in the conflict in Ukraine, so he casually suggested that upon our return to Colorado, we should stockpile some nonperishables in the back of the pantry—in case of nuclear war. 

I was offended. How dare the world threaten a descent into international turmoil when I’m trying to write about my evangelical feelings?!

This is, to some extent, what the writing life is always like. Regardless of whatever’s happening out there, you go sit in your basement and make up stories about your imaginary friends. The world is on the brink of diplomatic collapse and we’re editing drafts, rending our garments and pulling out our hair over questions of scansion and grammar and story arc. 

For us, class of 2023, this is particularly true. In the second half of 2020, covid-19 was devastating the American population and closing schools and workplaces, police violence against Black Americans had reached a new threshold of visibility and people were protesting in the streets, and the government was preparing for a highly contentious election. Life as we knew it turned inside out—and in response to that, I decided to go to writing school. To tell stories and write beautiful sentences and devote myself to language. What kind of foolish desperado does that? 

According to my mom, writers are a little bit “out to lunch.” To the industrial-capitalist mind exclusively concerned with product, earnings, and efficiency, the choice to pursue an MFA does not compute. It’s willfully impractical, because it serves an end outside of capital. 

Claire Dederer addresses this idea, loosely, in her latest book, Monsters. Now, I don’t want to give anything away, but there’s a scene toward the end of the book when Claire and a friend get into an argument about the best kind of tree. She explains: “That’s the kind of argument we have in the Pacific Northwest.” 

She goes on: “My friend and I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were having an argument about utility versus aesthetics.” These two categories are routinely pitted against each other, and there’s a coterie of values affiliated with each side. 

Picture Utility and Aesthetics as the big kids on the playground, picking their friends for kickball. Utility plans to stack his team, so he calls on Efficiency, and Brute Force, and Profit, and Pragmatism. Aesthetics doesn’t really care about winning; she’s in it for the fun of the game, so she picks Whimsy, and Curiosity, and Subjectivity, and Experimentalism. You can imagine how this kickball game goes. 

We get a summary of the outcome in Monsters. “Utility is almost always going to win,” Claire admits. “And so it was on this night: beauty lost—except, you know, in my heart.” 

Beauty wins in our hearts, too, I’ll bet. If we were the playground cronies who kicked for Utility’s team, we wouldn’t be here. We would’ve gone into real estate, or day trading, or Big Pharma. Utility’s teammates are the kind of folks who can typically justify their choices according to profit and loss, the ones who can show you the receipts. I can show you my receipts–I have cigar boxes full of them in the craft lab in my basement, but that’s because I’m a cashier and I scribble drafts on receipt backs under the register while I'm at work.

My day job is at this liquor store, as many of you know. My regulars are mostly practical folks. I’m selling six-packs at the end of the workday to house painters and pizza delivery drivers and William the Tile Layer and Renny the Machinist—folks who would kick for Utility’s team. 

The idea that I just want to work my hourly job and keep time to write is baffling to them. They ask the peskiest, well-meaning questions. They say, “Are you gonna go get a better job?” They ask, “What’s your degree in, anyway?” “What kind of stuff do you write?” “Have you published anything I can read?” 

How do I tell these lovely people that I write nonfiction about being a teenage Christian girl and having a lot of feelings? Or that I write something called “cultural criticism”? Do I invite them to subscribe to the obscure lit mags where I’m submitting, where, in six to eight months, they might have the dubious pleasure of reading one of my scintillating book reviews? 

These are impressive people, you know, hardworking people. And some days it takes a lot of effort to remind myself that behind the pockmarked stainless steel counter, I, too, am an impressive, hardworking person. 

Of course, I didn’t get into writing because I thought it would impress people. (If that’s your driving goal, I have some bad news.) Fame and fortune are not the payout for this path. The poets already know this. 

We beat back the external pressure to justify ourselves to a world concerned with accomplishments by feeding on the art that sustains our creative life. We have to stay close to the art that fuels us.

Just by being here, you’ve already demonstrated your fidelity to a way of life isn’t just about outcomes or products, but is about the process of making art. Allow me, briefly, to assume the collective authority of the first person plural: we got into writing because we believe that writing isn't actually adjacent to life, and that language and storytelling and poetry are essential to flourishing. When Utility’s teammates get particularly abrasive or persuasive, waving their profit and loss spreadsheets around, we can reach out to each other for the reminder that writing makes the world richer, even if those gains don’t show up on a bank statement. Writing is not a frivolous activity, a vanity project, or a meaningless pursuit. Art—the process of making it and the process of consuming it—changes people. It’s not an alternative to rigorous engagement with life; it’s a means of engagement. Our writing is how we move through the world. 

We share a belief, however inarticulate, that the power of art transcends quantification. The work itself becomes our reward. 

We might be foolish desperados, but what else is there to be? 

Congratulations, class of 2023. 

Special thanks to: Scott Korb, Claire Dederer, Mike Magnuson, Morgan Jerkins, Jennifer Scanlon. Allison, Rachel S, Jamie, Michael H, Ben P, Julie, Therese, Nicole, Angela, Philippa, Jacky, Kate H, Kate W, Atina, Michele, Bea, Matthew K, Mike I, and Aaron P.