Ten Anecdotes about the Destruction of Books

1.

I remember my friend and I throwing textbooks out of the window of our third floor high school classroom. Our Spanish teacher was senile and never noticed us leaving our desks, leaning out the windows, the stacks of extra books growing smaller and smaller.

She always seemed to have her eyes closed, rolling her r’s. Or telling the class her dreams about becoming a world-famous flamenco dancer. They were well-told stories. Something that could have appeared in a good book. But we didn’t care.

The joy of holding a book in our hands and watching it fall to the ground was too great.

We were always careful to make sure no one was beneath us. Once in awhile we did get so excited that we didn’t scan the ground below before we dropped the books. We could have really hurt someone.

Maybe such carelessness wasn’t always a result of a thoughtless eagerness.

The idea of someone being clobbered with knowledge was an image we wanted to see.


2.
Living most of my childhood in a trailer park, I never owned my own books, always checking out my reading materials from the public library. Because I was smart, my teachers placed me in advanced reading classes with students who had rich parents to buy whatever they wanted.

I never felt like it was fair that I had to depend on an institution to supplement my education.

I wanted what everyone else had. So I stole books from the library. I’d take the book into the bathroom and rip the pages from the spine. That way I could smuggle the book out without the detector going off.

Once my friend said to me, “Why do your books always seem to fall apart so quickly?”
“Because,” I said. “Anything that’s loved too much falls apart.”

3.
For about a year in high school, I was convinced that I had a spiritual responsibility to make contact with as many people in the world as possible. There was only one problem: I was horribly shy. So I came up with a game plan: I would write notes on the inside front cover of as many library books as possible. That way I could reach people I would never meet in real life.

I remember sitting for hours and hours, writing pretentious messages in random books. I wrote things like: “To Whom This May Concern, I want you to know I have absolutely no idea who you are. But I want you to know, because I feel it’s my responsibility, to tell you that you are loved. Don’t turn the page of the book and begin reading, because you’re embarrassed someone is telling you something so obvious. It’s an important thing to know no matter how reluctant you may be to accept it.”

On another book I wrote, “My name is Steve Fellner. I have blond hair and blue eyes. If you’re my father, please look me up in the phone book and give me a call. I miss you and want to know why you ran away from us.”

4.
There was a time I was so depressed in high school that I would take a book into the bathroom with me and deliberately mishandle the pages so that I would have dozens and dozens of paper cuts. They would sting.

Then I would mumble a number of profane words at the book. Once I remember screaming at one of my mother’s Harlequin romances. It looked innocent enough lying there. But I knew better. The cuts on my hands were proof of the book’s guilt. I said, “How dare you cause me so much pain. You bad book. You horribly bad book.”

I knew I had to punish the book. You can’t let someone get away with things like that.

So I would tear off a page, crumble it up, and flush it down the toilet.

I would do that for awhile. Or at least until I got bored which was pretty quick.

5.
A girlfriend of mine in college was a theorist. She’d come over to my apartment and prefer the company of Foucault over me. I couldn’t blame her. In a way. He had a lot of interesting things to say. All I wanted to do was get down her pants. I needed to prove to her that I wasn’t the gay man I knew I was.

When she broke up with me, there was a stack of her library books in the corner of my room. She left me a phone message, asking if I would drop them off at the library.

I threw them all in the garbage. I remember waking up one morning before dawn to watch the garbage men take my trash. At six in the morning they came, an hour before I had begun to drink mimosas. As the truck drove away, I shouted, “To hell with insight. Where does that get you anyway?”

The next time I saw her she said that the library contacted her about overdue books. The ones I had.
“Did you return them?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said. “I’m responsible.”

She invited me over to her house that same week. She made me dinner. Afterwards, we sat on her couch and she started to unbutton my pants. I kissed her.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you,” she said.

“Can I make love to you?”

“Sure,” she said. “After you answer one question.”

“Of course.”

“Did you return my library books?”

“Yeah.”

“Honestly,” she said. “Tell me the truth. I love you.”

How could I resist her?

“No,” I said, “I threw them out. Don’t worry. I’ll pay the replacement costs.”

She slapped me across the face and then told me to leave.

6.
I remember seeing my father cry for the first time. He was alone in the living room reading a book. When he saw me, he wiped away the tears, pretending nothing was going on. He folded the corner of the page he was reading. How I hated those words. He told me it was time to go bed. So I went. I knew he wanted to cry more.

That same night I snuck out of my bedroom and crept down the stairs. The book was still open to that same page.

I knew I needed to do something.

I was afraid to look at the page. Let alone the cover. If it had the power to make my father cry, it might yield ever lasting psychic scars for me.

So without even as much as glancing at any of the words, I tore the page from the book.
Then I sat at the kitchen table and ripped the page into little pieces.

Every night for a month I swallowed a piece.

7.
I remember one time my brother and I were so bored. Our father had deserted us. We had no idea what to do with our lives. We weren’t old enough to drive so we were forced to sit around our apartment and complain to our mother. She told us to watch a movie.

“We’re sick of movies,” we said.

“Play a game,” she said.

“We’re tired of games,” we said.

“Take a walk,” she said.
“Our feet don’t want to move,” we said.

“Read a book,” she said.

We couldn’t stop laughing. That was our mother for you.

We stole one of dad’s sci-fi novels from her room. We tore out pages and made paper airplanes. It was so much fun. The man-made vehicles darted around the room, colliding into the furniture.

“Where’d you get that paper?” she said.

“It’s dad’s,” we said.

“You mean, you tore up your father’s book?” she said.

We nodded.

She grabbed the book from our hands and made another airplane herself.

“Let’s have a race,” she said.

8.
Once my mother announced to my brother and I that she was determined to make sure that we transcended our trailer park background. “I’m going to see it that you guys are cultured,” she said. We were nervous. Culture had always seemed so boring, especially when people invoked it in such a grand, important way.

She led us into the kitchen where there were several cookbooks lying on the table. There was one for Indian food, one for Mexican, one for Thai. My brother and I took a step backwards. We were scared. We were Midwesterners who lived on a diet of casseroles and meatloaf.

“Tonight’s Thai,” Mother said.

For several hours she barricaded herself in the kitchen, refusing to let us in, telling us to enjoy the odors wafting our way.

The only thing we smelled that had any distinction was smoke.

Mother ran out of the kitchen, screaming for us to fetch the fire extinguisher. My brother followed her order. We put out the fire.

In a large pot, there seemed to be scorched noodles and some crusty vegetables. “Go get a envelope from the hall closet,” Mother said.

My brother came back and held it open for her. Mother dumped the stuff in the pot and then ripped out the recipe from the book inside the envelope. She told me to lick it. I did. Then she wrote the address of the publisher company on the outside. She commanded me to go slide the package into the mailbox.

I balked.

“They need to know what their recipes are capable of,” she said.

I nodded and ran barefoot all the way to the box.

9.
I never wanted my parents to read me bed time stories.

They weren’t good actors. I could always tell they despised each other. They both spent so much time looking out the window, imagining their get away car. Reading to me gave them an excuse to leave the other downstairs.

Once I said to my mother, “I’ll fall asleep quicker without your words.”

She insisted it was no trouble. She wanted to read to me.

One day I decided to take a magic marker and scribble out all the words to the story. When it was time for our nightly ritual, my father said, “Look what someone did to this book.”

“Guess no story tonight,” I said.
My father looked at me and said, “I don’t want to leave yet. Would you mind just looking at the pictures?”

“I’m tired,” I said.

“Please. Just give me some time. You don’t need to do anything. I’ll turn the pages.”

10.
I’ve always had a hard time finishing a novel. I always lose interest midway through. I wish that this problem only had to do with books. Once my mother noticed this characteristic. “It’s cruel not to finish a book,” she said. “It’s a form of abuse.”

Assuming she was joking, I laughed.

“I’m serious,” she said. “Would you just walk away from someone when they’re talking to you?”
“No,” I said.

“Didn’t think you were like your father,” she said. “You have a responsibility to let the other person say The End. You shouldn’t do it for them.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t apologize to me,” she said. “Ask the book for forgiveness.”



[With the anxiety of school beginning, particularly finalizing my choice of books for my classes, I decided to post this essay which originally appeared in Mid-American Review.]

On Vanity (Part One)

At least a million times, you’ve seen the article in Poets and Writers: the steps on getting your first poem published. In a kind, steady voice, a well-published author provides good tips.

That same well-published author will never raise the following questions:

What happens after you’ve succeeded, and then against all odds got that first book published? What do you do with the next manuscript you may have produced in the meantime?

Is it moral to put anything other than that first book out in the world?

How much, if at all, does the world need to see of you?

Is it pure vanity to expect the world to read more of your words?

*

At a restaurant, I was making fun of myself. As I always do. My friend said, "I could stay here for hours. You're funny."

For some reason, as time went on, I sensed that she started to feel bad for me. My self-deprecation was too intense.

Nothing makes me more upset than feeling like an object of pity. So I confessed a truth: yeah, I do a lot of dumb things, don’t think before I talk (does anyone really do that?), but I know I’m special, not because of talent, or intelligence, nothing like that, but because quite simply I am. If someone doesn’t like me, I said, I know something is wrong with them; unspecial people are the only ones who don’t like me.

Her face changed, she looked truly unsettled, and she quickly left.

*

Vanity can be a good thing.

I hate beautiful gay men who act modest about their looks. It makes them less attractive.

Or at least I wish it did.

I believe one should always flaunt what physical strengths they possess.

If you’re beautiful, then you do have a responsibility to put at least a dozen pictures of yourself on Facebook.

If you’re not beautiful , no more than five.

If every couple of days, you change your picture, fine, but you better be hot.

If you are beautiful (or even if you simply think you are beautiful), then you have a responsibility to sleep with as many lesser attractive people as possible.

You need to share your beauty. If you don’t you’re committing an immoral act.

Sharing your beauty with only one other person is selfish and damaging to the world.

*

I don’t know if the same thing goes with words.

You can always find something new in a beautiful body. But honestly, doesn't someone's words become old if you stare at them too much?

*

In the last couple years, one of my favorite books has been Richard Siken’s Crush. I love the sight of it in my bookshelf even when I have no intention to reread it. Like a good friend, it’s nice to know that it’s in the world.

More than once I’ve heard another poet say, “I wonder if his second book is going to be as good as his first book. How can he top himself?”

Why does he need to do such a thing? Why would anyone expect him to create anything more beautiful? Isn’t one near perfect verbal object enough?

Siken doesn’t seem to want to give us more and more books. Which in a way makes what words he has given us more beautiful. And if this doesn’t make his words more beautiful, it makes him kinder. We don’t waste a lot of time looking for his beautiful words. We know exactly where and what we should be looking at.

Dear Christian Teresi and the AWP,

This open letter may be outdated, or a disclosure of my ignorance, my being out of the loop.

Or at least I hope it is.

(Full disclosure: I was on a panel that was submitted for consideration. It was rejected. In all seriousness, it should have been rejected. For a number of reasons.)

But I am curious if you or anyone else could tell me what correctives have/will be implemented to deal with the necessary and urgent feminist issues brought to my attention by the postings of Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu's letters on various blogs.

For me, there are two major issues regarding this issue I haven't heard addressed. I'll name these issues later in this post.

Rather than summarizing their letters (it’d be shameful for me to gloss their precise, thoughtful words), I’d like to post the link to where I first saw these letters:

http://avoidmuse.blogspot.com/2009/08/letters-from-erin-belieu-and-cate.html

I do not know any of these people (Cate Marvin, or Erin Belieu, or for that matter, C. Dale Young), and have no plans to meet them. I say this only because I think it’s important for you to know this is out of individual interest. I am not associated with any collective, or any alliance with another person.

I would like to say that it partly concerns me that Victoria Chang reported on her blog that she was contacted presumably after she blogged about the incident.

It is not because you reached out to her. That's admirable. I think you should be commended for that. And I hope you have been.

But I must ask: after the women associated with this one particular panel was contacted, were other women from other rejected panels that were also feminist/female-centered, or consisted of all female participants?

Victoria Chang is a poet with a more than substantial reputation. Chang herself describes Cate marvin as a "super poet." All the women in this panel are pretty huge, if not stellar, instant name recognition for anyone who has been in any poetry circles.

Did you go to the trouble to explain your rationale to other women of less visibility? Was this a gesture made out of panic that some high-profile women may spread potentially negative feelings about the already heavily criticized conference? I hope this isn’t so. I hope that as a result of Victoria Chang’s blog that you realized that all female centered panels needed to be notified and offered a similar transparent rationale.

Otherwise, AWP is contradicting the ostensible philosophy that all people will be treated equally. AWP then would be in defiance of your own guidelines, and a public explanation is warranted.

I do not know if this has taken place. But I assume it has. I would love to hear that lesser known women writers were offered the same treatment. Maybe this conversation has already taken place. If so, please someone alert me. And I apologize to you, Christian, and AWP.

According to all accounts, Christian, you are a kind, extremely responsible person. So I want to make it clear, if it hasn't, Christian, that AWP is responsible, not simply you. This is I'm sure obvious, but it deserves repeating.

(I happen to be ambivalent about the AWP conference. I am sick of people whining about how big it is. Get over it! Use your money and come see me in wonderful rural Upstate New York them. It's cheaper and I'll buy you at least two meals. It's lonely here. That's why I do this blog.)

That’s my first point. This is my second point.

I can’t help but wonder if Cate Marvin’s panel wasn’t rejected simply because it had a great title. I would want to go see a panel named “Arsenic Icing: Sentiment as Threat in Contemporary American Women’s Poetry.”

It sound great. It has a kick and spin. It seems intellectually substantial for once. And it doesn’t cater to the high school students who seem to populate the conference these days. (Sometimes I wonder if the panels should be given MPAA ratings, protecting these literary youngsters.)

Did you really choose the following panel instead of Cate Marvin’s?

It sound like arsenic itself:

Ellipsis as art: Crafting omission of information in a text
Description: Typically texts are made up of explicit information vital to the story. But texts can also be constructed with vital information left out which the reader must provide. Such information -- negative text -- must be crafted as carefully as explicit information. Works of this type rely on the reader’s imagination to be effective. The panel will discuss various types of techniques for crafting negative texts and genres that employ them.
Participants: Lance Olsen, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Debra Di Blasi, Steve Tomasula

Or how many times have we seen this one?:

Getting Students to Meaningful Memoir
Description: Getting to Meaningful Memoir: Students in their late teens and early twenties have all sorts of experiences--jobs, family life, sexual orientation, cultural background--that they can draw upon for memoir that goes beyond immature navel-gazing. Panelists will present in-class exercises and writing assignments aimed at getting students of all ages to the widest possibilities for strong memoir story and voice.
Participants: Eric May, Laurie Lindeen, Joe Mackall

Or how about this?

It's Not You, It's Me: The Poetry of Breakup and Divorce
Description: Poetry is one of the most beautiful forms of human expression on earth; breakup and divorce are among the worst. Does the poet's experience with such a dire emotional event change the way she approaches the topic? Featured in a new Overlook Press anthology on the subject, these panelists will read and discuss their work in order to explore the connection between breakup and divorce and their own poetic process.
Participants: Jerry Williams, Kim Addonizio, Gerald Costanzo, Amy Gerstler, Alan Shapiro

First, anyone entitling a panel" The Poetry of Breakup and Divorce" should be ashamed of himself. Are we aiming our panels for junior-high students who shoot rabbits and badly in need of counseling?

There is another serious problem with this panel. And it is a huge problem.

By looking at the labeling, it seems that this should be a panel, but the description makes it seem like a reading. Which is it?

AWP has to differentiate between a reading and a panel. A panel is a discussion. A reading is a reading. A panel should not be an opportunity for a reading. The panels that openly state that time will be significantly devoted to the participants reading their own work is a huge problem. It makes AWP seem like they’ll devote panels to writers who are simply high-profile (what somewhat aware poet doesn’t know all five of these names on the Divorce Panel?) AWP needs to give panels to writers invested in intellectual exchange, not a substantial amount of time given to a reading of their own work. There seems to be more than one “panel” like this. Let these writers do their readings at their own readings.

For what little it's worth, I support Cate Marvin, Erin Belieu, women's writing conference.

My only hope that their conference is not seen as a supplement or complement to AWP, but instead a potential replacement of it if AWP doesn't offer less conservative, anti-intellectual panels.

If anyone of this information is wrong, Christian, I apologize. I just felt that AWP would like to pacify the concerns of people like me who are on the far invisible margins of the literary community.

I'd be more than willing to talk to anyone from the organization on the phone, via email, or at the conference face-to-face.

On Making Statements and Timothy Liu's Poem "The Decision"

Here is Timothy Liu’s poem The Decision:


When I removed

the ring I had
been wearing for

a decade, a ghost

ring remained
underneath — the skin

slightly paler

where the gold
had been — my finger

cinched where it

had been constricted
as I prepared to

step into the night —


How comforting it is to not be forced in a poem to deal with any periods! No declarative statements, sentences. There's no complete sentence in Liu's poem of overt political statement. Which is about a mandate which in its own way sentences gay men to an unfair punishment. Queers can't marry.

I see Liu's poem as a re-enactment of a tragic gesture. Not a statement.

Liu's poem is clever, no?

More than clever I say. His poem is kindness. It provides temporary relief in a pause, a rest.

That's what makes poems special. It can offer something other than a statement.

We need more poems. As well as useful, political statements. Sometimes those things are the same, some times not.

Appearing in the July issue of the Harvard Review, then August on Poetry Daily, no doubt the decision is The Decision-California’s “decision” (thank you Timothy for not naming it directly; it hurts sometimes to hear) to allow the killing of gay men. The Decision is Proposition 8. Which says you can’t marry; you don’t exist; please go and die.

Liu knows discursiveness, no matter how ultimately lyrical, has its drawbacks. Sometimes he uses it, sometimes he doesn't. Here in this poem he doesn't.

Discursiveness yields a whole lot of statements. And then someone, if they’re engaged and usually if they disagree, offers a lot of other statements. Statements accumulate. They really do. And they do quickly. No matter how hard you try, there’s always another statement, perhaps a necessary one, perhaps not, that’s going to get past you.

That frustrates me. I like to think I can capture all the statements about a particular subject and put them in a list.

That’s why I like grocery lists. It’s nice to see things stacked, as they are in a list.

Think about all the wonderful things you can stack: library books, pressed shirts, Legos.

Maybe Legos aren’t that good for a gay man to think about. If you can’t marry, it’s hard to adopt. No kids, no legos. I always preferred Playmobile.

Liu’s poem also makes it clear that one of the horrible things about Proposition 8 is that you can’t completely explain what gay men have lost as a result of it. No statement can sum it up. Statements should be able to do that, no?

Proposition 8 taught gay men that you need to make a lot of statements to fight inequality. You can’t really make enough. At the same time you can only hear so many. Everyone needs to stop at some point. Or else you need to go into your room, lock the door, and play Enya.

Even without a lot of statements badgering me, I do that.

I love Enya. I listened to her all the time when I took my Latin exams.

Proposition 8 affirmed gay-haters that you can make an inaccurate statement and, as long as it’s a statement, one made with conviction, you can capture and murder. Making statements make you feel one of two ways. Like you’ve been pinned down or that you can throw someone against a wall. That's why you make your own statements. This isn't to say in any way you shouldn't make them. It's just that everything hurts in its own way.

Liu knows periods can be dumb. He knows statements can be useless. For this particular poem, Liu has the solution. His solution is not a statement. It’s a dash. A dash is a pretty good thing if you don’t skip over it. A dash looks like something you can sail away on.

That's what how I think of Liu's final dash in his poem anyway.

You can glide away on it. Past Proposition 8. Past all the statements. You just keep on moving. Away and “into the night-”

My Final Words about "The Firm"

The thing that might piss me off more than anything else is that after all this controversy, all these hateful and loving emails, my Amazon.com sales rank has not gone up. With the more than 2,000 people who visited my blog and complimented me and/or wanted me dead, I haven’t sold a single additional goddamned motherfucking book!

My only consolation is that Suburban Ecstasies’ sales doesn’t seem to have shot up through the roof either.

So there.

*

I do feel that “the firm” is corrupt and evil.

I do feel that Seth’s blog has always increased the anxiety for MFA applicants. It provided often superfluous data which increases the anxiety for potential MFA applicants. What does this blog do now? It links you to his firm’s website. Where you can pay substantial sums of money to get help for each part of the application.

$80 for a purpose statement? As a friend of mine said, anyone who pays $80 to get guidance for a purpose statement shouldn’t be getting a writing degree anyway.

At the same time, the person who pays isn’t stupid. They’re desperate. They want to get in. Some years ago I was desperate; I wanted to get in. I would have paid if I wasn’t so cheap.

The blog and its linked firm know people want to get in. The firm aggravated the problem and now has the ultimate solution. The firm is a con man’s game. Plain and simple.

On Collin Kelley’s blog “Modern Confessionals” he writes about me in relation to Seth Abramson: “In the opposite corner is poet Steve Fellner, who critiques other poets on his blog and has enough axes to grind to keep whetstones turning night and day in every barn across the nation.”

Collin, you sure bet that I have axes to grind.

*

Ethics matter to me. On this blog, I have held queer poems and their queer makers responsible for what their art does. Sometimes I talk about other things. Such as "the firm."

Words have consequences. They can kill people.

Here’s one example: Proposition 8. I started this blog partly in response to things such as Proposition 8. Proposition 8 says gay men can’t marry. They say gay men do not exist. They say gay men are dead. When someone is told they are dead, how are you they not supposed to believe them?

I’m middle-aged and sometimes I believe the words. That’s why young gay men kill themselves. They’re doing what the words tell them.

*

Poetry can bring people back to life. If you try to write a poem, you won’t have time to think about those bad words and death. Poems want you to live.

Which brings us back to institutions and firms.

Institutions can kill poetry. I know. I've gotten degrees from them. But even in universities, even in those things we call workshops, you can find poetry in unexpected places at unexpected times. I’ve lucked out and sometimes have been in the right places at the right times.

*

The firm asks ask you to pay for their love, their care in order to pay an institution for their love and care. It may seem money isn’t that bad of a thing to trade in for love and care. There’s only one problem: institutions and firms don’t love and care for you back.

They already have more than enough people in line waiting for love and care.

MFA applicants have already been standing in line for the institution.

Now they have the “choice” to stand in yet another line created by a firm for love and care.

Lines are long and scary.

Especially when you’re being encouraged to stand in yet another one.

No one writes poetry when they’re waiting in line.

SOMETIME WEDNESDAY THERE WILL BE A NEW POST HERE

On Teaching Memoir Writing to Senior Citizens

As my colleagues and students will tell you, I don’t like teaching those in graduate school. They remind me too much of myself: desperate and cynical and sincere (a deadly combo). They’re typically very sweet as well, but I know, as they do, that they can glide through the program and be quite fine on their own. Teaching graduate students for most people is a sign of status, of teaching people who are more serious." I wish I found those beliefs to be true.

I much prefer to teach non-creative writing majors in introductory classes. They are excited to learn. Yes, I do confess: I love teaching freshman composition, especially first semester. They transmit exhilarating nervous energy.

Teaching prisons inmates, AIDS patients, illiterate people, and the elderly make me happy, too. I’ve done each one with varying success.

I would like to emphasize that I state my teaching of marginalized people in a completely unromantic way. My goal here is not to boast my own humanitarianism, selling myself as a charitable person. I’m quite selfish, and this act is selfish, too. I like to feel of use. I’ve always reached the worst states of depression when I have rendered my life purposeless. Teaching people who are at different crossroads in their lives than me reminds me that as an artist and a teacher I have something to give.

As a childless gay man, one who would never adopt a child, I find the fulfillment of this need important. A lot of heterosexuals live for their kids; a straight friend recently said, “Well, you have your writing.”

Any person who says that giving birth to a baby is like the writing of a book is an asshole. A book sits around your apartment, collecting dust. So can a baby. But at least it whines occasionally, reminding you that there is something else in the universe other than yourself.

About a week ago, I taught a workshop to predominately senior citizens in Sedona, Arizona at the Well-Red Coyote, one of the most amazing independent bookstores I've visited. I had a lot of fun. Its focus: how to begin writing a memoir. It was to last a strict hour and a half; twenty people were there for the class. I want to list some things I did to keep things running fairly smoothly. A friend of mine wants “tips” so here they are:

1.) Do NOT spend all the time talking about all your accomplishments.. You’re there to teach them. If you do a good job, they’ll approach you afterwards. Be as brief as possible. At the same time, you do need to establish some authority. So do say some things. But monitor yourself closely.

2.) Make your workshop revolves around a writerly anxiety. This workshop focused on the panic one feels when confronting the blank page as you begin a memoir.

3.) Everyone’s nervous at a workshop and wants to impress everyone else (including yourself). Say the word anxiety. Share a brief anecdote about your own. It makes people feel more comfortable. Confess that the reason you choose the topic is because it is one that plagues you. You’ll get a chuckle.

4.) Give them a writing exercise that restricts how much they can write. Otherwise they will write a lot and want to share everything they wrote. Who can blame them? If people though continue to read beyond a certain point, it will take away time from other deserving participants.

5.) I emphasized in the workshop that you shouldn’t edit yourself as you write your book. You shouldn’t try to write in a linear narrative. And most importantly, do not worry about closure. Things don’t have to come circle. When you get bored, stop. You're writing a draft after all. It doesn't need to make sense.

6.) This is the actual writing exercise I did:

I asked them to write down a significant person, place, and thing from their own life on a piece of paper. You give them 3 minutes to do that. Tell them the odder the person, place, and thing, the better is. I emphasized briefly the necessity of idiosyncrasy. Not a living room table. But an abacus. Not Mom or Dad. But a creep next door neighbor. Not a Florida beach house. But a Milwaukee bomb shelter.

Then I told them to write no more, absolutely no more than 5 sentences on each person, place, thing. Someone inevitably said, “But I can’t say anything in five sentences.” This is a good thing. “Fine,” I said, “You won’t be able to say everything. It doesn’t matter. I just want you to stop anyway.”

Five sentences each, fifteen sentences total may not seem like a lot. Trust me the sentences will be long and they will make them count.

Do not let them write more than five sentences for each. This is key. This is not an exercise in which they should be sharing their entire life story. They should leave the workshop with some “stuff.” Not an entire draft. Even more importantly, you need to have time for everyone to share.

After they wrote their paragraphs, I told them I wanted them to choose the best their best and we’d discuss it. I had 20 students. If you have less, you may want to have them read the two aloud.

Before they presented, I said “I want us all to think of two things to say.” Then I named that two things: 1.) What word, or phrase, or image strikes you as something that is truly unique 2.) Based on what you just heard, what would you to hear about next? This forces everyone to focus their attention. Their comments were precise, kind, and generous. Make sure you say something about each person's. No matter how brief. Everyone wants input from the teacher. Even if you know your students are saying smarter things than you.

7.) Most importantly: Be affirmative. They are trying to get stuff down on the page. They don’t need any negativity.

8.) Really do be affirmative. There’s no reason not to be. They’re accomplishing their goal: to get something down on the page. For a writer of any age that’s the most difficult step of all.