How do you structure the creative writing class you teach here? 

Here we divide the class into two, the semester is 16 weeks approximately, and about eight weeks is craft. The point is to teach the students how to read creatively, as opposed to other kinds of reading. There’s reading for leisure: for instance, you get in your bikini and read in California. But then there’s also reading analytically, which is what my students are often used to doing in their other classes. It involves a certain set of interpretive tools, to make analysis, to understand theoretical stuff, criticism and all of that, with an eye to be able to write a paper. 

We’re focused on how to read as a writer. It’s more of an investigation. You’re reading with an eye to understand what the strategies are, and the tools that have gone into it. Fiction, like any other art, is really about decision-making. There are 100 different ways that a story could begin: it could begin on the day the character is born. But it chooses to start when they are 18 — why did we make that decision? I am going in there to understand how this is made and to extract what I can get for my own writing. Eight weeks of that culminates in an exam that tests them on their knowledge of craft and also prepares them for the second session. 

Then for the rest of the semester, we are mostly doing workshop. 

 

What are the challenges of being a young person working on writing? Do young people with perhaps limited life experience run the risk of navel-gazing in their writing?

I always tell my students once you graduate, go into the world and do something. Go to Japan or Afghanistan — well, not Afghanistan right now, maybe. Go to a meat packing plant in Ohio, and just observe. Listen to people. Hear the cadences. Watch people. Stay with them for a while and absorb how they live, how they think. This will be, even if not in the immediate sense, useful for you later on. The writer has to be definitely cognizant of that, and I believe there are a lot of opportunities to remedy that situation. 

 

What changed your mind?

I wrote my first novel, “The Fisherman,” without any sort of training. I was mostly an undergrad — I had the manuscript when I got to the University of Michigan (for my master’s). But I did learn some things there. 

I realized I didn’t know how to really revise, which is probably the most useful thing. In essence, that’s what we teach here. A good creative fiction teacher should teach you how to revise, because you know you already have the stuff, to a certain degree.

It was interesting to hear people talk about my work and to weigh in on their work as well. It took me a while to adjust. I felt very odd for the first semester: I just didn’t know what to say. I was self-trained. I didn’t even know any writers. I’d never met a writer before. I felt like I was the only one in the world who was writing. Of course I knew of writers, but they were so far removed from me that I was shocked to meet actual writers were also doing the same thing.

 

What made you want to write — what was it that drove you? Did you write as a kid? 

It was very early on that I knew I was going to write fiction. It was probably age seven or eight when I became very interested in stories. It wasn’t just the stories — it was the making of them. If I read something, and it touched me, I would think what kind of head does this person have? How did they write this? Nobody could give me an answer. My parents didn’t even know what I was talking about. My dad had close to a Ph.D. but he read more for the expanding of his horizon: there was utility to the reading he did. It’s true — reading helps you broaden your intellectual capacity. He didn’t have a sophisticated library, but I remember devouring everything that they had. It really began from there. 

 

With the changes we’re seeing in technology and AI and the way the English language is evolving, how is that all affecting the landscape of modern fiction? How is fiction changing for the better or for the worse?

Everybody has anxiety about AI. What I see happening is there’s going to come a time when

there will be an infiltration of the market, which is even happening right now. What it will do is force people to start looking for authentic fiction. It might actually be what realigns the system. It might do some damage first, but AI-driven fiction will die.

Don’t use AI to write. The fiction you write is a piece of you. Don’t think that you are doing yourself any service when you use AI. 

 

What do you think is the difference between good fiction and great fiction? 

I think good fiction is writing that intensifies something that you already know about life, the humanity of the world, politics, etc.

But great fiction goes further. It will renew your understanding; it will have those elements of good fiction. But it will demand that you read it again; it will leave room for that. Each time you read it, the experience is different. It’s very layered and complex, and it does not by its composition. It doesn’t allow you to read all of it in one time. Great fiction is a work that stays with you for days, weeks. It’s not dispensable.

 

Why do we need fiction? 

On the surface, of course we need fiction because we need something to do. Think about the 16th century, for instance. There’s no TV; there’s no phone. It was one of those things that you could do in your leisure time. I don’t think that has changed.

The second reason is because we are interested in beauty as human beings. This is the synthesis of simple science and life, and they come together. That’s what poetry is. It’s very good for the soul. 

Fiction is the revelation of humanity as it is, not how it ought to be. I always run away from the idea that fiction can just change people. It’s not supposed to do that. It’s supposed to present beauty, it’s supposed to entertain and it’s supposed to enlighten a certain portion of human nature. But it’s not supposed to articulate the solution to that.