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 David Holper shares a story from his early writing days and how one person's advice, no matter how notable they may be, isn't always unbiased.
As with many of us who have pursued writing as either a vocation or an avocation, a good deal of my early writing life involved developing an inner critic and learning how to listen to this voice, particularly when I felt unsure about my ability or my work.
This story is one that I share because it illustrates that point so well: When I was in graduate school at UMass Amherst in the late 1980s, I studied with a writer named Tamas Aczel (now deceased, sad to say). He was a charming, elderly fellow, a national hero in Hungary, and a warm and insightful teacher. During the first semester that I studied with him, I took note of his rather traditional lens for stories, and for some reason, he and I clicked. Perhaps it was because I was fresh out of the military and the structures that I had been exposed to meshed with his world view. Or maybe it was just because he was such a likeable fellow. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed his fiction workshop, and I enjoyed his friendship, too. During that first semester, I was working on a piece that I had already published in my undergraduate literary magazine (Toyon), but for some reason, I sensed that it had more potential than its original formation, so I revised it extensively, sent out half a dozen copies to various paying literary journals, but then had second thoughts about the piece. I began to wonder if the story was any good after all. I walked around for the better part of a week wondering if I had any talent at all, until I started to obsess over the issue. Finally, because I couldn’t resolve these questions myself, I took the story to Tamas and asked him to look it over. Tamas did. He took about a week, and then we met in his office. He said, in short, that the story had no merit whatsoever. He said, “Put it away in a drawer and never show it to anyone again! You don’t want to publish something like this and then later deal with the embarrassment.” I left mortified, feeling foolish for having sent the story out before seeing him. It was late spring. A couple of rejection letters came back, which seemed to confirm his wisdom. I moved on to new pieces, even though some of those same doubts continued. During the summer I traveled home to California and spent the summer in San Francisco working as a bike courier and a data entry clerk. Then a letter arrived from Stories literary quarterly of Boston (now defunct), in which I was offered a small payment for my story. My first payment. Needless to say, I was taken aback. About two weeks later, I wound up on the phone with the editor and had a chat about the proof. As we were finishing the proof, she shifted gears. “It’s an interesting piece,” she said. “Not at all like anything I typically get from MFA candidates. I hope you don’t lose your original voice while you’re in grad school. By the way, who are you studying with there?” I told her. She chuckled. “Funny, he’s been sending us material for ten years, but we’ve never taken any of it. I guess it’s just not our taste.” In that moment, everything that had troubled me became instantly clear. Tamas’ comments weren’t about the quality of my work; they were about his taste in fiction, but I hadn’t even considered that. I took him for an impartial observer of my work, one who would be familiar enough with the marketplace to know what would sell and what wouldn’t, even if it wasn’t his cup of tea. It was a startling realization for me, and it’s a lesson I often share with developing writers. Ultimately, though you may surround yourself with folks who know, understand, and appreciate the work you do, ultimately, you have to know for yourself that what you’re working on has merit. That’s not an easy lesson to learn; in fact, I’ve had to learn and relearn it a couple of times along the way. Still, I’m forever grateful to Tamas for teaching me this essential truth.
David Holper has worked as a taxi driver, fisherman, dishwasher, bus driver, soldier, house painter, bike mechanic, bike courier, and teacher. With all that useful experience and a couple of degrees, he has published a book of poetry called 64 Questions (March Street Press), as well as numerous other poems in literary journals including Relief. He lives in Eureka, California, which is far enough from the madness of civlization that he can get some writing done. Another thing that helps is that his three children continually ask him to make up stories, and he is learning the art of doing that well for them. |
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