Joe Scapellato interviewed me for the class he’s teaching. He asked some very interesting questions pertinent to senior-year undergraduate English – Creative Writing majors.
Here are the results of the interview:
1. Okay, let’s talk about your senior year of undergrad. Do you remember how you were feeling? Where did you think you were headed? What were you doing to get there?
I spent the last semester of my senior (5th) year of undergrad making music, writing and constructing art pieces, mostly drawings, installations, and musical instruments made from found objects and tree limbs. I spent a good deal of my final semester applying for jobs online in NYC and Hawaii. I got a plumbing position in Honolulu but chose to follow my girlfriend to Denver instead. First, though, I spent the summer after graduation in Italy taking a landscape painting class, and that changed my life in a major way. My teacher was good and the experience itself blew the lid off my expectations. I became very interested in sustainability, and more interested in ways of combining drawing with creative writing.
As far as where I thought I was headed, I had little idea. I loved to write, and I knew what I wanted to do every day, but career-wise I wasn’t very well informed on what options there were, besides those I could pipe-dream. For example, I didn’t know of very many living poets. I was from Oklahoma and hadn’t been introduced to a whole lot. One semester I enrolled in a poetry workshop and the instructor asked us who our favorite poet was. I might have said E.E. Cummings, and probably got frowned upon. He told us that even though it wasn’t a university requirement that we do so, he would prefer that if any of us hadn’t taken other poetry classes, even if we had taken other creative writing courses, we should drop his section. So I did, and I realize now that he might have just been a jerk. I dropped the class even though I was up for it – I spent a lot of time writing and was really passionate and open-minded about poetry. I was reading what I could get my hands on, but not much of what I ended up finding was brand-new poetry. Meanwhile I was working in a factory and just kind of expecting something would turn out. I think I believed I was a ‘natural,’ and maybe that’s true for everyone who writes. I just expected that after college I would have to get a job doing something terrible, since it was becoming clear that my imaginary poet-profession didn’t exist. You know the one, where the world mostly leaves you alone and you can just live and get paid a modest income working at your craft? Well, the details on that were a little hazy.
2. Did anyone give you advice? We’d love to hear who said it and what it was. Was it any good?
I got bad advice from my academic advisor. I don’t blame him–it’s most likely that I took what he said wrong. I don’t know why, but maybe during my second year of school, he told me not to bother with apprenticeships/internships. I was interested in getting into editing, since I had the idea that I could make a living at it, and since it would be somewhat close in spirit to creative writing. Closer than working in a factory or making pizzas. He offered some piecemeal advice that such a thing would be possible, offered to contact someone he knew who worked somewhere, and nothing came of it. I didn’t push for it, and he seemed to have said that I’d better not worry about it. So I didn’t. I traveled abroad (spent a semester in Nova Scotia), met really great international students, and produced all manner of creative stuff, often collaboratively: music, writing, photo/videos, art objects. I would have had an art show there but wasn’t going to be in the country when it would have been possible. Funny–I tried things there that I didn’t really consider possible back home, and a lot happened because of it. I was busy, but I had the support of an enlivening community of friends. There was no ‘norm,’ and so it was easier to be brave, I think. When I returned to Oklahoma, I encountered the same closed-in feeling, and this was most likely psychological on my part. Maybe I felt like Oklahoma was holding me back, but I can say for sure that I was not doing everything I could to test the waters. I feel it’s important to get clear–I mean, crystal-specific, on where you want to go. It is different for each creative person, and even if the destination is the same, no two people take the same path. It is crucial to have role models for both end result and quality of life. You can only have a satisfying outcome if you like who you are and who you have to become to get there. Growing pushes us to the absolute edge of our expertise. Creative success means different things to everyone, but it is always difficult because it is hard work; everything worth doing is. It takes effort and introspection to blow past what holds us back, and knowing whether we’re being true to ourselves as we grow to become who we want to be is a balancing act.
I didn’t have the experience of someone opening a magic door for me, maybe because I didn’t ask, maybe because it just wasn’t in the cards. Some people achieve success of some sort because they have the assistance of a mentor. I had the belief that if I just kept working, something would eventually happen. I spent most of my time writing, reading, and creating, but I wasn’t showing it to anyone outside my circle of friends. I now feel that it’s important to get your work out there for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it is challenging. Not because publication is magic or leads to fame or fortune, but striving for it forces us to confront some difficult questions. Sometimes we get lucky and someone we know opens a door for us: gives us assistance getting a job, choosing a school, that kind of thing. But really the only way a person can get this to happen, or at least to increase the odds, is to widen the circle of who gets exposed to you or your work. Beyond that, there’s networking, which really if it is to be effective has to be genuine–it is either an exchange of valuables or something done between friends. So, show up, offer a lot of value, be a genuine, contributing community member, ask for something if you need it, and be friendly. Be unendingly authentic to yourself and your beliefs, and challenge yourself.
As far as advice goes, I got a great deal from my drawing instructor. What’s best about the sum of his advice is that he embodies it. He’s generous and he gets a kick out of himself. He is a role model for living as an avid, disciplined artist but doesn’t let art get in the way of daily living. I think that’s important because the way a person lives each day can be wonderful in and of itself.
3. Okay—graduation. Bang. Your first year out of college. Can you tell us the story of this first year, where you were, what you did, how you got there?
After the summer in Italy, I moved to Denver, which was great except for my job. I lived in the suburbs, worked full-time as a tech support guy in a call center, and spent the entire rest of my days reading, writing, painting, and gardening. Again, I was really busy, but not much of a social circle. I heard recently that the average American has only one close friend. In the fifties, it was much more, maybe something like a dozen. One of my friends was a magician, an actual magician: card tricks, the whole thing. A guy who emigrated from Mexico and was pursuing his dream. He introduced me to self-help stuff, which I felt like I should be ironic or sarcastic about because I was a writer, and I thought writers didn’t worry themselves with anything practical or remotely related to self-development or economics. My other close friend in Denver was a cartographer. We went hiking a lot. I didn’t have any writer friends anymore. It didn’t take long for me to learn that I should apply for grad school. It was the relief of my life when I got into 7 of the 9 I applied to. I told myself that I would never worry again, because this was such a confirmation for me that I was on the right track. For the rest of the year, I worked at jobs until I could afford not to and spent the rest of my time riding my motorcycle through curvy mountain roads, hiking, and doing my best to enjoy every day. It was at about that time that I came to learn from experience that self-development techniques like goal-setting and the power of a person’s beliefs are nothing to be ironic or sarcastic about; in and of themselves, they are like opened doors.
4. Two sentences of advice for undergraduate seniors who are writers:
Try your best to not obsess over yourself or get bogged down with other responsibilities — I think it behooves creative people to live streamlined lives, and this means getting absolutely clear on what you love about what you do. Once you have that, you just have to do whatever necessary to keep it; staying in touch with what makes you feel fulfilled is a gift no one and nothing can take from you.
5. One thing you wish you had done (just before or during your first year out):
If I could offer some advice to myself back then I would have been a lot more strategic with how I was being-in-the-world. I would have shown my art in some galleries, I would have played music for people live rather than just in recorded sessions, and I would have realized that it wasn’t evil to think about the reality of a livelihood. It is important to keep things in perspective. Rather than working feverishly, with abandon, and often without having an end result in mind, I would have worked more in terms of projects that could be produced or printed. To make something is great. To share it is ultimately more important. And I would have lived even more fully, as if each day could be my last. That factors into your art too.
6. One thing you’re glad you did (just before or during your first year out):
Well, I’m glad I traveled, glad I was passionate about so many different pursuits, and glad I learned so much by doing. Traveling was extremely important for me to get a new perspective and to raise my own expectations of how much was possible and how enjoyable life could be. My English department didn’t always convey a sense of thrill to me, and that’s fine. I don’t believe there’s any need whatsoever to be bogged down by writing as if it were a chore. I am glad that I read as much as I did and wrote as much as I did. I’m glad I followed through on a lot of different pursuits, because ultimately they can and do feed back into each other.
7. What are you up to these days?
I’m teaching English at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. I just got back from spending my fourth summer in Italy. This summer I got married in Tuscany (Joe was there–he can tell you about it) and coordinated my first two retreats: one on wellness and writing, and the second dedicated solely to creative writing. The wedding was the happiest day of my life, and the retreats were a blast–the best professional experience of my life by far to date. I am lucky to be able to work with people in this way, modeling what has worked best for me in the past: removed from familiar surroundings, placed into a beautiful natural environment where your meals are delicious and everything is taken care of for you, so you can immerse yourself in your writing and belong to a cool community of likeminded souls. Participants in the 2- and 3-week retreats got an incredible amount of work done — we’re talking books here. And made lifelong friends. I would recommend traveling to anyone graduating college.
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I’m really glad Joe created this opportunity to connect via interview. I know I would have really benefited from a few outside perspectives when I was about to graduate with an English degree. I hope some of the things I’ve written have been helpful for you. Feel free to contact me via Facebook—I’m Stephen Lloyd Webber. I wish you the absolute best.
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