What I Wish My Creative Writing Degree Had Taught Me
Fiction doesn’t have to be sad to be good.
Sometimes I joke that I learned more about writing from Twitter than my creative writing degree. It’s not entirely true and I don’t regret getting my degree, but there are some things I’ve learned, not from Twitter itself but from the other writers I’ve connected with there, that I value more closely than anything I learned in school.
During my senior year, we had to compile all the writing we’d done over the course of our four years there and edit it into a polished manuscript. As I looked through all my writing, I was struck by the one thing it had in common. It was sad. The short stories, flash fiction, poetry, almost all of it was sad, melancholy, depressing even. One of my professors had taught me the lesson freshman year that every story has three parts: put a man up a tree, throw rocks at him, get him out of the tree. Some of my stories were more along the lines of: throw my protagonists in hell, give them a small glimmer of hope, then leave them there.
I puzzled over this because I didn’t think of myself as an abnormally sad person. Yes, I dealt with my share of struggles in college–anxiety, burnout, loneliness. But I got through it okay. I made some great friends at school who helped me through some of the worst of it. My senior year of college was honestly some of the best months of my life. So why did none of my stories reflect that?
And then I thought back to my creative writing classes. Most of my writing classes had been structured much the same way: we read short stories and we discussed them. And what did all those short stories we read in class have in common? You guessed it, they were some of the most sad, depressing stories I’ve ever read in my life. I mean, we had protagonists who were serial killers, abusers, people planning to bomb public places, more serial killers. We had entire families being murdered and children dying of cancer. Then there were some stories that were so disturbing I won’t repeat it here.
I mean, wow. Looking back on it, I can’t think of a single short story I read in a fiction writing class for my degree that I would describe as happy. And when students would submit work for workshops, it wouldn’t always be quite as depressing as some of the published work we read, but we all picked up on the mood the professors were setting with their story selections and our work reflected that.
Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with writing sad stories. Sad stories can be beautiful, insightful, and meaningful. They can be a way of working through trauma and grief. But sometimes the impression I got from some of my creative writing professors was that this kind of sad, gritty literary fiction was somehow better than fiction that was happy or hopeful. And that, I don’t think is true at all. One kind of story can’t be better than another. We need it all. The good and the bad and everything in between.
When I think about why I write, it’s not to make myself feel sad. It’s not to make my readers feel sad. I write to make myself feel better, and I hope in turn to make my readers feel better. And that’s what I learned on twitter that I didn’t from my degree. I connected with other writers and found plenty of people who write stories that are meant to be enjoyed, not just analyzed. Stories that keep you up at night, not because you’re afraid they’ll have a terrible ending, but because you know the ending will be happy but you just don’t know how it will happen. I’ve found writers breaking boundaries, breaking rules, leaving behind the strict ideas about what makes good writing that you often find in creative writing programs.
In the time since I graduated, I’ve realized that a story doesn’t have to be sad to be worthy of literary merit. Stories that are meant to be enjoyed can be just as worthy. I’m grateful for my creative writing degree, and I don’t mean to criticize the program or the professors. I’ve just realized that the kind of writing that was encouraged and celebrated there is not the kind of writing that appeals to me. I’m ready to move beyond the sad, melancholy stories I produced during my time there. I’m ready to write stories that may not be happy all the time, but will always have a happy ending. Because that’s what I want to write. And in the end, that’s what matters most.
