A New Port
I read in a travel book once that “the lovely thing about cruising is that planning usually turns out to be of little use.”
When I was in high school, I used to make short films. Every time I got an assignment in history or English, I traded in the option of cranking out a quick five-paragraph essay for a multi-weekend film shoot about the topic. It was an unnecessary amount of work, but I loved writing stories. And I took any opportunity to do so.
I went to college, and for lack of time, dropped the hobby. Law fascinated me (which is really a profession built on writing) and I went off to law school. It was a heady and invigorating place! While some focused solely on the reasoning in legal writing, I found myself preoccupied by its aesthetics. How can we effectively communicate legal ideas to laypeople? By making legal prose pleasurable. And so I happily continued writing in this new context.
When the pandemic hit, though, I needed a more creative outlet again. But I had neither the time nor resources to make more movies. This time, I drank from the purest source—written fiction. I had always loved reading. I’d stay up late as a child, with my flashlight hidden under my pillow, to read past my bedtime. Now I wanted to write something worth staying up late for.
I took a free writing course offered by the Boston Public Library. I took part in National Novel Writing Month several times. And I formed a weekly writing group that celebrates its two-year anniversary this month. This writing group has turned out to be life-giving, and it liberated me in a sense. Here was a place that I could focus on writing not as a vague ambition or impossible dream, but a craft. A discipline and practice to be honed like any other. Reading and writing and rewriting, obsessively. And feeling unembarrassed for our obsession, because look around! There are others like me.
Back when I graduated from college, my path was clear. I was going to be a great law student and then a great lawyer and maybe even a judge! But thank goodness in life too, planning is often of little use. What drew me to law drew me back to storytelling. Now I want to become an excellent writer and to publish novels. Why? My favorite part about any art is when it is shiver-inducing. I remember reading Antigone for the first time—she had buried her brother Polynices against the express wishes of the King.
The King said, “Polynices was a rebel and a traitor, and you know it.”
She replied simply, “He was my brother.”
I remember then thinking of my own younger sister. How she might, in a different world, martyr herself to give me eternal rest. The love of a sister. How could thousand-year-old words, sent out like little ships in bottles, reach me across time and continents, and give me goosebumps? That’s art. When you experience something sublime and transcendent. It’s my religion, and I am overeager enough to want to learn how to do it myself.
This is why I’m starting the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College this upcoming spring. I admire the emphasis on fiction and poetry there, with faculty and coursework that value both. I aspire to write novels that not only tell compelling stories but also contain lyrical prose. And of course, I value the convenience of a no-residency program.
But there’s something else drawing me in too. I’ve always found in my academic endeavors that formal instruction will take you only so far. One of my deans at Kenyon once told me that her favorite part of a liberal arts education is that you are “learning in the company of friends.” How easy it is to underestimate that. The population that an MFA program draws is equally attractive. I know of no other way to improve my writing than by, on occasion, proudly and irresponsibly retreating from the clatter of modern life, taking refuge from temporal concerns, and, with other writers of all types, play.
This blog will document the various writings—whether fiction, non-fiction, or poetry—that I produce as I formally commence my writing journey, starting with this MFA program.
Of course, I still aim to practice law for a long while. I enjoy it—Lincoln supposedly called it a “sturdy profession.” But no matter where I ultimately arrive, the writing journey itself is the destination. Well worth the trip.
