Pittsburgh (where I was moving in August to start an MFA program) was overwhelming for many reasons: it was too big, too foreign, too not-Cincinnati.

At 24, I had finally settled into a pattern of life and created a network of friendships with which I was content. Chronically a lonely and socially anxious child, teenager, and college student, every previous change of location had been cause for celebration. It had been a chance to start over in a new place and hopefully, somehow, be a different person.

This time I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t want to leave my underrated, beautiful Cincinnati. I didn’t want to leave the random, unexpected meetups with people I knew or the places at which I’d become a regular: Arlin’s Bar, Lydia’s Om Café, Tuesday night yoga in Washington Park. Whenever someone asked if I was excited to move to Pittsburgh, my heart went cold.

And yet, after I had decided I would be going to graduate school, that was that. Even if I stayed, choosing an uncertain future in Cincinnati over the certainty of further education, things wouldn’t stay the same.
No matter how I dig my heels in, my life will be changing come August. My AmeriCorps term ends and some of my closest friends will be moving away from this city with which I’ve had a love affair ever since I first left it for Evansville, Indiana in 2010.

I should be happy. I’m going to Pittsburgh because I’m going to graduate school, which I’ve wanted from the moment I started undergrad. But if I’ve learned anything from the past few months, I’ve learned not to beat myself up for not feeling the way I think I should.

For the first half of 2016, I was overwhelmed with how everything fell into place (even if I did have to move to Pittsburgh to make it happen). On May 3, I Tweeted, “My cup is so very, very full right now. Thank you, Universe, for all this is glowing and vibrant in my life #gratitude.”

I smiled when I saw that Nathan, my first love, had liked the tweet. After all that we had been through, after the heart-wrenching realization that his Christianity and my quasi-Buddhist-agnosticism would never play well together, he could still be happy for me.

I didn’t know then that in exactly 10 days, I would learn of his death.

As soon as the reality hit me (and hit me, and hit me, and hit me), things I thought I had forgotten came back bright, shining, and terrible. The quiet young man I’d fallen in love with, the man who had helped me cart my stuff to the very apartment I was now looking to leave, was gone.

Suddenly, I had to make space for grief and guilt even as I was preparing to move from the loved and familiar to the new and strange. I was both horrified to leave the last place we had been together and newly eager to go.

I hadn’t seen him in over a year. I would never see him again.

At this point in my life, on the precipice of moving away to graduate school, I would have expected to be filled with unshakable joy. Instead, I spent more than a month alternating between fear and numbness, trying to behave like a normal person for those around me. I tried to be grateful for all that I had been given. And yet, I am raw, newly sensitive to the reality of death. I feel guilt that can never be resolved with an “I’m sorry.”

As I begin to collect boxes and plan the move, I am reminded how often Nathan did this very thing. He was fearless, always packing his life up in the back of his Toyota and driving someplace new. The adventurous spirit that wasn’t salient to me during my first visits to Pittsburgh is, for the most tragic of reasons, suddenly my constant companion. It gives me a strange and sad kind of strength.

To leave behind a place that fills your heart up with the deep, resonant chorus of “I am home” is a terrifying thing. To do it when the whole world seems to have turned into something dark, twisted, and unrecognizably cruel seems impossible.

And yet, like all the places I have been before it, I know that in time Pittsburgh will become home. I know that life goes on and that, somehow, so will I. This August I will begin to settle in to a new place, and a new way of being myself within it.

I know this because I know that Nathan made a home of each new place he lived—Evansville, Grantham, a small town in Holland, Arkansas and, finally, Arizona. I know this because I know that I am strong, that though I carry the weight of grief, anger, doubt, and guilt with me every day, I can still see the beauty of the blue, blue sky stretching infinitely out above me as I reach my foot behind me in Downward Dog, ready to pull it forward, shifting from one precious moment to the next.

Amanda Kay Oaks received her BFA in Creative Writing and Literature from The University of Evansville and is a current Creative Nonfiction MFA student at Chatham University. An AmeriCorps alum, online tutor, writer, and nonfiction editor of Newfound, Amanda considers herself a professional wearer of many hats. When she isn’t working, reading, writing, or sneaking in a few minutes of yoga, Amanda can most likely be found snuggled up on the couch with her cat. Her work has appeared on Book Riot.com, Greatist.com, and in the Aspiring to Inspire women’s anthology.

The post Leaving Cincinnati, Leaving Home appeared first on Newfound.

Thinking about this recently, I have found it does cause some problems. Namely, how does one read well? Will your inner reader complement your inner writer? Are the two selves involved in peaceful symbiosis, like a bird picking between the teeth of a crocodile, or are they a Jekyll and Hyde kind of affair, with one always fighting the influence of the other?

In short, how selective should we be about our reading?

This thought has been plaguing me recently because of an article which stated that a lot of the general public in the UK admitted to feeling regret over never having read the so-called classics, such as “Moby Dick” and “War and Peace.” They presumably felt that, simply because these books were agreed to be the best, they should be required reading.

Having not read a great deal of the listed books myself, I too started to feel guilty. Surely me, a self-appointed purveyor and wrangler of the written word should not only have read the greatest books humankind has to offer, but should be rereading them to the point of worship?

Well, that is what I thought until quite recently.

Before coming to New York, the majority of my reading was what I would have called the “classics.” I loved reading Melville and Twain and Austen and James not only because they were great, but because they were dead. Mainly because they were dead. Death was proof that a writer had lived in a more inspirational, better time and therefore had more to offer. These geniuses had managed to jump ship before modern mediocrity and mind-numbing technology set in. There were no good books anymore because a living, great writer would somehow be living a life comparable to my own, with the same influences and problems, and I couldn’t quite get my head around that. Woody Allen called it Golden Age thinking. I think I was just cynical.

That all changed when I started my MFA. The beauty of the program came not from the results or the hard work, but from the opportunity for discovery. Being a Creative Writing student in New York allowed me to see that great writers do currently exist. My inner cynic witnessed great writers in the flesh. Classic writers suddenly seemed irrelevant and dull. I was soon convinced that the Golden Age was happening right now.

This train of thought eventually hit an obstacle. I’m not a native New Yorker; I take a trip home every so often and find myself surrounded by my childhood books. As I was searching through my old bookcase I found “Moby Dick,” still with the bookmark wedged in halfway. A poignant reminder of my inability to finish it. My reader’s guilt, the longing to know literature’s greatest heroes, relive the glorious past, came flooding back.

“Moby Dick,” my own elusive leviathan, threatened to make me give up on my current reading in order to finish what I had begun long ago.

With a sigh, I wondered whether I had fallen into the same trap with modern writers as I had with classic ones:  idolizing them and, as a result, finding fault with the others. There must be a way to solve this problem, I thought.

Alternating between reading dead and alive authors was one option, but my own life seemed too woefully short to allow me to work consecutively. And going only for novels whose author’s survival was questionable seemed idiotic.

I was trapped between the two golden ages, not knowing which to commit to.

This thought rose up in me whenever I reached the last chapter of a book I had painstakingly chosen to read. What would I read next? The wrong choice would just waste time I could be spending on someone more inspirational.

The answer would come from one of the modern masters. I was at the New York Public library, listening to Martin Amis talk about his latest book, when something he said struck me. He told the audience his father, formidable and respected author Kingsley Amis, would read the trashiest literature he could. Because he enjoyed it. And, he noted, it had no influence on how his father wrote. Then he simply laughed this fact off, as if it was not even worth dwelling on.

Now, I know that whatever rules Kingsley Amis played by don’t necessarily apply to me. Yet this gave my mind the wiggle room it needed to accept that there is no hard and fast rule when it comes to choosing what to read.

Are there certain books that everyone should read? Possibly. Should a writer be selective about which books they spend time with? Again, possibly.

Is there be anything required for art other than hard work, a good idea and happiness? No, I don’t think so.

Not even the greatest master on your bedside table can save you if you’re not willing to look at yourself as a separate entity and work hard on your own creation, regardless of what others are doing. After all, we don’t consider the crocodile any less intimidating when he is without his little cleaner bird.

Josh King is a second-year MFA student at Adelphi University in New York, and moved from the UK in 2014. He divides his time between writing fiction and sampling the New York literary scene.

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The closest I had come were “critiques” as a freshman art major at community college. I switched majors because I couldn’t handle that kind of criticism. All the attacks felt personal. Nobody ever had anything nice to say. Also, maybe I was bad at painting.

My MFA class was the first ever at William Paterson. It was small, only four students, but we shared classes with MAs (and eventually MFAs who started after us), both in creative writing and literature.

The four of us were clique-ish, is what I’ve since been told. We were intimidating. Bullies. We were intimidating bullies, is what I’ve been told. I don’t agree with this, though who am I to deny people their observations.

I think we bonded over taking the work seriously. We bonded because we knew that we meant it. That it was blood and bone for us. If it wasn’t that way for other people, that’s their problem.

Sharing your writing is one of the most vulnerable things that you can do; criticism of it can feel like someone has taken a bite out of a fleshy part of your skin. It scars. I get it.

But look, these three other people: Liz, Charlie, and Tim? These are incredibly sensitive people, with real concerns about other people’s feelings. I know because they care about my feelings. Friendship matures quickly when you share a common bond of vulnerability.

All the attacks feel personal. It doesn’t matter if you’re bad at painting. How you survive personal attacks is by working on your craft until there’s nothing to attack.

Besides, what’s being perceived as an attack is just a friendly gesture to a spot that could be better defended in case of a real attack. Presumably the real attacks come later, when we’re all doing this for a living, right? That’s the idea anyway.

Because we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable with one another, we also allowed ourselves to be critical of one another. There’s nothing any of them could say to me about something I wrote that would make me mad, because I know that they are attacking me to make me stronger. If you don’t have that bond, things get tougher. A workshop can be a real unfriendly place if you don’t feel like you’re part of a community that cares about your work and is trying to make it better.

I went into the MFA program with the idea that by the end I’d be born fully shaped: a novelist version of Athena. It’s okay that that’s not what happened. It’s partially okay because I met the people who are still shaping me. Although that sounds like they’re going to birth me? Or I guess only one of them would birth me, probably Liz. Which means that they had sex with each other and one of them is pregnant with me?

Look, this is getting graphic and I didn’t really learn about metaphors in the MFA program. None of us ever had sex with each other, is the point. What am I, on trial?

The upside is everything above: community, friendship, love. You form lasting relationships that will change your life for the better. You really do. And you get better at writing, I swear.

The downside is: I’m an adjunct professor. For how much longer, who knows. Teaching sometimes feels like it’s the best thing in the world, but money-wise it’s not a sustainable lifestyle and unfortunately it’s really the only lifestyle that an MFA allows for.

The previous sentence is not entirely true, as Liz is a full-time instructor. Charlie is getting his PhD. Tim works at a hospital where he gets all those benefits I crave.

The MFA allows for whatever you want it to. I was making excuses for myself. Am I a happy person? Did the MFA program make me a happy person? No, probably not. But happy isn’t the point. The point is that we never had sex with each other.

Bobby Fischer lives in Haledon, NJ. He received an MFA from William Paterson in 2012 and has been adjuncting at various schools in NJ ever since.

The post 700-Something Words About MFA Programs appeared first on Newfound.

Besides, what was the alternative? Ignore all of these ideas? Unthinkable.

If, back then, I had heard the misleading mantra that tells young writers to “find their voice,” I might have proudly declared that I already had. In fact, I might have even said as much as I went through my undergraduate years.

But now, as I near the end of an MFA, I’m not so sure.

This reconsideration came about slowly during the first years of my twenties, and became most apparent when I moved to New York. In the city I found myself falling deeper in love with the world of contemporary literature, while also facing the terrifying realities of the contemporary world.

Through this love and fear I realized that modern writers had a certain power. They could engage with and judge life as it was happening and ease the pain for the reader.

Once I realized this, I was excited. This is what I wanted to do. I wanted to hold the world accountable. I wanted to use my skills to undress political realities. I wanted to write something worth writing. I had reached that time in my life, I thought. Gone was the six-year-old who thought his voice was destined for anthropomorphic animal stories.

So, you must be thinking, what a stroke of luck. For writers looking to shine a light on humanity’s foibles, there surely has never been a better time to be alive. Because there surely has never been more abundant horror on which to cast judgement.

That’s true enough. But my problem doesn’t come from lack of inspiration. Gun crime, impulsive wars and pervasive faulty ideologies of the modern era are enough to inspire a writer’s passions twelve times over. My problem is: As a young writer and as a student, do I have any authority to speak on these matters? Is my voice as valuable as the writers’ who have had a fuller lifetime in which to dwell on these things?

Something compels me to say “yes.” This is the same answer I would ally with if any of my writerly friends were to ask me the same questions. But when I do begin such a piece of writing, I find that I am filled with a lingering and heavy doubt.

If I begin to write something to shed light on the Syrian refugees, as Martin Amis did recently, I wonder who in the hell I am to comment on such things, even in fiction. In an age when everyone with a Facebook page can lob their opinions into the devil’s pit of public scrutiny, there seems to me little point in writing something unless it is truly enlightening. And how am I supposed to declare my work such a thing when I am still rushing to finish homework?

I have not been alive and writing long enough to think that what I write is the best it can be. In fact, I am sure it isn’t. I am young and aware enough to know that even by next year it will have changed (and hopefully for the better). So, can I honestly say that I should be weighing in, in fiction or otherwise, about topics such as the Syrian migrants, war, God, the Holocaust and –

Wait.

As I list things I’m starting to see another problem. I could go on listing things forever, just as my eight-year-old self could endlessly come up with random story ideas.

Like my younger self, I can either write about these things or ignore them completely. Perhaps my writing voice is not yet as valuable as those of the many notable figures who are commenting daily on the state of the world. But writing about things which are important to me at the present moment – war or superhero penguins – paves the way for my writing to grow into something enlightening in the future.

There is no better way of improving one’s writing, and indeed improving the world, than engaging in that tried and tested method of chipping away at it, sentence by sentence.

I still don’t know if my opinions mean anything at this point in time, but I suppose, just like any MFA student or young writer, I must just keep writing the most important thing I can think of until that eight-year-old mindset comes back.

Josh King is a second-year MFA student at Adelphi University in New York, and moved from the UK in 2014. He is curator of the blog As & When for the literary website Village of Crickets, and divides his time between writing fiction and sampling the New York literary scene.

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