Sarah E. H. Lyons

Writing has been difficult lately—and to be expected. It’s difficult to finish a large project and create distance. It’s difficult to start something new when your mind is so consumed with the tale still spinning in your mind. And I say this as my thesis—a coming-of-age comedy about the challenges of agency, identity, and difficult families—has a framework but requires significant revisions to become a story worth reading.

Worth reading. It’s a statement that’s stuck with me, which I pull from John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist—Gardner being my mentor’s mentor and influencing his approach to page, thus influencing my approach to the page. And every book has an audience; some books are to delight while others are to teach, and in rare cases, both. So I take this charge seriously, to write something serious in a sense that it gets into the white-hot center of things.

So writing is difficult. Writing something worth reading is difficult. So while I figure out where to go while I untangle the plot issues plaguing my work in progress, I want to reflect on what I’ve done because I’m still proud of it.

What follows is the self-reflection essay I submitted with my behemoth of a manuscript (compare to June 2023). Maybe it will help you through dark times or inspire or let you know we’re all fighting to breathe.

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Over the last eighteen months, through collective study and hours of silence and kind words from mentors and muses, I’ve learned that this profession of writing is not for the faint of heart. August Wilson claimed, “A writer’s first job is to survive,” seeming melodramatic but expounding on truths since so much threatens to undermine our efforts, whether physical or intangible. And while writing can be lonely, I have learned through this program that it’s dangerous to go at it alone.

The curriculum engenders community through its structure, which I first experienced in our foundations course when my cohort and I tackled craft across genres and worked together in small groups. We listened and offered graceful remarks on the elements that worked in a piece and those that did not—all of which came with kindness and a lack of ego, which may be unique to Wilkes, but I’m not sure. These wonderful humans in my cohort have provided immeasurable support as I’ve suffered through pages and run my car into a light post while tangled in my thoughts; they made me pause and listen to my breaths when I was fractions from chucking my manuscript in the trash. And who can say that about their writing friends? (Who can say that about their friends?) And who completely understands you when you say the words won’t come or is willing to read through your ramshackle stories or will cheer for you loudly without malice when you succeed? So, yes, while the act of writing is solitary, the community provides the nudge to keep going.

After cultivating the basics of craft and community, our movement into mentor-mentee pairings gauged our skills, which ranged from mud-puddle shallow to Challenger Deep, yet I was blind to my flaws until my mentor sussed them out. I have little knowledge of how other programs do it, but this movement from the group to the pair, from the basics to specifics, has been invaluable to my development as a writer—and while I still have far to go, I’ve cut that distance in half.

I’ve learned writing is an exercise in trust. We must trust our characters and ourselves to take risks, ceding control to the character so they develop an agency we would have otherwise robbed from them, like some parents with children. Bob Mooney urged I sit in the room and wait; he said my characters would shock me, and they didn’t disappoint. It took time to trust myself as I feared—and still fear, to some degree—the imperfect page. What struck me most was Bob’s emphasis on the deep crack existing in all great novels, as with life. The literary analysis uncovered soggy middles, forced plots, and point-of-view (POV) issues rampant in classics and Pulitzer winners—but these issues did not dampen the beauty of these books. Maybe they made them more lovely, more real.

When I consider what lessons will follow me, there are many. Trust, as noted before, but also the “yes, and?” mentality—an exercise that Nancy McKinley introduced in foundations that encouraged us to think less with our minds, more with our hearts. What we found on the page surprised us. My playwriting education with Greg Fletcher will fuel my writing, like economy of characters and dialogue as action. Rachel Weaver’s lessons in building tension are master classes I wish I had learned sooner (but better late than never). The most crucial lesson has been the element of perspective, thanks to David Hicks and his drilling POV as the problem or solution to most of our drafts (and in every instance, he’s been right). Further, Bob Mooney encouraged me to use it to deepen character through diction and expressions, what they’d share or omit. And this included the character’s interaction with their setting—“Sit in the room and look around,” Bob would say. These advisements strengthened the force of my story and gave it a madcap energy like its anti-hero. Of the lessons I will carry with me, these lessons in patience and trust ring loudest.

So. Where to now? Revisions, eventually—or “re-visioning,” as Bob would say. While I sit in the room with my characters and wait, I have literary analysis and papers that should hopefully reveal the missing pieces I need to fuel the next draft—and hopefully a better draft too. Between these larger projects are the short stories brewing within me and the old ones in need of a scrub and the play I’ve wished to write since foundations and the blog pieces recounting the lessons in craft I’ve acquired. “Yes, and?” I imagine Nancy asking. And I imagine my cohort with our wide eyes, scattering, silly with laughter in the classroom while putting into practice elements of improv comedy through ridiculous responses and questions sparking seedlings of stories. And how much we can imagine when we lower our shields and listen to the stories within us. So, regarding the question of where I’ll go next, I’m not sure, but I’m listening. And waiting.

[Fin.]