The WELL: inkwell.vue.27: THAISA FRANK, Magical Realist

#80: Laura (lfargas) Thu 20 Oct 05 01:21

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 01:21:00 PDT

Thaisa Frank, if you're still reading this topic, I want to say thank you for your beautiful book. I first bought it when I was on the Well about ten years ago, and I read it over and over. It is one of the very few books of fiction I find myself in. And no one else I've ever read writes with your lilt. [Read entire topic]

#79: Uncle Jax (jax) Tue 28 Sep 04 15:23

Tue, 28 Sep 2004 15:23:00 PDT

oops. unquestionably. Please accept my apologies. [Read entire topic]

#78: My free and simple demeanor set everybody at ease. (pdl) Tue 28 Sep 04 14:31

Tue, 28 Sep 2004 14:31:00 PDT

Perhaps you intended that post for a different topic. [Read entire topic]

#77: Uncle Jax (jax) Tue 28 Sep 04 13:34

Tue, 28 Sep 2004 13:34:00 PDT

<hidden> [Read entire topic]

#76: tastefully minimal plug (jnfr) Fri 9 Apr 99 18:26

Fri, 09 Apr 1999 18:26:00 PDT

TFTP, satyr. [Read entire topic]

#75: Gail Williams (gail) Wed 3 Feb 99 12:05

Wed, 03 Feb 1999 12:05:00 PST

A fine, thought-provoking discussion of writers' issues, Thaisa. Thanks for all the considered posting. Thanks, Steve, too, for arranging the interview.

A quick aside for anyone reading from off-WELL, who may have bookmarked this topic specifically, please have a look at the current inkwell guests by going back to <http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue> or have a look at the Inkwell conference topic list here: <http://engaged.well.com/engaged/engaged.cgi?c=inkwell.vue>

And I'm glad I bought Sleeping In Velvet. It made me want to write stories, which says it all. [Read entire topic]

#74: Thaisa Frank (thaisa) Sun 24 Jan 99 20:42

Sun, 24 Jan 1999 20:42:00 PST

Writing in the vernacular of the ghetto is very big now. We're past the PC disputes about whether a straight guy from Idaho can write about a gay woman in New York (there have been a lot of those in my classes), and people are just writing from their neighborhoods. Writers who can't draw on that kind of vernacular sometimes feel disadvantaged, but then there's the voice of the street and the rumbling voice of what we think of as "literature" and when those two voices come together for a writer, the writer usually says "Wow! I'm really writing like I'm talking and talking like I'm writing." So even though the emphasis in some programs is on the language of the street, writers are always looking for a synthesis of written and colloquial voice. [Read entire topic]

#73: Thaisa Frank (thaisa) Sun 24 Jan 99 20:40

Sun, 24 Jan 1999 20:40:00 PST

I just realized that the last paragraph contradicted what I said about teaching not helping the creative process. Obviously it does, in that it helps me see the boundary of what most writers in American writing programs want to be doing, and that helps me see the boundaries of a lot of American writing.

It's hard to say how that helps my writing, but it somehow does. I get a sixth sense of what people think narrative is, where the limits of vision are in general. Teaching a class of writers, especially writers in their early twenties, is a little like traveling in a space ship.

There are times when I need a break from teaching, but I really love to do it.

And maybe it's interesting for me to see the boundaries (obviously viewed very subjectively) because I like pushing people past them and thinking how to push past them myself. [Read entire topic]

#72: Thaisa Frank (thaisa) Sun 24 Jan 99 20:31

Sun, 24 Jan 1999 20:31:00 PST

I have a sort of secret zealot in me, and I can get very fired up about the fact that writing programs stifle voice. So I really like to do things to allow writers to work from their own visions, and their own way of putting things. I think more good writing programs could rattle the cage of American fiction.

One great thing about teaching is that I always know what's going on in the literary world and in the literary zeitgeist. I can learn more about that by reading student work than I can by wading my way through any number of mediocre novels. So teaching keeps me tuned in to what people want to do with language and how they're thinking about literature. [Read entire topic]

#71: Thaisa Frank (thaisa) Sun 24 Jan 99 20:25

Sun, 24 Jan 1999 20:25:00 PST

Thanks, Cynthia and Joe. I love titles. Sometimes I write a story, just because I think of a title.

> And yet you teach... you must work with people who don't have that lid on/off issue.

Actually, many people have it. I try to teach so that people can work with that issue. I give people the option of working on a deadline or working without one. And I try to work carefully with workshops on the novel, since people are seeing so little of the elephant and not all of it. I think it's very hard writing in a school setting. I see the best writers get around it in all kinds of ways: Sudden disappearances. Cryptic letters about their process. What I look for, then, is how a writer is working rather than what they're putting out.

That's a good question, Gail. And it's a good question, too, as to whether teaching helps or hinders my creative process. Both, and sometimes neither.

Rarely does it help it--in the sense of inspire. Writers are just on different waves lengths, I guess, although last semester I had a student where there was a kind of creative click between us.

But it certainly helps the loneliness, and it's fun to articulate parts of the process.

I don't think it hinders the process anymore. I used to compare myself with character-driven writers who were imitating people like Ann Beattie, and think that I should be doing that, too. But somehow I developed a compartment in my brain that held other peoples' writing and I stopped feeling mired in a more linear way of writing. I also got more confident.

Its _always_ exciting to meet a writer who has found their voice, so to speak, on the page. And very exciting to work with a writer who is in that process and who has a real voice and may not know it. [Read entire topic]