Try to be Somebody on Whom Nothing is Lost: An Interview with Prof. Greg Frost
Photo by Kyle Cassidy.
Greg Frost, author of science fiction books like Fitcher’s Brides and the two Shadowbridge novels, is also an instructor of creative writing at Swarthmore College. Over a zoom call in April, Books Editor Elisabeth Miller spoke to him about teaching, writing advice, the benefits of MFA programs, and more.
Elisabeth Miller: First, what is your favorite thing about being at Swarthmore, or favorite thing about teaching?
Greg Frost: My favorite thing about being at Swarthmore is that I used to be at Swarthmore. It’s so weird [to be isolated from Swarthmore]. My favorite thing about teaching is discovering writers. There’s always somebody for whom that’s the case in every workshop—there are writers that just blow me away, because they’re, you know, between 18 and 21 and they’re just writing these knockout pieces of fiction. And now that’s impressive because I think [it relates to] Henry Miller’s thing that you have to write a million words of shit before you write anything that’s great. I definitely went that route, so I went through the million words of shit before I got to anything that I thought was publishable. It’s surprising to me to see somebody who’s, like I say, 18-, 19-, 20-years-old doing that. That’s kind of amazing. And so it feels good by association to be in a room with people that are that creative and that juiced up to be creative. I hope I can impart some of that in a way too.
EM: What is the best writing advice you have received?
GF: Oh, God. The best writing advice I’ve received was probably from a friend of mine, Maureen McHugh, who says that in the middle of any story you write, you eventually arrive at the point that she refers to as the “Dark Night of Despair.” And the best advice she can give and I can give on that is to not stop at that point, because that’s where a lot of people flag. They write to a point where they don’t know what comes next, and they look back at what they’ve written so far, and it’s all crappy because it’s a rough draft and doesn’t look good. And then you look ahead and there isn’t anything there because you haven’t written anything yet. That’s where a lot of people lose their nerves and they just quit halfway through. I think the best advice I can think of is don’t do that. Just go ahead and keep pushing through, because that’s the only way you can get to the end of the story and that's the only way you get published.
EM: Related to that, do you have any specific writing habits that you think have helped you be successful?
GF: The standard writing mantra, of course, is to write every day, but I don’t know anybody who actually does that. Everybody tells their students that they should write every day. But I don’t think that necessarily means you have to sit down at 8 a.m. every single day and write. It’s not a bad habit to get into, though I think a lot of writing is going on in people’s heads even when they don't realize that they’re writing. I think getting something down on paper [is helpful], because that’s how your brain starts playing and messing with [your ideas], even if it's wrong that it’s pushing you in a certain direction. I’ve got a note on my editor’s table that says to write four pages every day. That’s supposed to be the goal. I don’t know that I write four pages a day because I’m often in the middle of revising a novel, like I am now, so I’m not really writing four pages a day. It’s more like I’m chopping up 20 pages a day.
There’s the advice for when you’re just first drafting a story or a novel, and that’s to write until you're done, write until you’re exhausted. And the other is, when you’re revising, try to get at it every day. But don’t expect to write four pages a day or limit yourself to that. I mean, I’ve now absorbed so many pieces of advice from so many writers that it’s hard to know which [share]. I tell my writing workshops that they should try to write for 20 minutes a day, so maybe three hundred words or so. That’s about a page each day. If you do that every single day for two weeks, you’ve got a short story, or at least a draft of a short story. Given the pressures on all of you to do other work for other courses, 20 minutes is not a lot of your time, but it does mean that you’re not waiting until the night before your story is due to turn it in and then desperately try to write something in a panic. Panic is a good motivator, but still not the best way to get your story done.
EM Yeah, I must say, I did some panic writing in the fiction workshop.
GF: Well, you’d be in good company, let’s put it that way.
EM: What would you say to your students who are considering pursuing an MFA, because you read a lot of conflicting ideas about it online.
GF: Well, I probably have conflicting ideas about it myself. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to do, but from my perspective, the are two reasons to pursue an MFA program, one of which is to be in the company of other writers, all of whom are trying to do what you’re doing, trying to figure out your fiction, trying to make your fiction better. [An MFA program] also allows you to focus all of that energy on your fiction. The other reason is to make connections, to network. To a great extent, I think an MFA program can offer the opportunity to study with writers who you really admire or whose work you really admire. If I were a student right now and I were considering MFA programs, I’d probably be killing myself trying to get into George Saunders’ workshop at Syracuse, because that’s somebody I’d really like to work with. You know, I've met George Saunders. He’s a wonderful person, and I adore his fiction. That's the person I’d want to get in with, or T.C. Boyle, though I’m not sure he’s teaching at the University of California anymore. I had him as a mentor when I was at the University of Iowa. I’d be happy to study with him again, so, I mean, an MFA program really comes down to: who’s running the workshop, who's teaching the workshop? It doesn’t necessarily have to be a really prestigious MFA program, but more so about who you want to work with.
To me, those are the only two reasons to really take an MFA program. Otherwise I’d say major in something that you can make a living with while you’re writing fiction, because that's probably the way you’ll end up writing fiction anyway. That way you’ll have something else that you have to do. I mean, everybody wants to immediately come out and have, you know, a book sell the second they leave college and it’s a huge bestseller and they get six or seven figure advance. But the reality is that for every person [to whom that] actually happens, there are 50,000 people who don’t get that at all, and it’s kind of insane to assume that you’ll be the one who just suddenly breaks loose.
EM: How important do you think having a community is for writers?
GF: I think it’s imperative. I think you have to either find or forge a community. It’s very helpful to have other people who have your back, if that makes sense. It’s also really useful, at least in my experience, to have somebody who will just meet you in a coffee shop and say, you know, we’re getting together for two hours and we’re going to write, and that’s all we’re going to do. Just being in a coffee shop with another writer who’s going to sit there and write is enough to compel yourself to write. It almost becomes a weird competition without actually being competitive because, you know, the other person’s writing, so, God, you better write right now, too! I'm doing that online now with a group of four writers. We meet Tuesdays and Thursdays, ten o’clock in the morning on Zoom to write. We spend about five minutes talking to each other and then we all shut up and turn off our cameras and start writing in and go from anywhere from an hour to two hours of doing that. That’s really been helpful.
EM: Yeah, my friends and I sometimes have writing sessions together to keep each other accountable, and it’s nice because it never feels like competition or like we’re jealous of one another’s progress.
GF: Yeah, well, there’s no [basis] in the whole jealousy or competition thing, anyway. I mean, you’re going to write what you write and it’s going to feel like you’re writing, and they’re going to write what they write and it’s going to look like they’re writing. There’s no competition there. Theirs might get more attention than yours does or theirs might get less attention than yours does, you might sell yours to a magazine and win an award for it, and they might not. Mileage varies, but it’s not competitive. At the same time, it’s not you against them. It’s all of you trying to achieve the same thing. You all have similar goals. With my group, there’s no competition here, there's just people saying, yeah, I can help you with that.
EM: My final question is, do you have any general advice for anyone pursuing writing, either through an MFA program or on the side?
GF: Simply write. I mean, there are two things you have to do to be a writer: one is read and the other is to write. Those are the two things. Everything else is really not terribly relevant. If you’re going to be a fiction writer, you should read fiction—I mean, you should read outside fiction, too. You should be reading all over the place and all kinds of different things, because who knows which will turn out to actually be important or inspirational to your writing. But you also want to know what’s being written right now. You want to know [how] writers are writing, especially those who are considered to be bringing their A game to their novels or short stories. You want to know what it looks like, what it feels like. So you need to read and you need to write. But beyond that, I don’t know. You know, it’s curious, but try to be somebody on whom nothing is lost. Be aware of the world around you and what’s going on and take a lot of notes if you have to, because frequently you don’t know what’s going to be important. Things that nobody else will notice, you might notice. And that might turn out to be a critical element in some piece of fiction that you haven’t even written yet. Try to pay attention to the world around you as opposed to walking down the sidewalk, playing with your iPhone. You know, that’s important.