Robert Butler - From Where You Dream - The Process of Writing Fiction

But, ironically, I think that many of those literature classes could be taught exactly the same way and be beneficial if two things were said, which everybody then understood and believed. Every literature course in the country should begin with this announcement: What we're going to do this semester is a purely secondary and artificial thing. We are going to do that in order to tune up the instrument inside you which thrums. We're going to add some new strings in the upper and lower regis-ters. We're going to tune up all the strings, so that after you've taken the course, when you encounter a work of art, you will thrum to it more harmoniously and completely.

Then it's OK, teach the same things that are taught.

The last thing that needs to be said in every literature course in the country is this: Now that we have done this artificial and secondary thing in order to tune up your instrument, your final assignment is: forget everything we've said. Because if you don't forget it, when you encounter your next work of art, if you begin to translate it into terms of ideas and theory, breaking it into its parts even as you read — then I have destroyed your ability to have an aesthetic response and to encounter a work of art in the way it was intended. I have taught you how to miss the essence of this object.

If you take literature courses and these things are not said, then please fill in those blanks. Give yourself that warning at the beginning of the course and that final assignment at the end.

Let me say that what I stress here, what I obsess about, I think is absolutely crucial to assimilate into your artistic process. There may seem to be resident in that obsession a criticism of the way others teach this subject. That criticism is not intended and would be wrong. I think you absolutely need to hear the things that I obsess about, since they are the foundations for other insights — you need, for example, to get to the matters of craft and technique once you have earned that step by getting your process right. But do not infer any criticism of anybody's else's workshop here at FSU. We are a bunch of obsessives, each in our cage, and you slip into the cage and crouch in a corner. It is necessary for you to slip into several of our cages, because my obsessions are different from Mark's, are different from Elizabeth's, are different from Virgil's — you need exposure to all of us. The nice thing about it is that we're a complementary group of writing teachers. If I were your only teacher, something would be missing for you. So it's really important for you to be exposed to all of us or many of us. Let a hundred flowers bloom, as Chairman Mao once said.

Also, please understand that you're in a terrific school, because the literature people in this English department actually love and appreciate literature. This is not always the case. There are graduate English programs in this country where no literature is taught at all — only secondary sources, books about the books, are taught — literally. There are a lot of wonderful literature teachers here at this university and almost none of the syndrome that I was describing to you. So it's good you are required to take literature courses. You're in a good place.

Now, let's talk about the workshop, how we'll run a workshop with the insights I've been trying to give you. I offer this to you as a model if you choose to teach with the same emphasis I have or even as a model for informal writing groups. All writing workshops have a built-in danger. If you are in the place in your creative development where you really need to get in touch with your unconscious — the point where my particular obsession is what you need the most — there are certain aspects of common pedagogy that need to be drastically adjusted. One of them is your pace of production. None of you will have an externally fixed quota of words placed upon you this semester. It's a kind of honor system. You need to start meditating every day, and if you're not writing you should at least be going into your trance to free-float, free-associate. At some point you will need to be writing, and then — I've already told you that you have to write every day.

A few weeks into the course you need to catch me and we'll set up a personal goal for you — where you feel you are in terms of your unconscious, what you think would be a reasonable production for the semester. The point of this class is to get you out of your heads, so I don't want to put you under strictures of production that will force you to start willing things into being. You do not have to workshop at all this semester, any given one of you. If on a particular week, no one has anything to workshop, that's OK. We'll come, we'll meet, we'll talk, meditate or whatever, and you'll go away.

If you have a novel to write, and the system I taught you last week is really tapping into your unconscious, then after most of the semester is spent dreamstorming and working up your possible scenes, we might want to make your goal just the first few pages of your novel, which you could give me at the end of the semester. Be very flexible in terms of your production goals.

The workshop is open to fragments, but they need to be the opening fragments of the work. I'm not going to be dogmatic about how a particular piece manifests from your unconscious. I have some suggestions, but there's some wiggle room there. As I indicated to you, my use of that system of predreaming changed with virtually every book. But I do think doing a fair amount of writing ahead of sequence is fraught with dangers. For inexperienced writers, it's usually a way of avoiding the hard stuff. So if you're going to bring a partial something in, let it be the beginning, and please make sure we all understand that's what it is when you hand it in.

We can effectively do probably four manuscripts a week, and if they're fragments, probably more. So, theoretically, we've got enough spots that everybody can submit twice. If one person wants to submit six pieces, that's fine, because I'm sure there are some who'll prefer not to workshop at all. I've never had a class where somebody who wanted to workshop didn't have the chance. If you put in a fragment early on, it's not as if you then go to the back of the line. If you don't workshop at all, then we'll have a one-on-one meeting at the end of term.

Another thing that will be different from other workshops is that you are not required to say anything about anybody else's work. You will have the opportunity to, but there is no requirement. I want to help prevent you from reading from your head. When you get your fellow student's manuscript, you must read it as a work of art. You probably

shouldn't have a pen in your hand. You certainly should not be asking yourself, "What am I going to say?" Not even if it 'sfrom a benign impulse — and it usually is. Certainly not, "I'm going to get this son of a bitch because he got me last week," and especially not, "Butler's my way into publishing and not only am I going to have a chance to impress him with my work, I'm going to impress everyone with my critical acumen and my eloquence about matters aesthetic." I am not impressed that way. It will not affect your grade. I don't give a damn if you ever write a brilliant book review. But if such things are in your consciousness, the chances of your reading a manuscript the way it's intended to be read are very slim. That's why when you read that work, the first time through especially, it's just as if it's been written by Leo Tolstoy or Flannery O'Connor. You read it as a work of art, and you go thrum thrum thrum, and then perhaps you hit a twang. The second time through you have a pen handy: thrum thrum thrum, twang; you mark the passage and you keep thrumming on or twanging on.