by Amy Lutz, MCWC Operations Manager
There’s less than two weeks left before our February 15 deadline for applications for the Master Class with Julie Buntin, and for any of our scholarships. This year, we have scholarships on offer in multiple genres, including historical fiction, nonfiction, speculative fiction, and more. There are also scholarships available specifically for diverse writers and young writers. Visit mcwc.org/scholarships to apply for a scholarship and mcwc.org/master-class to apply for the Master Class. Please note: you’re welcome to apply for both, but you must submit two separate applications, following each set of instructions.
Join Julie Buntin to perfect your first chapter in this year’s Master Class, The Art of Beginnings, a cross-genre, juried workshop geared for experienced writers. Julie’s debut novel, Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, translated into ten languages, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen outlets, including the Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, Vogue, the New York Times Book Review, Guernica, and elsewhere. Julie shared with us a taste of what she’ll be bringing to MCWC in this month’s faculty spotlight.
You reference the power of storytelling and it’s interaction with understanding throughout this interview with Literary Hub. You end by explaining that Marlena is “about the act of telling, what it means to do that, and the power our stories have over us.” Do you think that “act of telling” is influenced by the process of learning to write?
I do think deepening your craft as a writer can help empower you to reconsider or interrogate the stories you tell about yourself, and that learning to question your first impulse as a storyteller (both on the page and off) can expand and complicate what you’re trying to say. Learning how to create complex characters, for example, or even thinking through how plot and character intersect—these are skills that can help you think more expansively, and, I hope, more sensitively, about the world and your place in it, as well as how that world might be different for different people.
In this interview with Craft, you discussed writing the POV’s in Marlena, it’s structure, and your intentions with the novel. You also mentioned the role fear plays in the writing process. How did you manage that fear while you were working on Marlena and what advice do you have for writers struggling with their own doubts about their writing?
I still struggle with doubt and fear and impostor syndrome and all sorts of self-sabotaging baggage pretty much whenever I sit down to write. I wish I had some really ironclad advice about how to deal with it—I would give it to myself! I’m working on getting better at accepting that fear is part of how I do this. The fear is going to be there, and instead of trying to silence it entirely, maybe we can have some kind of uneasy relationship where I let it take over for a little bit and then, once it’s run its course, I can banish it for a few hours and get some work done. I guess I would suggest that writers try and make their fear work for them —can you convert it into an anxiety that will actually help you? For example, a fear that I’m an idiot and everything I write is terrible is hugely unproductive, but if I can kind of massage that fear into an adjacent fear—that if I don’t write, I’ll never say the things I want to say—that can be kind of motivating.
You wrote a fascinating essay featured by Catapult on writing fiction, how readers make assumptions about writers based on their fiction, and the power writers have in the way they tell a story. You expressed a bit of a complicated relationship your own novel, Marlena. Has that relationship changed in the three years since publication?
I am not sure that it has. Some of the more difficult personal elements of that relationship—my mother’s issues with my novel, in particular—have mellowed a little with time, but there’s still tension there. I think one major difference between now and then is just that Marlena doesn’t feel as urgent to me anymore. I’m working on something else, and I’m wrestling with a whole new set of questions and anxieties. Marlena, from the writing process to the publication experience and beyond, all just feels a little distant to me now, in a way that I think is probably helpful for my new work.
In many of your interviews, you mention other writers and teachers who played a big role in the creation of Marelna. In this interview with Literary Hub, you talk about Lorrie Moore’s Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? and how both the book, and Lorrie herself, were very influential in your own writing. I also saw you mentioned working with Sarah Bowlin, who was one of our faculty members at MCWC 2019. How important do you think writing partnerships and groups are to a writer’s success?
As I wade out deeper and deeper into my new project, having a writing group and a handful of trusted readers that I can send very messy work to, without fear of judgement, has been an essential lifeline. I know that some writers can joyfully do this work alone, but I can’t. For me, readers and community are the key to having control over the fear I was talking about in my answer to the previous question. They remind me that I’m not alone in this, and they give me a helpful gut check on the work itself. It can be hard to build community—having just moved to a new place, I’m newly aware of how tricky it is to ask busy people you don’t know all that well to exchange work, for example. But thankfully there are tons of resources online—organizations like Catapult and Grub Street offer incredible and robust online workshops—and I am a strong believer in the power of conferences for not just getting feedback, but finding durable and long-term writing relationships.
To find out more about Julie Buntin, check out her website at www.juliebuntin.com.
Applications for scholarships and the Master Class close February 15. General registration will open March 1, and you will be able to register for the morning workshop of your choice after that date; there is no application required for MCWC. We recommend you register as soon as you can when registration opens March 1 to secure a seat in the workshop of your choice.