Trepidation

Today I am meeting with my writing teacher.  I am thinking about whether to be honest with her, whether I am that brave.  Actually it's not whether I am that brave, because I've discovered it's not very hard for me to speak honestly.  It's whether I am willing to make her uncomfortable, whether that would be the right thing to do. 

What I want to say is, I have never had more difficulty communicating with someone I respect as I have with you.  It seems like I make you uncomfortable, which isn't my intention but which I don't know how to fix.  I feel like you don't like me, like there's this distaste that you are covering up with a forced polite laugh.  That makes me feel really strange.  Usually I can find my way around initial awkwardness, I can turn on the charm, laugh and be self-deprecating, but that doesn't work with you.  You don't seem to like my directness.  You make me feel like I'm not the right type of person, like I don't have the right kind of sensibilities.  I don't think that's true.  I feel like a blundering clumsy oaf around you, and that's an unusual sensation for me.  I feel like the way I speak isn't valued by you.  You are so British.  I am so American.  I'm a bull, you're a china shop. 

I've learned a lot from you.  I like the way you think about writing. I keep telling you that, hoping it will disarm you.  I guess I've been thinking that maybe you imagine that I am challenging you, and I need to convince you otherwise.  I feel like I keep rolling onto my back, exposing my underbelly, hoping you will soften. Teach me, I keep saying.  Throw me your table scraps.  It hasn't worked. 

I have learned a lot about my limitations from you, and about my biases and comfort zones.  I mostly mean in writing, as a reader and as a writer, but I guess I mean more than that.  I'm impatient, although I knew that already.  But I'm so damn concrete, you've made me see that about myself.  I'm so moved by my senses.  I live in my body; I write about motion and sensation and place and smell and touch.  That is what moves me in the writing of other people.  I'm suspicious of politics and philosophy and symbolism and parable and grand abstraction in writing.  I don't think I'm smart enough for that.  I often don't catch those things in the stories I read; I don't value them like you do.  Give me beauty and sensation, give me people who seem alive, and show me what they feel and make it as real as you can, make things move and surprise me with where things go and I will be touched.  I will be loyal.  You will have my attention and my respect.  I'm a simple creature, I think.  I don't like these European writers whose characters sit in parlors and talk, vaguely disappointed.  Get them outside in the warm night air, insects bumping into their skin.  I like Updike -- I even dreamed in Updike's language the other night when I fell asleep reading one of his stories.  But the sensation of being immersed in that complex language was like swimming through seaweed -- it pulled on me, it weighed me down, it caught at me and I was afraid I might drown in it.  I don't value a lot of flourishes.  It is rare that I stop in the middle of something and reread a sentence, admiring its craft.  If that's happening, I disapprove.  That's showing off.  You and I see these things differently.   

I'm happy to acknowledge that you're more intellectual than me.  I've never felt like a dumb jock before but I'm starting to wonder.   Last week when I begged you for feedback, suggestions, some guidelines that might help me going forward, even some idea about whether I should go forward at all, you paused and said, with your cool accented civility and a nervous laugh, "You certainly are.... goal oriented."  It was clear that you didn't approve, that you found my request pedestrian and practical.  Good heavens, woman.  I'm the least goal-oriented person I know.  Maybe that's because so many of the people I know are lawyers and business people, ambitious movers and shakers.  I know what goal oriented is and I left that world behind for a life of process, exploration, experience, pleasure, possibility.  But I do see some value in structure.  I need milestones and feedback.  I think it's useful to take stock from time to time, so you can see where you've come, and where you still need to go, so you can make course corrections. 

Will I say these things to you today?  It would make you very uncomfortable to acknowledge this unspoken strangeness between us.  Maybe it would insult you; it would imply that we are equals, that this relationship has meaning, that our styles both have merit.  Would that topple the teacher-student dynamic?  Am I allowed to do that?  I never would have when I was an undergraduate.  But I'm a grown-up now, and I'm used to speaking frankly with adults.  I don't know.  I suppose if I don't have your respect it's because I haven't earned it as a writer or a reader this semester.  That's my own fault, I guess.  My writing hasn't been strong enough to move you.  Maybe I don't force the moment to its crisis (will you like me better if I quote TS Eliot to you?).  Maybe it's better if we pretend to have a friendly, distant teacher-student relationship.  Maybe I should just accept your oblique comments with a nod and a smile and walk away baffled, leaving you in your cold office full of papers, relieved as the quiet settles in to take my place. 

Comments

I am not sensing that you are troubled because she is withholding knowledge or instruction from you. I sense that you are troubled because she is withholding approval of your writing, and more importantly, you.

You are a dynamic, strong, intelligent woman and that threatens those who are not... if she is conscious of the strain you write about, confronting her will likely just threaten her more.

As long as she is not standing in the way of your progression as a writer, consider living and growing from this discomfort... afterall, lowly European characters are able to charm everyone they cross or at least box them up properly. I would far rather read from a writer who vividly 'lives in her body; writing about motion and sensation and place and smell and touch,' of growing through something that is psychologically uncomfortable than someone who is is a gay and lively character at the parlor sipping tea.

[MT]

It seems like you want us to conclude it's time for you to find a new teacher. I'm finding it hard to avoid that conclusion. I don't think it's arrogant to think you have your own sensibility, and I imagine the more different a student's sensibility from any given teacher, the earlier in the curriculum he or she will experience a disconnect that gets in the way of teaching. If teachers of diverse schools are in large supply, why not shop. Otherwise I suppose you have to be the grasshopper and suck it up, perhaps finding your own style after some years in the wilderness or a course of psychoanalysis.

Writers are sensitive creatures. If she's hindering your expression of creativity in any way, unload her and find a teacher who will nurture your creative spirit.

[l.]

The first few paragraphs are an EXACT description of what's been going on with me and my profs at law school! I can't believe you captured that complicated interaction so completely - you're a fabulous writer. I'm really sorry that for some reason she is letting you think that SHE thinks you're not. Fwiw, it got a lot better in some ways with my profs when I stopped showing them my underbelly and begging them to teach me, but just assumed they hated me and forced them to answer my questions anyway. It took an extra step out of the equation. Of course, I'm stuck with them, but you're not stuck with her. Good luck!

[A.]

I don't think it's a question of her being "more intellectual," although I understand that feeling and often have it myself, but of just relating to the world in a very different way. I read constantly as a child, but rarely what was considered good literature. Poetry, prize-winning books - they never made sense to me. Instead I read mystery novels and encyclopedias, and now I know lots of things, but can't shake the feeling that I'm somehow less sophisticated as a result.

But I think in many ways these differences are inherent. I remember taking an achievement test in elementary school, and being asked to read a poem about a tiger. I generally got all of the questions on these things right without much effort, but this one asked what the tiger symbolized. I was baffled. I had no idea. It was a tiger sitting in the grass. It had nothing to do with time, or love, or whatever...and I probably wouldn't have much more of a clue what it symbolized today than I did then.

So, perhaps you can just take what you can from this teacher, and find someone more suited to your style of relating to the world. I don't think there's any shame in that.

sometimes we have people that come into very sensitive areas of our lives that we wouldn't invite, but being challenged to consider who you are and your own voice is good. Not comfortable or affirming in the way you want someone to be that has entered this sensitive area, but good. You may never get the approval you are looking for from this person, but it sounds like your own voice is stronger because of them.

[Eleanor]

I don't have anything really deep to say. Just wanted to say that I usually agree with you about disapproval of stopping to admire a sentence's craft. But one book where I just had to stop fairly frequently and read the sentence over again was "The Great Gatsby." Each sentence is such a pleasure.

[Jenn]

I think your clarity of who you are is wonderful. Knowing how you explore and create, full of self awareness is a key which many people lack. However, I wonder if your professor has decided that it's time to take you out of your box, not even for the purpose of changing you, but for the purpose of that exploration and discovery. To make that a cultivated part of you as well. I don't think this has anything about her liking your or not liking you. I feel that you have challenged her to make your writing style acceptable in her class, and she's simply saying no. Don't beg, or look to her for acceptance. Merely ask your questions and write for her according to her standards, and then move on... In the end you will be writing the way you want to.
All the best!

[Visio Professional 2010]

I am sorry but I did not understand your post. What issues and what are we to expect in the form of
these issues.Kindly be a little more specific