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Writing Without Letters
by Jennifer M. Wilson
Usually, letters are my most favored of puzzle pieces. Take just three letters,
for example, and you can spell out all sorts of things. Spell the word "key" and
open a door, spell "yes" and embark on a journey. Three little letters, that's
all a future can be, on a certain day, seen in the right light. Unfortunately,
for the politically-challenged writer, some havens of the art require more than
just the usual letters. If you want to get a Master of Fine Arts in Creative
Writing, you are going to need three very different letters entirely.
Every year I cycle through the grad school panic, my ass hanging out in the
wind of life, serving drinks and typing letters for lawyers in order to pay
the bills. Usually, as autumn approaches, I begin to dream about sitting in a
circle, on a lawn, in a quad, on a campus, beneath a warm and nurturing sun,
discussing character development with other flourishing authors. It's too good
to be true, I think: only in a dream could life be so wonderful.
And then, I think, no... No! It CAN happen, people do it. Maybe I should too? And so,
I pull out my yellowing 1993 guide to graduate schools and I start surfing the Web
at work, downloading applications, and gazing longingly at the program listings in
the good old U.S. News and World Report.
Each year I decide that I'll apply. I imagine embarking on the greatest journey of
my life, working under the caring guidance of professors of the writing art. I
envision my work well on its way to an audience of more than just the harried
agents and editors who send beautiful rejection letters to my mailbox. More people
will read my work than only the friends in my Outlook address book, and I just know
that I will feel fulfillment and wonder at the marvel that is my life.
I begin to read through the requirements: Transcripts—can be ordered online
(although I still have three in my desk from the last time I went through this;
Essay—will do, I nod in satisfaction; GRE scores—got them; Writing
sample—any portion of my latest novel should suffice; and then my smile
fades, and there it is again... Three Letters of Recommendation—preferably
at least two from former professors. Here I stop, a cold, withering terror creeps
up my arm and into my throat.
I think back on all of the classes that I took over the years, in part just hoping
to get a letter, any letter. I remember all of the e-mail replies from the professors
who responded in the nicest and most colorful narrative array of excuses. The
professor in college who told me he wanted to write a screenplay with me and then
showed up at my favorite bar and recited Shakespearean love sonnets until I vowed
never to see him again. No letter.
Then there was the class I took a few years later, taught by a young and prematurely
embittered man who talked endlessly about the waste of schooling on true artists and
the novels he had tucked away in his desk drawer at home and who then never showed up
for the last session of class. And did he write me a letter?
There was the distance-learning class on novel writing where the professor decided
that year only not to write any letters for anyone. And, of course, how could
I forget the scriptwriting teacher who told me that if he ever caught me hiding my
talent away in school he would have me hunted down and killed.
But this year I am freeing myself from the cycle.
I look up from my desk.
I am writing on company time again. I shake off the daydream of bustling student
centers and coffee shop meetings and return to my real life and a personal file folder
full of agent query letters for my novel and story ideas waiting to be brought to life.
Tomorrow's Friday, and another paycheck will buy me paper and postage and more nervous
trips to the mailbox until the real three letters I wait for come through.
Are you interested in my work? I ask the world.
And in three simple letters it will answer back,
Yes.
Jennifer M. Wilson is a secretary by day, novelist by night. For more of her work,
stop by www.jennifermwilson.com.
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