This post, by Jon Reiner, originally appeared on The Atlantic site on 4/9/13.
An unexpected brush with professional jealousy reminds a writing teacher that it’s what you have to say, not how well you’ve learned to say it, that’s the basis for great stories.
The other day, a college student sent me an autobiographical essay to read, following my visiting lecture to his creative-writing class. I had written my e-mail address on the white board, and he was the only student who took me up on my general offer of help. What I received wasn’t well written. It suffered from too much telling and not enough showing—a common shortcoming in student narratives—but buried in its moony diary entries was the germ of a compelling story.
I won’t spoil it here, but seeded in the essay—as I saw it—was the hook of a young man’s shocking decision to walk away from the pinnacle of his adolescent dreams in order to pursue a far less certain adult future. A journey of destiny aborted and reimagined, a tale of courage and risk. Potentially more than a typical student essay.
As my wife and kids watched a TiVoed Glee, I wrote several paragraphs of encouraging and, I hoped, constructive editorial notes, and didn’t give it much more thought until I received an e-mail from the student two days later. He graciously thanked me for my comments and wrote ecstatically that his rough piece had just been accepted for publication by The New Yorker online! Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who recognized an undeveloped story lurking within the wandering pages. According to him, “I met with the editor I’m going to work with, and it might as well have been you talking.” Lucky me.
I shared the news with the student’s creative-writing instructor who’d invited me to class, and she—like me, like every coffee-shop writer in New York—was shot through with a mixed serum of emotions: happy for a nice person’s success; astounded by the coup of his incomplete writing’s placement; envious of the ease at which he’d reached this peak; stunned by the willingness of the magazine to work with material this preliminary and a writer this unproven.
Having labored over a finely tuned story that was recently rejected by the same publication, the bite of the student’s triumph stung. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I felt like a fool, trying to chisel perfect sentences when it clearly didn’t matter. If you had a story in you—as the student did—the quality of the writing wasn’t important, even for the esteemed New Yorker, reflecting this period when writers are tasked to compete with piano-playing cats rather than with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Story is and has always been king, but now more than ever before, it is the entire court. Print and online publications are ginned up to shine an anecdote, an experience, into a gem that will be plucked and dittoed through the social media.
Read the rest of the post on The Atlantic.