8/6
I find myself tired and dealing with insomnia this week. It has gotten in the way of reporting my days.
Last Saturday was my most active day out of the apartment. Laundry, the farmer's market, a quick lunch at Popeye's, and the car returned was the morning. I got back here around 1 PM. Then I found out my friend DM was in town for DWNTN Muncie. He and I grabbed lunch at the Downtown Farmstand. He agrees they have great pizza. That took up about two hours. I arrived here a bit achy.
I have photos that will appear in a separate post.
Sunday, I managed Liturgy but only Liturgy. A little weak doing all that standing, but also from the sitting and standing up.
I need to get out today. I seem to have lost my pants on Saturday. Confused by that.
I woke around one and went back to sleep around 5 AM and then back up around 10.
Emails and Star Trek Discovery dealt with.
I started a new short story.
Onto other things.
8/3
I went to the grocery, I think. Certainly to the convenience store. Watching Star Trek shows on YouTube.
8/4
I started this post.
Stayed put, a convenience store walk. Working on the MS.
Reminded last night of something unpleasant: Murder of Sylvia Likens. This I did not know about until my forties. One may smile and smile and be a villain indeed.
8/5
I meant to spend the day out. All I did was get to the writer's group and in the evening to Walmart.
Readings:
‘I want to be ripped to shreds’: writers flock to MFAs - but does it breed elitist literature? (The Guardian) touches on a sore point for me: MFAs running the show and me not having one.
These days, the writerly lone wolf is more a myth than it is a reality. Most of today’s celebrated authors are trained in the profession and their qualification is the MFA (master of fine arts). Percival Everett received his from Brown, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie studied at Johns Hopkins University, and Jhumpa Lahiri went to Boston. Great writers, now, are less rare animals discovered in the wild and more elite thoroughbreds, meticulously trained and set up for the race ahead.
But is it a good thing?
While the idea that the workshop is de facto a magical, hermeneutic space where mediocre writing turns into something great is a lie, it can be a tool. For the most part my workshops were generous and generative spaces where people read plentifully and with grace. A writer who is forced to confront her work regularly through the eyes of others must think about what it is she wants to write and why, and this inevitably leads to writing that is more thoughtful and ambitious. Of course, learning who to listen to is a skill in itself.
One rejection came with a critique and a recommendation to workshop my story. Okay, could it be that workshopping also offloads editorial work?
What seems to be the consensus is that an MFA teaches you style as opposed to soul. A focus on craft, on how to write, creates automatons who can turn a good phrase, but whose writing is stripped of something essential. Pulitzer prize-winning Robert Olen Butler, interviewed by Edward J Delaney for the Atlantic, sums it up: “creative-writing students, who are typically trained almost exclusively in craft and technique […] don’t know the first thing about [being an artist].” Jo Ann Beard told me she could recognise an Iowa Writer’s Workshop graduate anywhere. There was something honed, particular and controlled in the writing. Perhaps the imprint MFAs have had on fiction feels more forceful at a time when the gulf between literary and popular fiction has never been wider. Do MFAs guard the ivory tower of literary fiction while “untrained” writers produce popular fiction for the masses? Or more generously, do MFAs protect a dying art?
While it is true that spending hours in a classroom under the influence of certain teachers can create similarities in style among a cohort, in my classes students submitted widely: magical realism, noir, historical, auto-fiction. They had epic aspirations.
Yet there is a sense that contemporary fiction conforms to a similar style. Is this because MFAs encourage that? I’m not sure. Or is it rather the influence of narrow trends, which force certain books into the public eye at certain times. That many of the most popular authors today have MFAs, and that those novels might have a similar style or focus on a similar subject is a bit like saying fire engines cause fires.
But a shared education may implicate a shared philosophy. Or it could be a shared culture beyond the MFA program creates a shared world view, or just a shared set of cultural touchstones. What I write about seems to be slightly outside what MFA writers latch upon.
You can drive yourself crazy trying to say exactly how an MFA influences writing, and whether it is worth it. The truth is, an MFA isn’t a magic pill. It’s much harder to pastiche a style than you think; spending hours on anything takes stamina. Doing an MFA puts you in a rigorous environment for several years where, hopefully, you can learn how best you write. As Everett put it in Brown’s alumni magazine: “Brown allowed me to really just be who I am and just work.”
Ideas:
The Greek Tragedy Behind Suddenly Last Summer - JSTOR Daily
Structurally, The Bacchae and Suddenly Last Summer are dominated by two key monologues, and, specifically, Violet’s and Catharine’s monologues turn Sebastian into the subject of a performed drama. “Sebastian himself, of course, exists only within the competing dramatic accounts of Catharine and Violet,” says Morra. “These expressions are themselves contained within a work that calls continuous attention to itself as drama, vehemently anti-realist and self-consciously subjective. The play refrains from staging or confirming the violence of Sebastian’s demise; even more so than The Bacchae, it contains its narrative at the level of language rather than action.”
Frame-Breaking: When Stories Step Outside Themselves – The Hemlock Journal
If writing descriptions intimidates you, consider breaking the concept down to just remaining mindful. Reflect on what the protagonist is thinking, feeling, and perceiving as they advance through a scene, whether or not you know the “perfect” language to describe that. Then, it will be up to you to decide which of these details are most relevant to convey the tone you’d like a scene to have. Including each of the five senses all at once is rarely necessary—in fact, doing so will work against you by reducing the impact that your words have—so be sure to prioritize what feels like it best fits the moment.
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A complete lack of description, on the other hand, isolates the reader from the characters, environment, and plotline that they’re meant to bond with by leaving them in the figurative dark. If the reader is given no visuals, sounds, scents, or other details to ground them in a narrative, very little remains for them to connect with to envision our scenes as real. Dialogue and exposition alone, while both incredibly valuable skills for writers, cannot reach their full potential without the aid of description, and the same may be said vice versa.
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Untranslatable Food Words (Vittles) there is something here, even if it is only a reminder of language's limits.With all of the above in mind, it’s also vital to remember not to rely solely and excessively on description to elevate our writing. Doing so is often referred to as writing purple prose, which many readers prefer to avoid, making it a distinctly unflattering label to have attributed to our narratives. Similarly, utilizing an abundance of repetitive descriptions may begin to fall into the territory of cliché. Because of this, it’s necessary to be mindful of how our descriptive writing works alongside other storytelling aspects like pacing and dialogue, as depending too heavily on descriptions may lead us to neglect equally necessary skills.
I really think Mike Bloomfield represents a story that needs telling and “It’s tragic the way he died. He made the blues accessible to a lot of guys like me.” Bob Dylan and Jorma Kaukonen on the 1960s guitar icon who led an electric blues revolution and died alone and unknown (GuitarPlayer) reinforce this idea.
Rejections
8/1 for “The Unintended Consequences of Art”
Thank you so much for your submission to the Submission Pit’s July ‘26 window.
I regret to inform you that your short story did not win this month but fear not! You’re more than happy to submit for August immediately.
And don’t forget to subscribe to the Submission Pit Substack below if you haven’t already.
Also if you have had a recently published short story elsewhere (or forthcoming) feel free to let us know about it and we'll give you a special shout out in next month's statistics post.
8/3:
Thank you for trusting us with "Agnes." After a close reading, we've decided that the story isn't the the right fit for us at this time.
Sincerely,
StoryBottle Co
8/4:
Thank you for letting us consider "Pieces About A Small Indiana Factory Town, 1976 – 1984" for publication in the Missouri Review. We enjoyed reading your work, and though it doesn't quite fit our needs at this time, we wish you excellent luck with it and hope we will have the chance to read more of your writing in the future.
Sincerely,
The Editors
The Missouri Review
Submissions
8/4:
BoomerLitMag (Agnes 2026-06-26)
Passager Books (A Heart’s Judgment Judged)
The Fanatic (After Making Landfall)
For Page & Screen (Pieces About A Small Indiana Factory Town, 1836 -1990)
Planet Scumm (The Psychotic Ape)
8/5:
I was looking at a possible submission of One Dead Blonde. Only it required another 2,000 words. That took most of the day.
EPOCH (After Making Landfall)
Blue Mesa Review (After Making Landfall)
MIAMI UNIVERSITY PRESS NOVELLA PRIZE (Plain Tales From The Flatlands)
The Iowa Review (After Making Landfall)
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