An Interview with Rebecca Johns
Editors' Note: Niche will be hosting feature interviews with graduates from various creative writing programs around the country. We hope these pieces will provide a multifaceted glance into the MFA experience for those considering enrollment, or for those who are currently pursuing a degree in creative writing. We are very pleased to begin this series of interviews with the talented and distinguished writer Rebecca Johns. We want to thank her again for taking the time to share her experiences and wisdom.
Rebecca Johns's first novel, Icebergs, was a finalist for the 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction and a recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Award. Her second, The Countess—a fictionalization of the life of Elizabeth Bathory, the “Blood Countess”—was published in October 2010 from Crown Books. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, the Harvard Review,the Mississippi Review, the Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, Ladies' Home Journal, Self, and Seventeen, among others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Missouri School of Journalism, she teaches in the English Department at DePaul University in Chicago.
Rebecca Johns's first novel, Icebergs, was a finalist for the 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction and a recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Award. Her second, The Countess—a fictionalization of the life of Elizabeth Bathory, the “Blood Countess”—was published in October 2010 from Crown Books. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, the Harvard Review,the Mississippi Review, the Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, Ladies' Home Journal, Self, and Seventeen, among others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Missouri School of Journalism, she teaches in the English Department at DePaul University in Chicago.
NM: Was being a writer always an aspiration of yours, or did the decision to write come later?
RJ: I always wanted to write, from the time I was very young. Since I was a voracious reader, the idea of producing the kinds of books I loved so much really appealed to me. I didn't know any writers, so I didn't really know what the work entailed, but everyone kept telling me I needed something else to live on while I wrote novels, so I thought, "I'll be a journalist!" For me that meant being a magazine editor and writer. But I discovered that journalism demands as much of a person--if not more--than fiction writing does, and the idea of my entry-level magazine-editor salary as something "to live on" while I wrote my books was laughable to say the least. I made so many mistakes. I didn't always know what kind of writer I wanted to be, in other words, and it's taken me years of trial and error to figure it out. But I'm not alone in that. A lot of my students spend years trying to be lawyers or businesspeople and then decide they can't stand it another minute. Some of them don't really get to writing until they retire, and that's okay too. The path is different for everyone.
NM: Did you apply to an MFA programs directly after completing your undergraduate degree or did you wait and apply later? Looking back, what were the upsides of that decision? What were the downsides?
RJ: I had a whole career before I decided to go back to school for an MFA in my thirties. I was one of those people who thought (get ready for the ego here) I didn't need to study fiction writing in order to be good at it. There's a little truth to that idea, but there's also a whole lot of truth to the fact that workshop study can make you better--much, much better--in a relatively short amount of time. I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad I waited. I would never have been admitted in my early 20s, nor do I think I would have appreciated it as much if I had. And frankly, having had a different career earlier in my life has helped me in my search for teaching positions.
The downside is that I was never going to be the hot young writer at the Workshop, the rock star, but that has its problems too. That's a lot of pressure on a young writer, and it can backfire. I applied because after years of working on my own I realized I needed to study writing, needed to really dedicate my time and energy into unlearning all the things you learn as a student of literature, the hunt for theme and symbol, and bend myself toward the humbling and sometimes humiliating task of putting words on the page and realizing I didn't always know--even me, the author--what those words meant, at least not at first. The harder you try to write literature with a capital "L," the worse it turns out. What could be harder for a student of literature to learn?
Also--and this is no small thing--the world understands going back to school for a degree. It understands improving your credentials and adding some letters to your resume. It doesn't understand taking two years off to sit in a room by yourself. For a lot of people, me included, the MFA gives you permission (even if that permission is only your own) to sit down and write for a couple of years and not feel a damn bit guilty about it.
NM: How many programs did you apply to, and how did you go about deciding which to attend? Did you want to work with a specific person? How much did funding and rank influence your decision?
RJ: I applied to three places--Warren Wilson, Columbia and Iowa--and got into two, so the money must not have been as big an issue to me as rank. This was in 2000, when the dot-com bubble was just bursting, and in the months when I was applying I had a good-paying dot-com job as a contract editor, so I saved up a chunk of that for school. Originally I got into Warren Wilson, which is a highly respected low-residency program. I really liked the idea of keeping my job and my marriage and my condo in Chicago while I went to school, but I started to worry (because low-res programs don't offer graduate teaching assistantships) that I would have a difficult time finding a teaching position without that TA job on my resume. So I held off and applied to the other two, partly because of the TA issue, partly because I wanted to study with Marilynne Robinson, and partly to see if I could get in at all. I couldn't believe it when Iowa admitted me. My husband couldn't either. He'd already promised me that if I got in, we'd go, which he thought was a safe bet.
It's just as well we left when we did. Most of my co-workers and my husband's co-workers got laid off the next year anyway.
RJ: I always wanted to write, from the time I was very young. Since I was a voracious reader, the idea of producing the kinds of books I loved so much really appealed to me. I didn't know any writers, so I didn't really know what the work entailed, but everyone kept telling me I needed something else to live on while I wrote novels, so I thought, "I'll be a journalist!" For me that meant being a magazine editor and writer. But I discovered that journalism demands as much of a person--if not more--than fiction writing does, and the idea of my entry-level magazine-editor salary as something "to live on" while I wrote my books was laughable to say the least. I made so many mistakes. I didn't always know what kind of writer I wanted to be, in other words, and it's taken me years of trial and error to figure it out. But I'm not alone in that. A lot of my students spend years trying to be lawyers or businesspeople and then decide they can't stand it another minute. Some of them don't really get to writing until they retire, and that's okay too. The path is different for everyone.
NM: Did you apply to an MFA programs directly after completing your undergraduate degree or did you wait and apply later? Looking back, what were the upsides of that decision? What were the downsides?
RJ: I had a whole career before I decided to go back to school for an MFA in my thirties. I was one of those people who thought (get ready for the ego here) I didn't need to study fiction writing in order to be good at it. There's a little truth to that idea, but there's also a whole lot of truth to the fact that workshop study can make you better--much, much better--in a relatively short amount of time. I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad I waited. I would never have been admitted in my early 20s, nor do I think I would have appreciated it as much if I had. And frankly, having had a different career earlier in my life has helped me in my search for teaching positions.
The downside is that I was never going to be the hot young writer at the Workshop, the rock star, but that has its problems too. That's a lot of pressure on a young writer, and it can backfire. I applied because after years of working on my own I realized I needed to study writing, needed to really dedicate my time and energy into unlearning all the things you learn as a student of literature, the hunt for theme and symbol, and bend myself toward the humbling and sometimes humiliating task of putting words on the page and realizing I didn't always know--even me, the author--what those words meant, at least not at first. The harder you try to write literature with a capital "L," the worse it turns out. What could be harder for a student of literature to learn?
Also--and this is no small thing--the world understands going back to school for a degree. It understands improving your credentials and adding some letters to your resume. It doesn't understand taking two years off to sit in a room by yourself. For a lot of people, me included, the MFA gives you permission (even if that permission is only your own) to sit down and write for a couple of years and not feel a damn bit guilty about it.
NM: How many programs did you apply to, and how did you go about deciding which to attend? Did you want to work with a specific person? How much did funding and rank influence your decision?
RJ: I applied to three places--Warren Wilson, Columbia and Iowa--and got into two, so the money must not have been as big an issue to me as rank. This was in 2000, when the dot-com bubble was just bursting, and in the months when I was applying I had a good-paying dot-com job as a contract editor, so I saved up a chunk of that for school. Originally I got into Warren Wilson, which is a highly respected low-residency program. I really liked the idea of keeping my job and my marriage and my condo in Chicago while I went to school, but I started to worry (because low-res programs don't offer graduate teaching assistantships) that I would have a difficult time finding a teaching position without that TA job on my resume. So I held off and applied to the other two, partly because of the TA issue, partly because I wanted to study with Marilynne Robinson, and partly to see if I could get in at all. I couldn't believe it when Iowa admitted me. My husband couldn't either. He'd already promised me that if I got in, we'd go, which he thought was a safe bet.
It's just as well we left when we did. Most of my co-workers and my husband's co-workers got laid off the next year anyway.
NM: How did you go about putting your writing sample together? Did you send the same thirty pages to every program you applied, or did you vary your sample?
RJ: I sent the same sample, the first thirty pages of a voicey little first-person novel I was working on. It wasn't really even a question of what to send, because the novel (since abandoned) was easily the best thing I'd written up until then. Somewhere in my late 20s I'd finally turned a corner in my writing, and that sample was the proof. But I also think there was some luck involved. At a certain level it's just someone taking a chance on you and seeing if they made the right choice.
NM: How would describe your experience at Iowa Writers’ Workshop? What was the overall atmosphere?
RJ: Some people in the classes ahead of me said they found it really competitive, and there was still an undercurrent of competition when I was there, too, but (for the most part) people were grownups about it. There's always going to be some low-key envy of people who get in the New Yorker or sign book contracts in their second year, but that's going to be true outside of Iowa too. I found some very supportive friends at Iowa, people I still consider among my closest friends. Mostly I remember the fun we had, parties and dinners and day trips and readings. I learned to play poker, I learned to garden. For many of us, Iowa was and is a difficult place to leave. I stayed for four years after I graduated for just that reason, and many of my friends are still there.
NM: What are the upsides and downsides to the workshop method?
RJ: The workshop method gives a writing student the opportunity to hear, in a relatively safe space, how readers read their work, where the intention of the writing and the reality of the writing meet and where they clash. That's maybe the hardest thing for a writer to find outside the workshop, how to read their own writing. Outside the classroom, criticism can get vicious, it can get personal, and that makes it easy to dismiss. Inside the workshop everyone is vulnerable. And because everyone in the class is equal in terms of what's at stake, it's easier for the writer to listen to the criticism, to not take it as personally. As personally. It's still going to be personal; it's still going to sting if people don't like your work as much as you do. I'm talking in generalizations. There are always going to be egomaniacs in workshops. There are always going to be people with self-esteem and personality issues who are going to have trouble listening to criticism or giving it in a helpful way. But if you come into it with an open mind, I think it can be very enlightening. It can help you develop a thicker skin, too, which most writers (I include myself here) desperately need.
The downside is that not everything you hear in workshop is going to be helpful. There's a lot of chaff with the wheat. It takes a while, but eventually you learn how to listen, and who to listen to. The aesthetic agenda of the workshop or the instructor might be at cross-purposes with yours. No one can decide for you what to write, they can only offer their honest reactions. And then, sometimes, those reactions are not honest but colored by jealousy, anger, frustration, etc. But you learn to spot those reactions pretty quickly and move on.
NM: What is the one thing you wish someone had told you before you applied to an MFA?
RJ: Don't sweat the GRE. No one's even going to look at your scores or your GPA unless they're off-the-charts low. The writing sample is everything.
RJ: I sent the same sample, the first thirty pages of a voicey little first-person novel I was working on. It wasn't really even a question of what to send, because the novel (since abandoned) was easily the best thing I'd written up until then. Somewhere in my late 20s I'd finally turned a corner in my writing, and that sample was the proof. But I also think there was some luck involved. At a certain level it's just someone taking a chance on you and seeing if they made the right choice.
NM: How would describe your experience at Iowa Writers’ Workshop? What was the overall atmosphere?
RJ: Some people in the classes ahead of me said they found it really competitive, and there was still an undercurrent of competition when I was there, too, but (for the most part) people were grownups about it. There's always going to be some low-key envy of people who get in the New Yorker or sign book contracts in their second year, but that's going to be true outside of Iowa too. I found some very supportive friends at Iowa, people I still consider among my closest friends. Mostly I remember the fun we had, parties and dinners and day trips and readings. I learned to play poker, I learned to garden. For many of us, Iowa was and is a difficult place to leave. I stayed for four years after I graduated for just that reason, and many of my friends are still there.
NM: What are the upsides and downsides to the workshop method?
RJ: The workshop method gives a writing student the opportunity to hear, in a relatively safe space, how readers read their work, where the intention of the writing and the reality of the writing meet and where they clash. That's maybe the hardest thing for a writer to find outside the workshop, how to read their own writing. Outside the classroom, criticism can get vicious, it can get personal, and that makes it easy to dismiss. Inside the workshop everyone is vulnerable. And because everyone in the class is equal in terms of what's at stake, it's easier for the writer to listen to the criticism, to not take it as personally. As personally. It's still going to be personal; it's still going to sting if people don't like your work as much as you do. I'm talking in generalizations. There are always going to be egomaniacs in workshops. There are always going to be people with self-esteem and personality issues who are going to have trouble listening to criticism or giving it in a helpful way. But if you come into it with an open mind, I think it can be very enlightening. It can help you develop a thicker skin, too, which most writers (I include myself here) desperately need.
The downside is that not everything you hear in workshop is going to be helpful. There's a lot of chaff with the wheat. It takes a while, but eventually you learn how to listen, and who to listen to. The aesthetic agenda of the workshop or the instructor might be at cross-purposes with yours. No one can decide for you what to write, they can only offer their honest reactions. And then, sometimes, those reactions are not honest but colored by jealousy, anger, frustration, etc. But you learn to spot those reactions pretty quickly and move on.
NM: What is the one thing you wish someone had told you before you applied to an MFA?
RJ: Don't sweat the GRE. No one's even going to look at your scores or your GPA unless they're off-the-charts low. The writing sample is everything.
NM: Was it difficult to continue writing after graduating? How did you motivate yourself to keep writing?
RJ: It wasn't difficult at all, in part because two months after graduation I had a book under contract. I didn't have a choice. But also, I was older and had already learned how to incorporate my writing into my working life. I wrote two novels before I ever got to grad school, so I knew how to find the time to work, if nothing else.
NM: What advice would you give to those who want to apply programs, or are attending programs now?
RJ: Go for yourself. Go because you want to learn to write well, or because you want to give yourself time to write. Don't go to get a teaching degree or because you don't know what else to do in this shitty economy. MFAs can be expensive (though many now fund their students partially if not completely) and no one has a guarantee of a job when they're done. Go because you've done as much as you can on your own and now you're ready to listen to other people, and learn something.
For students going now, I'd say, Don't have an agenda. You're not a failure if you don't have a book contract by the time you're 30 and a dozen stories to your name. Your only job is to write, and write as well as you can. After that, everything else is gravy.
RJ: It wasn't difficult at all, in part because two months after graduation I had a book under contract. I didn't have a choice. But also, I was older and had already learned how to incorporate my writing into my working life. I wrote two novels before I ever got to grad school, so I knew how to find the time to work, if nothing else.
NM: What advice would you give to those who want to apply programs, or are attending programs now?
RJ: Go for yourself. Go because you want to learn to write well, or because you want to give yourself time to write. Don't go to get a teaching degree or because you don't know what else to do in this shitty economy. MFAs can be expensive (though many now fund their students partially if not completely) and no one has a guarantee of a job when they're done. Go because you've done as much as you can on your own and now you're ready to listen to other people, and learn something.
For students going now, I'd say, Don't have an agenda. You're not a failure if you don't have a book contract by the time you're 30 and a dozen stories to your name. Your only job is to write, and write as well as you can. After that, everything else is gravy.
