In the early 2000s, Mickey Hess taught creative writing at a community college in New Albany, Indiana. Since 2006, he has taught creative writing at Rider University in New Jersey. ?Interviews with my Former Students? finds Mickey tracking down his old students nearly a decade later, to see if they still write and to find out if they learned anything.
Interviews With My Former Students
Installment Five: Alex Sharry
Mickey Hess: Alex Sharry, writer and professional armpit model, what have you been up to since you left our fine Rider University campus?
Alex Sharry: Aside from maintaining epic armpits, I?ve kind of been all over the place metaphorically. Geographically, it?s NY. I left Rider the year after I took your creative writing class and transferred to The New School where I studied Writing (when it?s your major, you capitalize the ?W? so people know it?s official).
It was there that I was first introduced to things like anxiety, syntax, trust fund babies, hyperbole, and all the other things that come with people somehow making blowing lines of cocaine off of the lid of a toilet bowl before Don Quixote class ?chic.?
But since those dog days are over, there?s been a lot. There?s been jobs I hated, jobs I was ambivalent about, and jobs I loved. There?ve been people I hated, people I was ambivalent about, and people I loved. Currently, I am coming down from the spin cycle that is your early post-graduation 20s and am a yoga instructor, part-time nanny, and top secret personal diary columnist.
MH: Without exposing your top secret identity, tell me about the writing you?ve been working on recently.
AS: To be honest, my writing has changed as of late. For one, I graduated from school thinking the writing world was my oyster (for lack of a better clich?). I graduated in the heart of the recession. Our dean reminded us of that with his congratulatory speech. Literally, his only words of wisdom were ?This is a really rough time. The world isn?t what is used to be. Take what you can get in the job market, but always remember the enjoyable Liberal Arts experience you had here at Lang.?
It was the most ominous thing? everyone was a little turned off by it because we were so damn eager to become famous professional Joan Didions. Each and every one of us. That was the problem. Under the campus shelter, you ARE a successful writer. You?re writing semi-regular columns for the school paper, stressing about your thesis and working on a new poem that you?ll workshop in class on Thursday. You?re writing? and doing it and getting grades and getting a diploma.
Bur our dean was right. It was a triple slap in the face and one on the ass when we graduated and walked into the real world, which was and still is super fucked up and in a super duper awkward growing pain stage as the digital age continues eating everything for dinner. So, I wrote? but all of a sudden I found myself blogging not as myself. It was literally like someone changed my writerly vocal cords and I was this bitchy blogger kind of just trying to be snarky enough to get read by other miserable people.
I just broke my collarbone. This one. Right. Here.
It wasn?t inspiration fueling my work, it was imitation. I was writing about stuff I didn?t even want to hear myself write about (mostly about being a 20-something NY?er who is lost in Google translation). So? I literally stopped. I stopped writing like that and began writing on my own personal blog in the format I wanted. It was private and only shared with friends, but it was fun and in that time I reconnected with what it is about writing that I enjoy. Fiction. Creative Non-Fiction.
It all came back a little bit and that?s when I decided that I needed to take a breather from trying to be a successful writer right away. The idea of that was just not even an idea anymore. It was squashed by the reality of the times we live in where? how the HECK do you make a living doing anything, let alone doing what you love? ?So? what I do now is sit and write how I want to write. I recently have been working on a fictional piece about a girl ?dating? her 45-year-old boss. I don?t love it, but I?m writing it.
Before that I documented a break-up? kind of just wrote about 50 one-liners a day about the things that happen? even the most banal. I thought it was interesting enough? my grandma liked it. Also, I have recently been re-reading my diary from high school and have turned some of those entries into little things? I mean, I was a freak in high school. I was this self-loathing miserable half-human walking around feeling so sorry for myself about the stupidest of things. It?s hilarious? especially when I talk about how much I loved my boyfriend and friends and also how much I hated my boyfriend and friends. (You have a daughter? get ready, dude. Women are NUTSO).
There?s also these little moments in there where I guess I was crying as I was writing and my tears smudged the ink and I found it SO necessary to circle the smudge marks and label each one ?tear.? I know. Anyway, In terms of my writing, I think more than anything else, I have been writing about the transition my mind went through when I did my yoga teacher training.
I don?t really know how to compile all of that into this blurb, but I will say it was one of the most enlightening experiences of my life and literally, without me even being conscious it was happening, changed the ways in which my mind functions in the world. So? I often find myself writing about that, about yoga stuff. About mediation? the connection of the mind, body and breath and how relevant that is to everything we do.
In conclusion, All-in-all, Finally; my writing is scattered, but it certainly is mine and I am much happier where I?m at with it now than I was before. I hope one day to write more for the public? get back out onto the blogs, but as of now I?m happy in my little hole.
MH: Sounds like you?ve packed a career?s worth of writer?s anxiety into the past couple years.?Speaking of students being eager to?become famous professional Joan Didions, I have three questions for you:
1. A complaint I?ve heard a lot from my colleagues at schools where I?ve taught is that all creative writing students believe they?ll get rich writing poetry and?a creative writing professor would be fairer to say what your Dean said from day one of class. It?s tough enough out there to get published and to find readers, let alone hope to make even a small supplemental income doing it. Would I have been a better teacher to encourage you to stop wasting your talents on short stories and poems and instead to sign up for business writing?
2. Do you think there?s money in becoming a famous professional Joan Didion impersonator? Like for bat mitzvas or whatever?
3. When a 76-year-old Joan Didion broke her collarbone last year and that news trended on Twitter, I reacted with what I thought was Twitter gold ? ?Where were all you well-wishers when Joan Didion broke MY collarbone? ? and no one retweeted it. Not one person.
Do you think that?s a funny tweet, Alex?
AS: 1. My belief is that a lot of creatives think that because they?re in the art world, business is irrelevant to them. It?s funny because I was having a similar conversation with one of my closest friends just last night. He and I were on his couch talking about writing, the New School, and all that stuff. He is a popular blogger who just signed a book deal and what comes with all of that is the reality that at the end of the day, there?s a lot more business-thinking than there is
creative-thinking.
Once you have a foot in the door, it switches over to the business of keeping your foot wedged in that door, while hoping to jam your other one in there someday. It?s all business. Certain moves simply can?t be made because of the popularity around your name once you?ve been known to do something or once you?ve adopted a certain online personality. So. What I think should be done is there should be, like, an elective or something that?s called Business of the Arts or The Business of Being Creative. Titles are not my thing, so someone else should name it. Anyone? Thoughts?
But essentially what this class should be is a lecture where there?s always a guest speaker. The class could be an hour and a half, once a week, but folks like you, your pal Mr. Joe Meno and guys like my friend who has made it in the blogging world? people like that? discuss the business.
Liberal Arts students get stuck in the rut I did because they are so fixated on the destination. They just know what they want to be when they grow up and don?t think about the BS they have to go through? the paperwork and grueling business meetings, etc? to get there. So, once an author?s book goes out on the table at Barnes and Noble, said author has readings and book signings and are asked to lecture at colleges and read at colleges, but no one asks them about the annoying parts of getting there. No one asks them how big a pay cut they took to get their book?s front cover facing out on the shelf as opposed to just the spine cover. No one talks about all those things. And that?s fine.
When I was in your creative writing course, it was perfect. We were taught to use our imaginations and write and we did just that. It was innocent, it was fun, it was everything it should have been and it would have been ruined if you were Ebenezer Scrooge in the corner with a jaded, empty stare slamming the idea that none of us are going to be able to buy food let alone pay rent with a writer?s salary.
However, it should be mentioned, and as Lit students/Writing students and I think all Arts students, there should be a requirement to take a course that allows them to hear it from the people who have gone through/are going through it. It?s an opportunity to lift the veil from their eyes, without slamming it in their face during an actual course where within the confines of that course they should just be fanning the fire of their creative mind.
I mean, honestly, there is so much that happens to you when you graduate and hit that wall of realization and personally, I think it?s an important wall to hit because it truly tests the level of passion you have for what you?re doing. As I mentioned earlier, in college it?s easy to feel passionate about everything because you?re a kid-adult just l-i-v-i-n?, man. So, walls are important because they give you the choice to climb them or not. You?re only going to climb a wall as annoyingly huge as the one to be a successful writer if that?s seriously what you want to do.
2. ?I don?t know about bat mitzvah Joan, but I think there?s hope for stripper Joan. Moan Tition. She?s going places.
3. ?I?m sorry no one replied to your tweet. I think it?s funny, Mickey. If I could go back in time I?d retweet it or like it or
counter-tweet or sound my bat signal or something. I just think Joan fans are really serious. They?re all waiting for someone in their life to die so that they can write about it. (But aren?t we all?) #dark
MH: I?ve talked with Lauren Cerand about teaching exactly that course ? the business of writing. I?m on board. Maybe the three of us can team-teach it.
You?re talking to a man who wrote a book about the business of hip hop, and how rappers like Jay-Z and Wu-Tang have used their art to brag about their business sense. Tao Lin does a little of that with his writing (at least he shows the stats of how much he?s earned from his books), and Kurt Vonnegut was very open about the material side of his career in interviews ? at one time he said he?d made about three bucks off every man, woman, and child who died in the firebombing of Dresden, which he survived to write a novel about.
But I?d want the class, if I taught it, to be less about how to scrounge up a living writing stuff you don?t enjoy writing, and more about studying the people who created their own business model and sustained a readership by writing the stuff they loved and keeping the scrounging for a salary a separate thing.
Since you left Rider I?ve been including more of the business side in my classes. Seems like more of it every semester. One student wrote in a course evaluation that I should not start the semester with all the depressing stuff about how little money a writer can make ? she said it kind of cast a pall over the fun of reading and writing. So that?s the other side of it ? it?d be pretty hypocritical for me to make money teaching a creative writing class that discouraged others from writing.
I had those professors when I was a student, and they just seemed like they?d been beaten down by the futility of their approach to teaching, which was to come in and say they were miserable because they?d written and written and never become as successful as they wanted to be, so by this point they hated writing and teaching writing, and even reading. Those were the professors who told me not to go to grad school in English because I?d never get a job as a professor. And now here I am ready to discourage a whole new generation of students from making the choices I made.?I was trying to achieve a balance but I guess I failed in that student?s case.
Obviously, I?m in a bubble because I?ve made way more money from teaching writing than I?ll ever make from writing. But I wouldn?t discourage anyone from doing either of them. Just find ways not to drive yourself deeper into debt as you do it. My other lesson is that because there is so little money in writing books, never?make big compromises in your writing, because the rewards it brings are not worth it.
So you?ve found a balance, it sounds like, in discovering this yoga teacher/armpit model thing that pays money, and that you love to do, and is entirely separate from writing. That doesn?t sound like a bad way to go.
AS: At the end of the day we do what we can do and what we are best at doing. I think it?s important for all artists to come to terms with the fact that for a second they?ll have to take a shitty job to pay the bills, or be an intern or an editorial assistant for some a-hole one year younger than them. But it?s also important, amongst all the depressing chatter, to remember that it evens out. And eventually you wind up doing what you love, be it writing, teaching, editing or yogaing. I will always define half of myself as a writer. That?s in me. I like it and enjoy it and like thinking about it, but I wasn?t one of those who had the patience to climb that wall at that time in my life.
Let?s team-teach it!! I?m down. Or, also, if you ever just want to spew some ideas I can totally help you out with my input or thoughts or whatever. It?s awesome you?ve been adding the writer?s reality crash course to your classroom dynamic, but at the end of the day, sometimes you just want to write and sometimes it?s fun to live in the fictional world that is undergrad where you?re a famous writer at 25 living in Brooklyn with a Vespa. Just sayin?. Dare to dream.
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(Photo Via: wwwnet1.state.nj.us; joan-didion]
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