A City of Crumpled Paper

During my prison writing class this week, one of my students approached
me and said he wanted to talk. Like all the men, he wears khaki scrubs
and enormous khaki lace-up hiking boots (which seems a rather cruel
joke). Like most of the men, he towers above me. I always forget how
short I am until the end of class when they unravel themselves from
those tiny desks. This particular student is thoughtful and cheerful and
shows talent. The week before he had shown me the first few pages of a
story he's writing about a young girl struggling to find a better life.
Last month he shared the first part of a memoir he's writing.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I don't think I can do this anymore." His voice was soft, his eyes on his boots.

"Why not?" So many things can happen in a prison -- men get transferred,
they get locked up, their schedules shift. Change is a constant here --
sometimes seemingly arbitrary and sometimes because the inmate does
something felony-stupid.

"I just want to give up."

"Give up?" I said. "Why would you say such a thing?"

"What's the point?" he said. "I try so hard. I work at something for a long time and then it's no good."

"Who told you it's no good?"

He laughed and looked at me. "My editor-in-chief."

Good Lord. He meant me. "When did I say that?"

"I gave you that piece to read and I thought when I gave it to you it
was brilliant, and then you gave it back to me and you had all these
comments on it."

Oh dear. "I told you I liked it, didn't I?" He nodded. "I told you I
thought you should keep going with it, and that I wanted to know what
happened next, right?" He nodded. "I told you I thought you had talent,
didn't I?"

"Yea, I guess so."

"So how did that turn into 'it's no good'?"

"I thought it was perfect, and then after you looked at it I saw how bad it really was and I don't think I can do it."

And so we sat down and had a chat about what it takes to be a writer,
including that great quote from Oscar Wilde (who also did some time)
about how he spent the morning taking out a comma, and spent the
afternoon putting it back in. We talked about how what the student
heard, and what I said were two different things. I never said his work
wasn't any good; his internal "Editor-in-Chief" said that, the annoying
little bugger.

All writers do that, of course. My husband used to threaten to put a
recording device on my phone calls with my agent and publisher because
no matter how many lovely things they said, I'd get off the phone
convinced I was a talentless, unpublishable hack.


A writer learning his craft.

"You have to give yourself permission to write crap," I said. "You're
learning. It takes time. It's slow work, and hard work. I write a
boatload of crap for every book I finish. So will you, if you're lucky."

He looked at me as though he wasn't quite sure about my mental health, but he agreed to keep going.

Now, it's true these men have some special challenges. For the most
part, they're not in prison because they're masters of discipline,
patience and hard work. But the truth is they're not much different than
most of my students outside prison.

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