Draft is a series about the art and craft of writing.

I’m a genre writer. Gary Shteyngart hasn’t blurbed any of my novels, and Marion Ettlinger has never photographed me for a book jacket. I’m more at ease with the sequins and shirtless men at the Romantic Times conference than I am with the serious eyewear at poetry readings. When critics describe my work, which is basically chick lit, they don’t say it’s emotionally astute, sweeping or a tour de force. They call it “a fast-paced screamer.”

I’d had five novels published when, in 2008, just after the recession hit, my option was not renewed at my publishing house. I’d been supporting myself with book sales for five years. Now I had no contract, no agent and no new manuscript. Since I’d never had any formal writing training, I decided it was the ideal time to get my M.F.A. in creative writing.



I was accepted at a program in South Carolina near my home. At the welcome party I chatted with the other students. Most were younger than I, but already had the air of serious writers. We’d read one another’s workshop pages in advance, and I tried to match the work with the students. I said to one, “Didn’t you write that wonderfully moody piece on that D.J. from Las Vegas?”

“Yes,” he said. “And you?”

“I wrote the story about the all-female, middle-aged rock band. The first scene opens in Chico’s and —”

He was already drifting away toward the cocktails. The main topic of conversation was the workshops; first-year students were especially nervous. Not me. I was used to having my work publicly flogged. Kirkus skewered my last novel; it was partially set in heaven, and the critic called it “hellish.” After a review like that, how bad could a workshop be?



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The next morning the professor picked my pages to be critiqued first. Seconds in, it became clear that if there had been a goat in the room, he’d have gleefully fed it my papers. He tore apart my work for at least 15 minutes, dubbing it “parlor fiction.” I wasn’t the only one criticized. One student caught flak for stilted dialogue, another because her characters grinned too much. One even got some praise, for muscular prose (whatever that is). But no praise for me. I felt as if I had got the brunt of my professor’s ire.

The next few classes weren’t much better. At first, I was tempted to quit. But another part of me wondered if this was my opportunity to grow as a writer, to become less rollicking and more “fully realized.” My novels had always drawn laughs but little respect. Even friends occasionally said, “When are you going to finally write a serious novel,” i.e., one without recipes in the back.

So I decided to stick with it. And by the second semester, I was starting to understand what the program wanted: plain, unadorned sentences, no clichés, nothing too funny and easy on the plot.

Every semester a literary agent from New York would fly in to be a guest lecturer. The students looked forward to these visits but they were often a big bust. The fast-talking agents were like heathens in a church, swilling the holy water. Basically they all said the same thing: Writers need a distinctive voice. Also stuff needs to happen; you have to have a plot. And by the way, short story collections sell about as well as potato peelings in Idaho. The fact is, you need a novel.

Afterward, our professors would gather together the shaken students and try to undo the damage. Instead of addressing the agent’s points, they would usually criticize his grammar, taste or even clothes. The message was: That person is not one of us. And he is cheapening the art of writing.

At first, I couldn’t help but identify with the agents. So what if one misused the word literally? What did it matter if another had recently sold a novel told from the point of view of a dog? Wake up, people! These so-called outsiders can make your dreams a reality.

But eventually, I started thinking less like a commercial writer and more like an M.F.A. student. I started quoting John Gardner on how an artist “gets his sense of worth and honor from his conviction that art is powerful.” I read Poets & Writers magazine cover to cover. I knew my transformation was complete when, during my last semester, a high-powered literary agent visited. During lunch he put my professor on the spot, daring her to pitch her work in progress. Even though she was clearly flustered, he kept pressing her. The entire time I found myself thinking, “Mister, that is one loud necktie you’re wearing.”

At the end of the two-year program, I read aloud from my thesis novel. People complimented me afterward, but no one laughed, not even a titter. It was an odd feeling. I tried to reassure myself; who needs laughs when you might one day be the author of “an unflinching and elegiac novel that echoes the work of (insert name of very important writer)”?

After graduation I shopped my thesis around. I sent it to agents with a more literary bent because I now considered myself a literary writer. I received a slew of rejections. One kind agent leveled with me and said my prose was competent but lacked personality. I wanted to write her back and say, “Wait. I thought that was a good thing?”

I was stymied for a long time, trying to figure out who I was as a writer. Eventually I did a rewrite, employing my breezy pre-M.F.A. style. I queried again, expecting rejection letters echoing my classmates and professors, saying, “Too precious” or “Seems glib.” Instead I got five offers of representation.

Two years later, I continue to write fast-paced, funny novels, and if my professors were to read my work now they’d probably say, “That chick-lit girl learned nothing.”

In fact, I gained something invaluable: Each writer enters into the craft with a specific strength. For me it was humor. For another it might be storytelling or the creation of beautiful sentences. As beginners we tend to rely too heavily on our strengths, and sometimes we have to minimize them in order to focus on our weaknesses. Along the way, different styles beckon. Eventually, though, we must embrace the gifts that enticed us into being writers in the first place. As one of the Southern characters in my novels might say, “It’s best to dance with the one who brung you.”

Karin Gillespie is the author of the “Bottom Dollar Girls” series and a co-author of “The Sweet Potato Queens’ 1st Big-Ass Novel: Stuff We Didn’t Actually Do, But Could Have, and May Yet.”