AZ: While there are writers who may not be suited to the spontaneous conversion of thought to speech in front of a group, my experience is that desire overcomes fear. Being in charge of a class can be less intimidating than being a student in one. As a student, you can’t control when and for how long you speak, nor can you expand or modify statements at will. When teachers are at a loss for something to say, they can always turn to the class for comments. Students in my Writer as Teacher seminar teach mock workshops with their classmates, who sometimes role-play as difficult students. The best advice I can give to a potential teacher is to keep connected to the class -- look, listen, meet with students individually. People in a room.
AC: Not only does teaching take a lot of time, but it also takes a lot of energy. How do you manage writing and teaching?
AZ: Driving a cab takes time and energy; investment banking takes time and energy. There are some who -- by inheritance or success -- are able to put all their time and energy into their writing, but even they may choose to teach because overall it invigorates more than enervates. Teaching keeps me engaged with ideas and with people. I’ll often walk home from class more energetically than I walked to campus. It’s the administrative work -- I spent 17 years as director or chair -- that really takes its toll on the writing.
AC: Combining writing with any job requires discipline -- discipline in making time as well as in shutting off the day's work, the angry fare or the unhappy boss. But with teaching, if you care about it, it's hard not to spend extra time considering students' work, or meeting with them, or just, as you point out in the book, worrying that you forgot a student's name or that you joked when you should have been serious. You're responsible for other people while teaching, especially if your students are young, in a way that you aren't in another job, and that can make it harder to set boundaries.
AZ: I know how much it meant to me when my teachers gave an extra effort or showed genuine concern beyond the “job.” It’s actually easier to do that if you feel the concern rather than think of it as obligation (which can be more draining). Recently I was answering a couple of late-night emails from students, and my wife asked me what I was working on. I said I wasn’t “working” -- I was “corresponding.” I was being flip, but then I thought of all the wonderful letters written by writers (“negative capability” comes up in a letter, not an essay).
Sometimes the key -- at least for me -- is not to compartmentalize: during the semester I don’t necessarily set aside time for writing vs. time for schoolwork (critiquing students, reading for seminar preparation). I might be at a café editing one of my manuscripts, then work on a student story.
It’s crucial to make the best of the time between semesters. If I can end the summer with momentum, I’ll tend to ride that wave into the Fall term.
AC: Academia can sometimes be a harsh place. How do you respond when students offer unconstructive criticism in a workshop?
AZ: It’s always possible to injure someone unintentionally in a workshop; if I detect that criticism is unintentionally unconstructive, I’ll try to recast it in a more helpful way. Often, I don’t have to do this, because other students will jump in. There’s no room for malice. Deliberately mean comments are blessedly rare, and I’ll talk to the offender privately, after doing damage control in class.
It’s important to discuss all aspects of the workshopping process at the start, and to have periodic follow-ups to see how it’s going. After a few weeks, I’ve found that it’s more likely for students to be concerned that criticism is too nice rather than too harsh.
AC: So after a few weeks, you check in with the class, and the class may agree as a whole to shift the tone, to be more direct with each other, for instance?
AZ: Yes, they get a chance to exchange feedback on their feedback. You have to be careful not to overdo this kind of thing -- you don’t want to spend so much time on process that the work takes a back seat -- but it’s better to deal with the issues as a group while adjustments can be made. I hate hearing about something for the first time on an end-of-term evaluation.
AC: As a writer and a teacher, I also appreciated the fact that the book provides useful writing exercises. Do you have a favorite (included in the book or not)? How much do you use exercises in the classroom when you teach?
AZ: My favorite is “Winter Counts,” which is in the book.
I’ll usually give students a sheet of exercises and ask them to do four or five during the term; many of their best pieces start out as exercises. I also like to do brief in-class writing exercises. For one thing, they’re good “filler” for the first few minutes of class as stragglers come in or for the last ten minutes when there isn’t time for a new critique. But more important, they usually succeed on the fly, whereas at home a writer may need to warm up, get cold, and then reheat before producing. There’s something about the group atmosphere -- and perhaps the lower expectations engendered by the time restriction -- that enables most students to create some wonderful sparks for future writing.
Here’s a three-minute in-class exercise that works well, especially for the first class: I ask students to spend one minute writing a sentence of narrative -- any length, any tone, anything. Then, I say, “Spend one minute writing another sentence of narrative that in no way relates to the first.” When they’re done, I say: “Now, connect them with one of the following: “Consequently,” “In spite of that,” “But,” “And then,” “Amazingly,” or “Of course.”