I remember it from my senior year of high school, and from my senior year of college: going to the mailbox every day, hoping to find The Big Envelope: The Big Envelope from the schools to which I applied, The Big Envelope that would inform by its girth whether I had been accepted or denied, before I read a single word of the letter enclosed.
In 1993 I got big envelopes from Pitt, Clark, and BU, and I got a little envelope from Wesleyan. In 1998 I got a big envelope from Emerson, a little envelope from Brown, and a medium sized envelope from NYU (I was waitlisted, and invited into a different program).
Today, there was a big envelope in my mailbox. Having been well trained, I felt the little flutter of excitement that I get every time there is a big envelope in my mailbox, although most often these days, big envelopes are from insurance companies. I reminded myself of this, and of the fact that my transcripts got to Hopkins late, so it was unlikely that I would hearing anything until after the new year. I saw the return address: Hopkins, mostly covered by one of those postal bar code stickers. It could be something from my doctor’s office, although they usually send little envelopes. I opened The Big Envelope cautiously.
Congratulations!
My eyes started to burn. My throat got tight.
The admissions committee, after a full review of your application materials, has voted to accept you as a full degree candidate for the Master of Arts in Writing, with a concentration in Fiction.
I have been debating since before I applied whether or not I would go if accepted. Part of me likes staying untrained and doesn’t want to lose the spontaneity, to get workshopped to bland perfection. Part of me knows well that a MA in writing from a great school is an accomplishment, but it is also much more impressive outside the community than within it. But, another part of me is shaking the big academic slouch that I have always been, and saying “LOOK! Look at how we grew up! Look at the kind of school we can attend!” I slept and wrote my way through high school, partied my way through college, and did the absolute minimum I could do and keep my self-respect and get to the next level. In high school, that was keeping my grades just high enough to stay in honors english. In college, it was keeping my grades just high enough (over a 3.0) that I wouldn’t have anything too devastating to explain to future employers. There was just always something better to do, as my friends were going off to ivy (and little ivy) league undergraduate and graduate schools, setting the foundations for their careers.
Anyway, to me, just getting in is an accomplishment. Almost every summer for the past eleven years I have thought about getting a portfolio together and applying somewhere, picking up where I left off when I decided to forgo an MFA after getting into Emerson in 1998. This time, this year, I did it, and it worked.
With that, for anyone interested, I am posting the statement of purpose that was part of my application. When I sent it off a few weeks ago in a big envelope with my writing sample, the only thing I liked about it was that it was done. I guess it was good enough, so sayeth The Big Envelope that arrived today.
Twenty years ago, I walked onto The Johns Hopkins University campus for the first time as a fourteen-year-old CTY participant. The six-week creative writing program was a natural fit for me; I had been writing stories for as long as I could string words together, and my family and teachers praised me for it. I could not have foreseen then that this would be the first of many workshops over the years, and that two decades and twenty-one moves across seven states later, I would be back in Baltimore, applying for a master’s degree in fiction writing at the same school.
Writing is something I have always done, and while I do not have choice about being a writer –it is simply how I am wired– my choices around it have taken some wild turns over the years. I wrote my first book almost thirty years ago, when I was five years old. It was constructed of a manila folder with notebook paper stapled inside, and it was a careful, detailed autobiography, including copious footnotes about goings on that interrupted the flow of the narrative. (Of course, I was five, and I didn’t really know about footnotes yet. Instead I called them “book box info” and put them in boxes on the side of the page instead of the bottom. Functionally, however, they were footnotes.)
After my first workshop through CTY, I wrote my way through high school. At the time, poetry was my stronger genre, and I won awards for it every year (although my proudest accomplishment was receiving a note from the admissions board of one of the colleges to which I applied, telling me that they especially enjoyed my essay).
In college I wrote mostly for my own entertainment, but occasionally for the entertainment of others. I published a series of humor columns in the The Daily Collegian at Penn State and I wrote song parodies that became anthems at parties. I had this funny idea that I might be a normal person one day, and pursued a degree in health policy, but just before my last year, I learned that there was such thing as a graduate degree in creative writing. The first program website I saw gave me chills, and I knew it was something I had to do. I rearranged my class schedule to accommodate writing classes, toiled my way through fiction and poetry workshops until I had a portfolio together, sweated out the recommendations, and applied at the end of the semester. Two months later, I got into a top ranked M.F.A. program, my first choice.
I was overjoyed! Then I decided not to go. There were a lot of reasons, financial and logistical, but looking back, I think I knew I was not ready to dig that deep just yet. At twenty-three, there was only so much to mine, and a limit to how much I would reveal about myself. I needed another decade to try being “normal.” I spent a few years in my twenties –for the first time in my life– not writing much of anything, The muse still shone from time to time, and I still kept a journal, but I was also busy getting married and divorced, and moving all over the country.
Somewhere in all of those moves, I started blogging (first privately, later publicly), and attended a weeklong fiction workshop at the University of Iowa. It had been years since I had been in a workshop, and the moment I set foot in the room, I felt at home. In every workshop, class, and group I’ve attended since, I am reminded that this is where I belong, and when I am with other writers this is my community.
The past few years have been a series of homecomings. I moved back to Baltimore, I joined the Maryland Writers’ Association and serve on the board, and most importantly, I have come home to my writing. Professionally, I write content for websites. Personally, I made my blog public (http://www.laurenflax.net) and have a good following, and I started writing fiction again. Now I know that I am ready to invest the time and energy into a writing degree, not only because it is right for me, but because I know that I have something to offer my peers as well.
Part of my motivation for attending a graduate program is to sharpen my skills with longer narratives. Very short fiction has always been my strength, whether abstract, or capturing a scene or moment, while longer, linear fiction is more of a struggle. My reading reflects this. Recently I have been rereading Yasunari Kawabata’s Palm of the Hand Stories. I have also read many translations of Eastern mystical writings, such as the Bhagavad Gita, The Yoga Sutras, Bodhidharma, and the poetry of Rumi. The Eastern sensibility about language has begun to infiltrate my writing, occasionally in tone, and often in the examination of the mental processes of characters. The beauty of the imagery and the economy of language are moving and inspirational. In Western literature, I am enthralled by the modern novel, especially the works of John Updike. He does with elegance what I find daunting: unwinding a complex story in a way that is genuine and respectful of the characters.
While the writer in me loves the poetry of coming back to Hopkins for a master’s degree all these years later, I am drawn to the program for practical, personal reasons. I write fiction primarily, but I also write poetry, drama, and I would love to write a screenplay; having the option to take courses in other genres is not only desirable, but a necessity for me. I also need to work, so a part-time program is a necessity as well. The fact that all of this exists right in the city I love at a school I deeply respect is ideal.
So far, the most important thing I have learned about writing fiction is this: fiction is telling the truth absent the burden of the facts. This is what I am called to do. I have never had a choice about whether or not I would be a writer. I have been making up stories and viewing the world through the lens of literature for as long as I can remember. It is my goal that through a master’s degree program in fiction I will learn to more effectively and powerfully communicate the truth through my writing, and contribute to a community of writers doing the same.
