Arna Bontemps Hemenway
(2004)
How would you characterize the value of your YWW experience in the larger context of who you are as a writer/artist?
I loved the YWW. I can remember almost everything that happened very vividly. I got a lot of good writing instruction, for sure, but I would say that something that mattered more to me in the end was just the feeling of being around a group of other people my age who really wanted to write, and who cared about doing it well. Most of the people from my year have gone on now to grow up and do other things, but for me at least, that feeling was like catching a glimpse of the possible future. This could be what you make your life about, I think was the lesson I got from it. There are other people out there who don’t want to be lawyers, and who will sweat their unmentionables off in the un-airconditioned bowels of Tuttle dorm just to read a good story, or maybe learn how to write one. I understand that the YWW has moved into some more habitable digs, but I doubt that the feeling I had is lost for the participants.
What’s the best advice you can give a Young Writer (in general or in your specific genre)?
Well, the first thing is to understand that you have to fail, and fail hard, and fail over and over and over, if you want to write anything good. You know, we get a lot of “famous” authors speaking here at Iowa, and when I was a student, I always used to ask them this exact question. The funny thing was, almost all of their answers were horrible. It’s like asking someone who just got out of WWII and has shell-shock what their advice is for a kid who wants to go into the army. But it’s a question I’ve thought a lot about, and something I still struggle with. For me personally, I think the best advice I can give is a little unorthodox (and I’m no authority or anything): I think the best way to become a better writer is to become a more cultivated person, actually. It’s very true that you have to work hard etcetera, but it’s also true that if you want to be a good writer, you need to work on cultivating your taste, cultivating your perspective, cultivating a stable and fair idea of yourself. Most of the advice people give young writers is derivative of these things (taste = read a lot, as much as you can // perspective = be very open to a variety of experiences, people, characters, stories, etcetera // stable idea of yourself = don’t worry about trying to develop a voice or a style, or writing in ways that are popular right now; all the best writing comes from the peculiar qualities of the writer’s relationship with herself–that’s what’s human and interesting to a reader, in the end, if you ask me). But I think maybe the best advice is that there’s no advice, really, to be given. It’s not something that anybody can figure out. Everybody has to find their own way through, and you’ll have to as well.
What do you find yourself most often reading or listening to lately and why?
I always read a lot of different things. Most recently I’ve been making my way through Hilary Mantel’s first two Cromwell books (Wolf Hall, and Bring Up the Bodies), both of which won the Man Booker prize. I really resisted those books–I thought they sounded kind of boring, and took most of the positive press to be just more anglophilia–but I’m glad I gave them a second chance. I read nowadays for two main reasons: enjoyment and demonstration (in that order). And Wolf Hall is really quite remarkable in its unique structure, in the way it moves from scene to scene and renders such a deeply imagined and felt consciousness. There’s also lots of blood and guts, which is always entertaining.