My First Semester at Vermont College of Fine Arts

Last week I sent off my last packet of work for the semester to my advisor Sharon Darrow. If anyone had told me how fast this semester would pass, I would never have believed them. If someone else had told me how much I would learn in a five month period, I wouldn't have believed them, either. If yet another person had told me (and I think people did tell me this) how much I would learn from writing critical essays and how I would come to enjoy them, I would have thought that person had drank too much Kool-Aide. But the truth is, the semester flew by, I learned more than I could have imagined, and yes, I do love writing critical essays!

People, VCFA alums, told me the program would change me, not only as a writer, but as a person. I know I have changed as a writer. So here is a brief summary of what I learned.


First, I'll get those nasty critical essays out of the way . . .
I am not lying when I say I came to love them. I really learned how to read as a writer. So much so, that it is now difficult for me to read anything without picking it apart. And you might ask how I, a lowly newbie in the published world, can have the chutzpah to criticize well-known, successfully published authors? I do it because not every book appeals to every reader. (Which is another thing I learned and I'll get to it later in the post.) For the books I loved, I picked them apart to find out what it was I loved about them, what did the writer do to pull me in, how did she create a main character that I cared about, worried about, and subsequently, went on a journey with? With books that I did not love so much, I look at what it was I didn't like? What worked, what didn't. This is the heart of a critical essay. Learning what works for you as a writer and a reader, examining that closely and then applying what has been learned to your own work.

A sub-lesson in all this reading (FYI - I read 52 books this semester) is that it is impossible for one book to appeal to all readers. Which is why there is currently a surge of vampire, wizard, faery, magical nether-world books. Some people LOVE Stephanie Meyer's TWILIGHT series (I didn't) while others love Cynthia Leitich Smith's YA gothic fantasies TANTALIZE and ETERNAL (I did). Both have love stories with immortals and humans, both have characters who must exert blood sucking restraint. But they are very different and beyond being in the same genre cannot be compared (unless it's in a critical essay, which maybe I will write next semester). So, the lesson I learned from this is that it doesn't matter if an idea has been done before. The trick is to make it your idea, with your emotions, characters, and situations. It doesn't matter that ghost stories have to done to death (no pun intended) my current wip is different.

I also learned this semester to plumb the depths of my soul for my characters' emotions. The story I am currently working on is more personal than most of my other works, but, the emotions of my character are not my emotions. Still I must feel them. Even with my historical works, while I have never watched a heretic burned to death, I can feel the revulsion my 15th century character, Rat, feels as he watches. I need to find my own emotions, turn them, twist them, and make them Rat's. Emotion pulls a reader into the story. Emotion makes the reader care.

But the greatest impact on me this semester was learning about POV. Simple. Basic. Everyone who thinks they are a writer should know about point of view. Yes, everyone should know, but it's much more complex than I originally thought. POV is more than through whose eyes the story is told. It sets the tone of the story and the limits in which the story can be told. If you're using first person, everything has to be through that character's eyes. Even with the more lenient third person, a writer must stay in one character's eyes at a time. Yes, in third person, you can shift from one character to another, but while in one character's pov everything is through their eyes - so all those words like "felt", "saw", "thought", "believed" are not necessary. If you're in your character's head the reader knows it's them seeing, thinking, believing, and feeling. And that gets into the whole notion of showing not telling!

I could go on about what I've learned about objective correlatives, psychic distance, and establishing rules for a magical world, but this post is getting long. So let me suffice it to say that I have learned more than I thought possible.

Yes, one semester at VCFA has changed me as a writer. I can't wait to see where I'll be after three more!