Tongue Kissing Boys Taught Me Everything I Needed to Know About Writing
The creative writing program at the University of Oklahoma was small. There was a tight-knit group of us in the English program, and we all had the same classes.
I wouldn’t say I got to know anyone well, just because I was far too self-conscious to actually make friends. I also always felt like I was the dumb kid that they just let into the program, and that my writing would always be the worst.
(I still feel this way all the time. My writing career is basically just one extended dalliance with impostor syndrome.)
The workload was ideal, though. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t attending classes that made no sense to me. There was no chemistry or calculus. But there were Canterbury Tales and Baudrillard and modern poetry.
I would sit through classes and listen to professors exclusively talk about things I cared about. I’d start the day with critical theory, then move on to literature of the diaspora. From there, I’d take a class in medieval Spanish poetry, and then go onto the creative writing classes, which were always in the evening.
I took fiction writing and poetry writing, and the advanced versions of those classes too. And each class, we’d come sit around the conference table in one of the small classrooms. We’d read each other’s work and dissect it. We’d say what worked for us and what didn’t, any why those two sentences should be switched.
Even now, I get anxiety thinking about how open and vulnerable we were with our work.
But that’s a creative writing workshop.
There was a kind of solidarity to it. Yes, we were breaking down each other’s hard work. But we were doing it to make each other better.
And, at the end of the day, it was all of us just trying to survive the program, the workload, and our professors.
It should be noted that our professors weren’t villains hellbent on our destruction.
They did, however, have the power to assign more reading.
English Degrees Mean Reading
The creative writing program was part of the English department, and we all had to take so many literature classes.
And while it was work that I was very happy to do, and work that didn’t involve any math classes, there was still a lot.
At one point, me and a classmate tallied up what we were reading for homework in the course of a week. It wound up being right under 800 pages.
Now, granted, some of these pages were fiction, and some of them were really quite small given they were in a paperback book of poetry. Some of them were kind of beefy and small print, like anything we were assigned in the Norton Anthology of Criticism.
So, it shouldn’t be shocking that when I was done with my homework for the week, I stopped reading. I just didn’t have the bandwidth for more.
I spent a lot of free time listening to music with headphones, or watching trash reality TV.
And I knew there was a whole list of books that I would rather read out there, and that I should be reading for fun since that was something I always enjoyed. And let’s face it — the best way to be a better writer is to read.
I just didn’t want to at that time.
And Then the Professor Asked…
The creative writing faculty in the English department were all characters in their own right. I would also argue that anyone who makes a career in academia is a character. But the creative writing faculty — they were on their own plane of existence.
One professor, whose name I won’t share for the sake of privacy, especially since I’m about to share one of her offhanded comments that honestly probably expressed more frustration at being surrounded by 19-year-olds all day, taught the poetry writing classes.
She was, and still is, a very intense woman.
And one day, just as the workshop was about to begin, she just casually asked the class what we were reading.
As English majors, we had plenty to say. Weren’t we all reading everything all the time? Some students responded with the Foucault piece they had to read for a different class. Others mentioned a list of Shakespeare sonnets. I, for my part, talked about how I was reading essays on comedy for the Comic Theory and Practice class, as well as the memoir of Mae West for my History of American Musical Theater class.
And this professor, cagey as she was, just watched and listened. Her eyes seemed to narrow with each book mentioned. Her smile became sharper.
When everyone in the 10-person workshop had responded, the professor said, “Yeah. You’re reading those for your classes. But what are you reading for fun?”
My brain broke a little with that. When reading is the work you are doing, you don’t do a whole lot of it for fun.
I clammed up fast and looked down at the table. I knew this was going to a place where we didn’t win the conversation. But clamming up and becoming invisible is what I do best, and it’s how I got through school as an anxious kid.
The other students, however, didn’t see the trap that was laid.
I can’t remember who, but someone said that there was no time to read.
You don’t tell that to a writer. And you especially don’t tell that to a writer who has been entrusted with teaching students how to write.
This professor always made it clear that she didn’t take shit from anyone, especially her students. So, when someone said that they didn’t have time to read, she shut it down quick.
My memory makes me believe that she slammed her hand down on the table. But I can’t be sure. It wouldn’t be out of character for her.
What I do remember is this:
She looked around the room and said there was always time to read. And if we wanted to write, we needed to read as much as possible.
Then, as she scanned the students sitting around the table, she said something I’ll never forget.
“If you’ve got time to be tongue kissing boys, you’ve got time to be reading.”
Tongue Kissing vs. Reading
I’ve thought a lot about that quote over the past almost 15 years. It’s true, and it’s really helped me put things in perspective.
Now, I do think it’s important to note that during college, I wasn’t running around tongue kissing anyone. I wasn’t cool, and I was too insecure to really form any friendships, let alone romantic relationships, at that time.
But I do get the meaning, and it’s something that I’ve shared with my students when I used to teach. (Though, not in those words. I never had tenure, so I tried to be a lot more palatable in the classroom.)
I think we can all easily say we don’t have time to read more or to improve our writing. And for the most part, none of us have huge pockets of time to suddenly become the writer we’ve always wanted to be.
But we can always forgo the guilty pleasures for something that will help us.
So, rather than watching a lot of weird reality TV competitions, I try to only watch scripted shows or read books. I won’t say you have to read to write better, especially since TV show writing has gotten so good in the past 20 years.
But that keeps me consuming things I need to consume to become a better writer.
And while I won’t say that you can’t live your life — please, by all means, kiss all the people you want to kiss who also consent to said kisses.
I also remember that if I can make time for something I enjoy, I can also make time for things that need to be done that I don’t enjoy.
I’m not saying you have to give up kissing to be a writer, or all your guilty pleasures. I’m also not saying that I don’t enjoy reading, even though there are times where I want to do something that’s easier to do.
I am saying that you can make space for the things you want to become if you aren’t always giving into fun.
So, please, by all means, kiss whoever you want.
But if you’ve got time to run around kissing folks for funsies, you’ve got time become the writer you want to be.
