Literary Dinosaur
“Are you talking about pain porn?” my student is inquisitive, her hand up in the air, alert and engaged. It is 2017 and I am mid-lecture, pontificating on the concept of the tortured artist as it applies to writers—an image the world often seems intent on recreating and I hope to reframe. We are meant to suffer, writhe through career abysses dank with anxiety over withering markets, competition for agents, publication deals. Ebooks will be the end of us. The Internet is a dearth to intelligence. And say goodbye to those precious indie bookstores…they will soon be no longer.
I blink back at her, the stark lights of the lecture hall focused on my face. “Pain porn?”
“You know, as a society, it’s about how we crave reading about and consuming art that highlights other peoples’ suffering, especially people who are traditionally marginalized or oppressed.” She is matter-a-fact, arms crossed in front of her chest. I’d like to say she’s incredulous—How does the professor not know?—but she patiently waits for me to take it in, as I would if teaching a new concept.
“I’m going to have to Google that,” I say, jotting the phrase down in my notebook. “Thank you.”
This is not the first time I have learned something from one of my students, which can have the effect of making me feel like a literary dinosaur despite being in my thirties—our roles as educator and to-be-educated dramatically reversed. Usually, the cultural teachings my students provide come in the form of new phrases and slang, terms that later find homes in our dictionaries and daily dialogue. It’s pronounced MEEM, one student said of the sarcastic image I showcased in my presentation, rolling her eyes at my adorable, elderly ways. Rhymes with seem. I stood corrected. Although we still differ on how to pronounce GIF. I am, just now, learning what it means to be “extra.”
My classes are taught in a stuffy room devoid of natural light, capacity of 120 young minds to mould. For many of my students, our first-year Introduction to Creative Writing class is an escape from their otherwise science-heavy course loads. They come armed with teenage angst and a majority of them also tote along—bless their old-meets-new-school hearts—actual pens and paper instead of computers for note taking. I’ve learned my lesson from last year; I now give a ten-minute break halfway through my two-hour lecture, because this generation expects information by bullet point on a PowerPoint slide, not evangelized with my passionate arm gestures. But I don’t blame them, with social media demanding so much of their hearts, their tenderness, not to mention a dramatically different professional landscape where precarity reigns and security is a pipe dream.
Despite the fact that I am—as one student in my seminar group mentioned—old enough to be their mothers, they are marvels, each of them. After class, I often walk back to my car shaking my head because I thought a university job meant giving knowledge, not absorbing it from people half my age. But I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I’ve heard other instructors in the English department complain about allocations of first-year courses, the lack of dedication, those very same short attention spans that I see as a resource in so many ways. What about the things they teach us, though? I asked while slurping my coffee. My colleagues didn’t respond, likely because they often comment on my own relative youth, which I interpret as raising questioning eyebrows at my credentials.
Although my mostly teenage audience love their screens—I am strict about cell phones in class out of respect for our shared learning experience. I call out those whose faces are illuminated by white light, usually scrolling Tumblr or TikTok or some other online digital tool that perplexes me. Sometimes, they stop to show me what they’re looking at or posting and explain its relevance to our class. What do you mean, the things you post just…disappear? Sometimes I miss permanence, crave it in this age of disposable text.
It’s because of my former career in the military that I’ve been slow and late on the technology uptake. In the 2000s, social media usage wasn’t common for soldiers, considering the secure nature of our work. And blogging? Website creation? Hell, the government barely functioned with each outdated version of Microsoft, the system only moderately operational before a new update rolled out—so God, don’t ask them to dip into the minutiae of WordPress and Instagram. Ten years ago, had you asked me what a Tweet was, I would have brought my shoulders to my ears. Bird sound? Quirky euphemism for a fart?
After nearly a decade of military life, I decided to return to my professional writing undergraduate degree roots and become an author or find work in publishing. The 2011 job hunt proved ruthless when I was stacked up against my generational peers, who were tech savvy by demand of the workforces they’d been operating in while I was learning to fire a weapon and organize a command post. Publishers wanted me to have experience with content management systems, social media account operation, and Photoshop knowhow for the inevitable photos that would accompany my “feeds.” Can you SEO that, too? Sometimes, I’m still not sure I fully grasp the concept of the hashtag. It was a strange position to be in, both young from some viewpoints and elderly in others. Twenty-seven years old and uncertain of how to add a friend on Facebook.
And trying to figure all this out felt so moot, so superficial, so beyond the dream I had of the writer’s life in which I’d have ink pots scattered across my desk and a vintage typewriter on display. I just wanted to put words on the page and arrange them into something musical to the ear, the eye, the heart. What I didn’t want was to embrace all the ways in which technology and youth made this life possible because it didn’t fit in with my dreamed aesthetic. But a girl’s gotta eat.
So I set to work. The librarian quickly learned my name as I checked out titles like Social Media Marketing for Dummies, and WordPress for Beginners, and watched YouTube videos or read blogs when I got stuck. From there stemmed my own website, social media accounts I’m somewhat proficient at managing, and backup online storage solutions. Mostly, I sling up photos of my dog, with hashtags like #BullTerrier and #WorkFromHomeColleague. I still don’t know how to apply a filter to hide my chin hairs or pimples. Old and young combined, even in a selfie.
This is the writer’s life these days, the life I try to deromanticize for the first-year university students I teach. It is a cobbling together of fresh ideas and old techniques. It is a side hustle at the restaurant down the street and an unglamourous hour before shift spent hammering at the keyboard. It’s sneaking moments for sparkly observations while bouncing the feverish baby on your hip. It is multitasking at a macro level. It is horrible and wonderful at the same time.
Because here’s the thing. You will write a book, perhaps, but your publisher will not want to offer a contract without an already established online platform.
Magazines will want your content for less money, while publishing it through several different mediums. Online. Print. And can you share and engage and like that on Facebook, too?
More for less.
You will have to be a Jack-Jill-Jamie of all trades, knowledgeable about software and design layout and editing.
You will consistently feel somewhere out of your league because you will always be stacking yourself up against posed Instagram perfection (and there will be a vintage typewriter in the office that you will lust for but be unable to afford).
And yet with the advancement of technology that the young are so reliant on comes diversity and inclusivity. Stories from far corners are shared, and people often left out of the communication sphere are drawn in with new means of access. Language changes and grows with usage and creativity. If we work with technology, those stories can reach new audiences, and we can hear new voices who have been forced to be quiet for so long. But only if we listen.
A writing classroom is a unique space that stands apart from the remainder of academia, and my students are often relieved to discover this. In creative writing, there is the sense that instructors learn along with their students, in some capacity or another, and that the instructor is more of a guide through the path of finding one’s own creative and literary voice, rather than the ultimate authoritarian on all things book related. These classrooms are laxer, with the hopes of safe spaces in which to share our work.
At the end of each term or course, I have my students share a piece of their reading in a professional, timed manner, standing in my place at the front of the lecture hall, the owner of their own story. They are taught about voice projection, told to expect emotions to bubble up. Cry if you need to. Take a break. This experience is yet another necessary part of the writer’s life.
Something comes alive within each of us as we sit and listen. We hear intimate tales divulging pain, suffering, and joy. We learn of family deaths and gender-affirming transitions. We are played songs, with lyrics sung throughout the echoing auditorium. When the readers are finished, many are crying, hugging, doling out their phone numbers so they can develop their own writing groups. They create Slack channels to share writing tips, and Google Docs to keep track of writing contest deadlines. From the back of the classroom, perched on my uncomfortable stool, I admire their ability to organize with the click of a button.
In this way, I have learned that my role as both a writer and a writing instructor are relatively safe from the dangers of the professional extinction that lurks with each new edition of iPhone or software update. My first book has been even been pirated to “teach” AI. But creating resonance with readers, getting to the heart, sourcing passion, building that connection to other writers and fostering safe spaces for sharing work without censorship—well, only a human can do that. We have to work with what we’ve got.
As a creative writer in the age of technology, expanded even further since that 2017 introductory writing course, I sometimes feel like a polar bear managing climate change, with only shrinking ice floes to settle on. Yet technology is also what connects me to the outside world when I am alone for endless weeks, clacking out chapters of my own writing until my fingers ache. Through the power of the online space, I connect with likeminded individuals all over the world, keep in touch with writing groups, offer book recommendations on Goodreads, and link with former students who share publishing news. And then there’s my disabilities—rheumatoid arthritis and depression can make physically typing impossible, so on bad days, software helps me remain productive in the profession I love.
It’s my office walls, not my computer, that tell the tale of my passion, reminders of why I became a writer: a framed print of my first major magazine story, a piece of art that showcases the painted spines of my favourite reads, a scattered pattern of floating shelves that hold a sampling of my book trove and cherished family photos. On the bookshelf are my work texts, which includes a row of various dictionaries, thesauruses, writing and style guides. There are, I have to admit, several vintage typewriters.
Those are available online, someone inevitably remarks when they tour the house, gesturing with their chins at Webster’s, The Chicago Manual of Style, my APA Publication Manual, their eyes skeptic. Could save you some space.
It’s true. Even the Oxford English Dictionary now allows online access for a fee. And yet I prefer the feel of the pages in my hand, the thrill of finding a definition or synonym that makes my prose sing. In 2018, the OED added the word “self-publishing” to its roster of linguistics. It is listed as both a noun and an adjective, new words for new writers to add to their toolbox, all thanks to technology and the click of a mouse and the young making new words part of their nomenclature.
If we stay closedminded to technology, growth, and change, snub our noses at the next generation and what we view as their faults, we remain stagnant. We are fed the same stories from the same people, usually ones with the privilege in which to make writing life a reality. And that’s boring. Just come to my classroom to get a taste of what’s possible with change. It’s so extra, in the most wonderful of ways.
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