During the 49 Writers recent Anchorage Resolve to Write event, I enjoyed hearing about everybody’s plans for the upcoming year. I was also interested to hear how much writing everybody accomplished in 2015. Truly inspiring! The event is helping me dive into 2016, a year in which I hope to finish a book of short stories, publish an anthology along with my co-editor Lucian Childs, and last but not least, apply to a doctoral program through University of Alaska Fairbanks. What? More schooling? I must suffer from degree envy.
Many fiction writers hold Bachelor degrees in English. I still can’t figure out why I do not hold such a degree, given the fact that English was always my very favorite class throughout high school. Somewhere amidst my rabble-rousing at the University of Michigan, though, I set my sights on the social sciences. I later returned to school and earned an MFA, but I have to admit the whole while I pined for graduate courses in sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Now, as I chase after a doctorate, I am finally able to weld both of my passions: creative writing and psychology. Turns out, they fit quite well together. You have heard of the psychological novel, right?
In my upcoming 49 Writers course, What Women Want, I will share with you some of what I am learning. Focusing on the current trends in the psychology of women, I will explain my belief that psychological research can add depth to your stories, poems, and non-fiction. People often think of Freud when confronted with the field of psychology, and in fact, it was Freud’s old question that inspired my course name. “What does woman want?” he asked forlornly, then he threw up his metaphorical arms and said something along the lines of “Whatevs.” Although Freud did rock the world with his idea of the mind as a complex entity of competing drives, the modern discipline views much of his work as horrendously lacking in scientific method. Sadly, my course will not focus on penis envy or hysteria. Rather, we will review a more modern history of the psychology of women, illustrating that women have been left out of the research for decades, and emphasizing the gender similarities approach.
Once students digest the overview of the psychology of women, we will engage in a discussion about how psychological research can be just as important as historical research in the process of creative writing. Students will explore ways in which a character’s psychology interacts with other literary elements such as style, setting, and plot. After, we will do a close reading of a selection of female literary characters, some whose psychology is fully drawn and believable (though perhaps surprising), and some who . . . well, you’ll see. I encourage students to come to class with a draft or character sketch, as we will have an opportunity to practice various ways of envisioning and showing a character’s psychology.
I wish all of you the very best writing, health, and well-being in 2016.