Meet MWW19 faculty member Bryan Furuness!
Bryan Furuness is the author of The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson, a novel. His next novel, Do Not Go On, will come out in the winter of 2019. With Michael Martone, he is the co-editor of Winesburg, Indiana, an anthology. His next anthology, My Name was Never Frankenstein: And Other Classic Adventure Tales Remixed, will be forthcoming from Break Away Books in the fall of 2018. His stories have appeared in Ninth Letter, Sycamore Review, Southeast Review, Hobart, and elsewhere. His essays have appeared in Brevity, Nashville Review, and Barrelhouse, among other venues. His work has been anthologized in New Stories from the Midwest, Not Like the Rest of Us: An Anthology of Contemporary Indiana Writers, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of the Tennessee Williams Scholarship in fiction from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a finalist for the Society of Midland Authors award, and a winner of the Midwest Short Fiction contest. He holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and has edited for several literary magazines and small presses, including Booth, On Earth As it Is, Engine Books, and Pressgang, the small press he founded at Butler in 2012. He lives in Indianapolis, where he teaches at Butler University and serves on the board of Engine Books.
Bryan’s MWW19 sessions include:
- Session #3: Intro to Editing – A session about global editing and line editing, including exercises that can help students edit the work of other writers or revise their own work.
- Session #3: Forming a Writing Habit – Figuring out your own ideal creative process and starting a sustainable writing practice.
- Session #3: Reading like a Writer – Once you develop this way of seeing how stories are built, every text will become a teacher.
Bryan is also a member of the Manuscript Evaluation Team. Here’s your opportunity to have an author and editor evaluate your manuscript pages!
Jama Kehoe Bigger, MWW Director, interviewed Bryan for this installment of our MWW19 faculty Q&A.
MWW: You have a page “Notes on Creativity” on your website. What do believe are the components of creativity?
BF: Here’s a simple formula, straight from the pages of Creativity 101 by James Kauffman: Creativity = Novelty x Utility
“Novelty” means new or different. “Utility” is a little less obvious-here it’s talking about how appropriate the creation is for the situation.
Finally, note the multiplication sign. If either novelty or utility are a zero, the whole thing is an airball.
For example: I ask you for a story. In response, you slowly push a banana up your nose.
Novel? Sure. Task-appropriate? Uh, no. Therefore, not creative.
(For a slightly more developed take on this topic, see this post. And if you like this kind of thing, you can sign up for my newsletter here and get a few short posts about creativity delivered to your inbox every three weeks.)
MWW: Since you are an author and an editor, what do you see as the common traps for aspiring writers?
BF: I’ll give you one that’s been on my mind lately: overestimating the amount of talent it takes to write a book, and underestimating the time and effort and sheer persistence that it takes.
(This miscalculation isn’t exclusive to the writing world, by the way. See also this article with a very explain-y title: “People Underestimate the Value of Persistence for Creative Performance“)
Here’s a weird disconnect. If you tell people that it takes ten years of devoted work to reach mastery of a skill–not greatness, but mere mastery–they will nod and say, Right, that makes sense. But if you tell them that means it could very well take them ten years or more to write a novel, no matter how good their idea is . . . well, you can see the despair on their face.
But the thing is, you’re allowed to enjoy those ten years (or however long it takes). Actually, you better enjoy it. If you find that you don’t actually like writing all that much–if you’d rather be a person with a book than a person who writes–hit the eject button early and save yourself a ton of suffering.
MWW: What is your writing process like?
BF: I don’t have one.
Or, rather, I don’t have just one. My process depends on the type of project, the reason for writing, the time I get to work on it, and probably a thousand other factors I can’t consciously discern.
For example, my process for writing this response is different than my approach for my current novel project, which is different than my approach for my last novel project, which is different than answering a hundred emails in an hour, which is different than–
You get the idea. Each project calls for something different. I have a mental junk drawer full of strategies, and I’m always on the lookout for new strategies. That way, if a certain combination doesn’t work, there’s always something else I can try. Flexibility is key. Flexibility and an experimental spirit.
That said, certain threads run through my creative practice, no matter what I’m writing. Daydreaming. Making notes. Showing up to the page (almost) every day, and finding ways to lower the pressure and boost the joy.
MWW: What advice do you have for writers coming to MWW19? What will your sessions emphasize?
BF: The first time I went to a writing conference, I ran into one of my old teachers. “Pace yourself,” she said when I breathlessly told her about all the panels I’d already seen and everything I was planning to do.
Nah, I thought. I’m fine. I want to squeeze every last drop out of this conference.
As it turned out, the conference squeezed every last drop out of me–before dinner on the first day. So learn from my mistake, my friends, especially if you’re an introvert who needs the occasional oasis of solitude to recharge. Pace. Yourself.
Okay, about my sessions. Three sessions, three different topics: writing, reading, and editing.
- Writing: We’ll talk about process and practice, the cornerstones of the writing life.
- Reading: Once you learn how to “read like a writer,” every text will become a teacher.
- Editing: We’ll dig into global editing and line editing, playing around with exercises that can you help you edit the work of other writers or revise your own material.
Hope to run into you there. And if I look all wild-eyed and manic, remind me of my own advice, won’t you?
