Things I've Learned: Writing Seminars Professor Glenn Blake

If you have a class with Glenn Blake, be prepared to kill your darlings.

That's the phrase the Writing Seminars professor uses when describing the painful editing process.

Blake started off at Hopkins as a student, receiving his MFA in fiction writing. He is now director of the Introduction to Fiction and Poetry (IFP) courses, and teaches IFP, Introduction to Fiction Writing and Contemporary American Fiction. He is also managing editor of the Hopkins Review.

News-Letter (N-L): When did you first become interested in writing?

Glenn Blake (GB): Well, I started out as an English major as an undergraduate at Rice University and then started out as a poet... and when I graduated, my poetry professor came up to me, right there in my cap and gown, put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Glenn, son, if you continue writing poetry you're going to hurt someone.' So he was telling me that I basically couldn't write poetry

I'd heard University of Houston was starting a creative writing program, and I applied to their fiction program. Now, I had no experience in fiction, so they turned me down, but I kept on applying and eventually they let me in.

N-L: What people and places have most strongly influenced your writing?

GB: Well, I think place is very important in my stories. I grew up in the back swamps and bayous of eastern Texas, which is more like Louisiana than it is like western Texas. Eventually I moved to the Gulf Coast, but I remember just always wanting to get back to the backcountry. Some of these Gulf Coast towns are just bays of dead fish and oil refinery fires burning all night.

As for people, well I worked with a lot of great writing teachers, or writing coaches. Don Barthelme at Rice and Jack Barth here at Hopkins

I remember once when Raymond Carver came down to Rice while I was studying there, and he took a 30-page story I had written and worked on and worked on, and he edited it down to like, two and a half pages.

And it was a great story, but it wasn't my story anymore, it was a Raymond Carver story . . . but having that many different eyes looking at my work helped give me an idea of what a story should be.

N-L: How do you think those people influenced the way you work as a writing teacher?

GB: Well, I think I borrowed certain techniques from each. For example, Jack Barth paid great attention to every detail . . . he would basically go through and line edit the story and then on the back of each page have almost a full page of comments, and that's something I think really helps.

But I also have worked with some real monsters, and from them I've learned what not to do. I think writing now should be the fun part. I mean, it's hard and there's discipline involved, but it's just going to get harder out of school. Now it should be the fun part.

N-L: Has teaching altered your own approach to writing?

GB: What I love about teaching is that every semester I learn as much about writing as I hope my students do. We're now writing for readers who might see more movies in a month than they read books in a year . . . and this audience is our concern when we're in the business of creating narrative art. So to see what these students expect of a narrative teaches me about the creation of narrative in 2009 and what it will be 2010.

N-L: How did you end up teaching at Hopkins?

GB: Well, I taught for 25 years at the writing program in Houston and while I was there helped start the Gulf Coast, a literary journal that has become quite good . . . and I heard from John Irwin, who was one of my professors here . . . that they were trying to start up the Hopkins Review again.

So I called him up and said "Hey, if you need any help, I'm your man. I'll be there tomorrow if you want me." So he called me back and asked me to come up.

So then I was working on the Hopkins Review and semester by semester they started giving me a class or two to teach and now I'm the director of IFP.

N-L: Do you have any words of advice or wisdom for the upcoming generation of writers here at Hopkins?

GB: It's an interesting time to tell stories, because you're telling them to people who are daily, hourly influenced by other media.

To sustain someone's attention is quite a challenge, but I think ultimately, young writers are going to write what they want to write.