The Power Behind the Pen: Writers Anthony Doerr, Alexandra Mattraw, and Justin Guerra on Collaborative Craft
If a person doesn’t push themselves to experience the unfamiliar, it can be easy to for them become stuck in their own head. In a state of isolation, feelings of fear and self-doubt intensify—obstructing an individual’s natural flow of creativity.
For artists who work with words, an imaginative slump can often manifest as the dreaded writer’s block. Speaking to a frustration all writers can identify with, Anthony Doerr, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, said, “sometimes I'm just working over the same paragraph, almost out of fear of pushing on into new territory. On my worst writing days, I let fear kind of send me backwards, where I'm just trying to make everything right before I move forward at all.”
Though mental barriers can feel nigh impassable, Poet Alexandra Mattraw, a literature teacher at Athenian and author of the newly-published poetry collection Raw Anyone, said that it is critical to persist and “believe in the hard spots” of the process, because when “people get writer's block, or they feel that what they're making is terrible, [the key is] writing through those moments and just believing that you write the bad work to get to those gems… it's like a muscle that you are creating when you are writing.”
Doerr concurs and said that trying to “give [yourself] permission to make clunky sentences” is essential to break out of a writing funk, even though it may feel uncomfortable for a writer to produce work that doesn’t immediately meet their standards.
Within American society, individuals are conditioned to fear failure like a monster under the bed. While constructive criticism can be vital to a person’s overall success, it is often interpreted as a judgment of a person’s worth or ability.
Even after publishing five critically acclaimed novels, Doerr still finds it difficult to separate his emotions from how he responds to criticism. The self-described perfectionist said that sometimes “it doesn't matter if it's 99% praise. The criticism in there sticks with you because it articulates your deepest fears. It's like, I knew that I suck at doing this, whatever it is. And so sometimes I would be too emotional about that, too devastated. You know, giving strangers power over you is kind of dangerous.”
Justin Guerra, the author of the middle-grade novel Biff and Athenian Middle School Dean of Students, experienced the impact of constructive critique firsthand while studying for his Master’s Degree in Fiction at Columbia University. He said that the most important takeaway he gleaned was that “whether you agree with [the feedback] or disagree with it” writers need to “be open to hearing it and then reflecting on it for yourself, [because] there are some things that you're going to hear that you think, ‘I didn't know that about myself and/or my writing.’”
Guerra said that engaging in workshop dialogues taught him “practices of how to get people to rethink their work and really look at their own work, which was really helpful” because it empowered him to grow beyond the “writing structures in the way in which [he] had been taught, which was formulaic.”
If writers let the fear of failure discourage them from opening up, they lose the opportunity to receive valuable input from outside perspectives.
Within an appropriately constructive setting, Doerr said that he approaches the anxiety of sharing his work for feedback by trying to keep in mind that within a workshop, “everybody's got the same goal, which is to try to help you see your work more clearly and realize where you may have achieved your intentions or where you may have failed to achieve your intentions… the best way to make something better is to show it to another human being.”
Though Doerr, Mattraw, and Guerra all benefitted from a university’s writing community, the privilege of participating in a collegiate writing workshop is a luxury not every writer has access to. Noting the substantial insights into her writing she previously discovered through discourse with other writers, Mattraw continued to seek out collaborative spaces beyond the academic setting in the years following her graduation.
The writer said that the comradery she found among a fellow group of poets has had a meaningful impact on her creative process: “making a community of three to six other people who are interested in writing… creating a little workshop for yourself, that is really powerful because not only will it give you the impetus to make something by a particular time, it will put you in collaboration with people.”
Currently, a collaboration space for all types of dedicated writers is a platform for artistic growth that Athenian lacks, though journalists are able to share their work through the publication of The Pillar.
Previously having taught English at Athenian before accepting his position as Middle School Dean of Students, Guerra said that “creating a space for like-minded people here would be great… with some really passionate writers, who could come together in a space to share work, give feedback, and encourage people to keep going. One of the most important things, I think, being a writer, is for someone to see you and say, don't stop. Keep going.”
