A Review of The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes

Christopher Wilk, while finishing his novel in the MFA Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill, wrote for one of his class assignments a book review.  And he happened to choose my own novel to write about, The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes.  He showed me the review, and since his own blog will not be up for a while, I offered to post it here.  It’s a bit of shameless huckstering on my part, but I really did appreciate his review—I was impressed by what Chris had to say about the "milieu" and especially the style of the book, which in many reviews does not get addressed enough, the words on the page and how they make meaning.  So, with his permission, I post the review here, and I hope you enjoy it.  Many thanks, Chris, for all your insights! 

Ancient Aliens Create a Milieu for Interstellar Wonder, Intrigue, and Passion

- a book review by Chris Wilk

Albert Wendland’s story begins with interplanetary travel and the discovery of two strange derelicts, one of them sinister, jagged, and thorny, and the other a peculiar looking spaceship with three murdered people aboard. Along with the bodies, clues are found for the location of a Clip (Carrier-Locked Integrated Program). A race of ancient aliens have hidden an unknown number of Clips. The Clips, only four of which have been found on different planets and an asteroid, contain ancient alien technology that has propelled the human race toward interstellar expansion at a society-disrupting pace. Clips provided light-space and FTL travel, artificial gravity, instructions on how to build a planet-sized habitat, and secrets of a military nature kept classified by the government of Earth. The prospect of riches for the finders of the fifth Clip drive five disparate characters on a dangerous, life-threatening, galaxy-wide hunt involving four governments, several corporations, and the enduring genocidal conflict between two ancient and extinct alien races.

One of the key components, making this story so engaging as science fiction, is its milieu. Milieu is more than simple setting. It is the author-created world in which the characters are immersed: the totality of the physical, social, cultural, governmental, legal, technological, interstellar, and alien influences. In Alien Landscapes’ Wendland’s milieu causes characters to act, react, and interact in ways only possible in his story’s world.

Wendland’s setting is interstellar in scope. The story unfolds in the deepness of space, moves to Annulus (a planet-sized habitat created by an alien Clip), and continues to evolving planetary systems in search of a Clip. His descriptions convey a sense of awe by vividly presenting the motifs of his world, both artificial and natural, from the  minutest detail of a fluorite shard to the immensity of galactic travel. Scientific and poetic prose are employed by Wendland to give the reader a picture and feel for the environment of his characters.

He is adept at showing in terms of angles, distances, mass, tectonics, and astrophysics, and he includes such ideas as hyperbolic energy, light-space and time-space, a higher-dimensional analog of a mathematical theorem, fumes laden with sulfur, and 2000-degree lava streams. Though the reader may understand only 90 percent of the Sci-Fi talk, the context and comprehensiveness of the descriptions elicit a full sense of wonder and dramatic, captivating images.

Poetic prose complements and amplifies scientific narrative. As inspiring as the Sci-Fi talk is, the poet in Albert Wendland takes the reader to an even deeper level. “. . . the viewscreens brought out structure, milky dyes floating in ink: oxygen’s fluorescent greens, hydrogen’s excited reds, reflected dust’s gossamer blue.” “. . . lifts and ramps and cranes, in a slightly curved splendid bouquet, [from which] sprouted the great interstellar ships, the harvest crop of this spaceport’s activity.” “A line of fire fountains squirted lava . . . seemed almost gentle, like flame creatures preening themselves . . . ”

But Alien Landscapes is not a poetry book or science manual. It is an action-packed science fiction novel, with elements of a detective mystery, fast-paced thriller scenes, and a touch of romantic suspense. The plot, subplots, and conflicts are heavily influenced by the milieu generated by the discovery of Clips. The Clips-based world provides the impetus to find more Clips. It is the source of both human and alien (Airafane and Moyock) conflict. It supplies the means by which characters pursue their goals and the interstellar stage for the various plots and subplots to play out.

Perhaps more importantly, Alien Landscape’s milieu shapes the three main characters: Mykol Ranglen, Mileen Oltrepi, and Reese Balrak. Their actions, reactions, and interactions with each other would be impossible outside of the world created by Wendland. Ranglen (a writer and poet) and Mileen (an e-painter) are ex-lovers, whose artistic attraction to alien landscapes brought them together for a time. Before they separated because their relationship became too intense, they “drank in their worlds as deep and long as they drank in each other.” Ranglen, a Clip discoverer, possesses secret knowledge about how to find Clips. When Mileen disappears to pursue the Clip-location clues found on the derelict spaceship, Ranglen tries to find her. Balrak, a smuggler and human trafficker, wants to control them both for reasons associated with the Clips and the ancient aliens.

The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes is a multi-layered literary work with multi-genre attributes, including mystery, thriller, suspense, romance, and most recognizably, science fiction. Though its milieu places it squarely in the science fiction genre, it can be enjoyed by readers of nearly all genres, even including literary fiction.

Getting to Where You Are, Part 3: The Job

Continued from the previous blog: 

 

I’m hired by Seton Hill. All my reasons for initially saying “no” evaporate. The Teaching of English course is developed successfully, and I handle it for years and even enjoy it.  

 

 And I love teaching English at SHU, especially literature. I’ve managed to cover almost all my favorite areas: the whole sweep of British literature, 20th century American lit, Shakespeare, Romanticism, poetry as well as novels, the modern short story, European literature, Russian literature, and even some writing from the Ancient world. On top of that, I’ve also taught courses in the reading and writing of science fiction. And, covering my other interests, I’ve given courses in the graphic novel, lectures on art and astronomy, a whole class on the Sublime, and even history courses, Western Cultural Traditions I and II.  

  

It’s been great.  

 

I even learned, eventually, that two factors which fascinated the committee that hired me was my interest in science fiction, and that I had a Bachelor of Science degree instead of a BA. So you never know what will be appealing to the people hiring you. 

 

And the event I’m most proud of at SHU is the creation of the graduate program in Writing Popular Fiction.    

 

When I started, Seton Hill was only a college, but the decision was made to change it into a University. So the school was in search of graduate programs. Dr. Lee McClain, my colleague in English, had an interest in the romance genre, so she proposed the idea of a Masters in Writing Popular Fiction. She shared the notion with me because she knew I had a background in SF. So she and I worked together to create the program, and ultimately to get it accepted. And it’s been very successful. She was the Director for the first half of its duration. Then I took over, with the task of moving it from a Masters degree to a Master of Fine Arts. And that task has been accomplished. (I’m about to step down from Directing myself and Dr. Nicole Peeler will be taking over.)            

 

Seton Hill has been very supportive of the program (remember that they hired someone obsessed with SF). And this is not common at all universities, where there’s often a prejudice against popular fiction. Seton Hill, thankfully, has been open to new and innovative programs—at the time, few online classes existed, and we proposed the bulk of our instruction to be online. And I know, having been on the committee that hired Dr. McClain, that one of her qualities appealing to us was her having written a genre novel—in the same way that my SF and BS degree fascinated my committee. When we established the program, we sought to hire genre writers specifically: Dr. Michael Arnzen (the Stoker-winning horror writer) and later Nicole Peeler (writer of urban fantasy).  

 

A good example of the quality and success of this program can be seen in the anthology Many Genres, One Craft, edited by Michael Arnzen and a graduate of the program, Heidi Ruby Miller. Nearly every writer in the anthology has been part of WPF as either a teacher, mentor, student, or guest speaker. The book has won awards and is used often as a text in fiction-writing courses.  

 

We also now have an undergraduate Certificate in Writing Popular Fiction. We’ve always had an undergraduate major in Creative Writing, but we’re applying our expertise in genre fiction to make an opportunity for undergraduates too. All this demonstrates Seton Hill’s unique support, and belief in the worth, quality, and career-focus of popular fiction.  

 

And then, finally, to bring this story to a very pleasant personal close . . .  

 

I said in the first installment of this blog-trilogy that I always had the desire to write science fiction. Though I became very caught up in teaching (and administrating and creating programs, the natural activities of academia), being involved in Writing Popular Fiction brought back my longing to write fiction, and that desire was eventually fulfilled. Though I had played with writing short stories and novels over the years, I became more serious and applied myself strongly to writing an entertaining genre novel whose publication I would pursue.   

 

And just last year the novel was published by Dog Star Books, and released at our WPF summer Residency: The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes. It’s a straightforward SF novel—I’ve described it as a murder mystery that turns into an interstellar treasure hunt. One critic described it as “space noir,“ and I heartily agree. It combines all my interests in the subjects of SF: other planets, outer space, the future, space travel, interstellar mysteries, wonder, the sublime. And a hero who’s always seeking, questioning, searching, exploring—the embodiment of so many characters I loved in both literature and popular fiction.  

 

There’s a prequel being written right now (In a Suspect Universe), a collection of poems supposedly written by Mykol Ranglen, the protagonist of these stories (called Temporary Planets for Transitory Days), and eventually a sequel to the entire sequence (tentatively titled Galaxy Time). I’m thrilled to be working on these books, and to bring my long-held childhood interests to such a practical and valued conclusion.

 

In writing these three entries I went far beyond the little summary I gave to the freshman English students about how I got to where I am. But the “themes” I started with are still valid: 

• You never know where you’ll end up. 
• You need to be prepared for sudden openings and chances in order to shift your gears quickly. 
• Do not short-change your interests no matter how “childish” they might seem—they could take you to a career you’ll love. 
• And watch for institutions that are compatible to those interests, that are good “ground” for your own growth—because not all institutions are.

I hope these three entries were interesting, enlightening, and maybe even useful. 

 

Good luck with your own journey of “getting to where you are.”  

 

Best wishes!

 

Getting to Where You Are, Part 2: The Career

This story continues from the previous blog, and this part concerns graduate school.

After graduating from Carnegie-Mellon with my undergraduate BS (not a BA) in Physics and English, I knew I would need to go to graduate school for study in English. So, in some ways, any career/work/day-job decision was nicely delayed. Indeed, I believe many people then went to graduate school for, at least one reason, to delay the really big concern of “what am I going to do?” I attended the University of Pittsburgh, where I got a position as Teaching Assistant and then later as Teaching Fellow—so my tuition was covered, and I even made a little money.

I gained tremendous experience from teaching (two sections each term) and the many papers a graduate student writes. But I wasn’t enjoying literature as much as I did as an undergraduate. This phenomenon might be inevitable, because when you become a graduate student, your study of books grows more regimented, demanding, competitive. An uncomfortable self-justification creeps in, making the once wide-open excitement almost embarrassing, a feeling of “I have to leave that behind now.” I’m not criticizing graduate school, but the new professionalism automatically brings a self-conscious perfectionism that colors what you do.

And maybe because of that, to this day I still feel that my major role as a teacher is to instill the excitement of learning into my students—that great thrill I had when an undergraduate myself. And I’m so happy that the one positive evaluation comment I most often get is, “He was excited by what he taught.” Long do I hope to be!

And maybe also because of this frustration, I turned again to my original interests of art, science, and popular fiction, even comic books, and especially science fiction. Though I had kept reading my favorite authors (Norton, Clarke, Heinlein, Anderson), I found new and fascinating developments in the genre (the New Wave had left its influence, authors like LeGuin, Delany, Aldiss, and Ballard were doing their best work, and for the first time I encountered Stanislaw Lem). And suddenly, because the genre was spawning new interest, writing literary criticism about science fiction didn’t seem so ludicrous anumore. Maybe I could get grad-school mileage even out of my old interest too.

When it came time for me to propose my dissertation topic, I took the plunge and said, science fiction. Very luckily, some faculty were interested and I got the topic approved. I thus managed to write one of the earliest critical works on science fiction, and it was eventually published by UMI Research Press, which specialized in bringing selected dissertations to print (I was published in a series that included Kim Stanley Robinson’s groundbreaking work on Philip K. Dick).

I perhaps aimed too high in what I tried to do, setting up a huge theory of SF that dealt with “experimental” and “conventional” modes. But the second half of the study, on the scientific and stylistic means of “alien-creation,” held up well, and I’ve returned to the ideas there in later works. Some of it will be elaborated, from the writer’s point of view, in a future study I hope to do on Description in Popular Fiction, much of which will probably appear first in this blog.

But back to my story, and an interesting “fated” occurrence—that wasn’t fate at all.

Seton Hill (it was a college then), in Greensburg, PA, not far from Pittsburgh, was looking for an English hire, and a member of their hiring committee asked a professor she knew at Pitt if he was aware of any possible candidates. He wasn’t, but—very luckily—the first person he asked was the head of my dissertation committee, and I had just received my Ph.D. She passed the information on to me immediately.

I called the college. But I learned that, as well as teaching literature, the person needed a background in Secondary Certification for English to create and teach a Teaching of English course for potential secondary teachers. I didn’t have that background.

But I felt the interview would still be good experience, so I asked if I could come anyway.

Maybe assuming that I’d never be hired made me very relaxed and confident (my presentation was on the use of science fiction in teaching writing), for they told me, a week or two later, that I was their first choice.

I was totally unprepared. I had been certain I wouldn’t get it. I even reminded them about my lacking secondary certification. But they felt I could learn enough to design a course on the Teaching of English. I certainly knew about the subject, but I was nervous about high school expectations. And so, because of that (and for several other personal reasons—I was reluctant, for example, to stay in my home territory), I said no to the offer.

There was one big problem. The minute I hung up the phone I knew—I knew!—I had made the wrong choice.

I agonized for days. Finally, after about a week and feeling I had to face my shame, I called back and asked if I still could be considered.

Very luckily, the search was still open, and eventually, after more visits and interviews, I was accepted into the English faculty of Seton Hill.

I’ve never regretted it.


This entry, like the last one, has gone on long enough. I’ll stop here and pick up the next segment (which will be the last, I promise!) in the next blog.

Getting to Where You Are, Part 1: The Interests

I just attended a class of undergraduate English majors at Seton Hill University where I and a number of my colleagues were asked to share our past experiences and to show how we arrived at the career that we did. The point was to give to the students an “inner picture” of what really happened for several English majors in becoming their faculty, and to provide a better idea of the decisions made along the way.

When my turn came to summarize my road to where I was now, I mentioned that the story offered a few actual themes—to make the comments more than just a lot of reminiscing:

• The route to a career can go in many directions (you don’t know where you’ll end up) 
• You need to be prepared for the sudden chance, ready to leap when the moment is offered (or, as Hamlet said, “Readiness is all”) 
• An interest in popular fiction—in my case, science fiction—can take you far 
• And the special nature and understanding of Seton Hill University (hey, they were SHU students, so I wanted them to know they made a good choice) 

I repeat the story here, first to put it in writing for next year, but also to show just how accidental, and yet fated, any career seems to be.

My first interest was art. As a kid I made a lot of drawings, and though my talent was not great, it was good enough to sustain an interest. Though I moved from colored pencils to painting in oils and acrylics, I never excelled, so I knew it wouldn’t be my career. (Yet if I realized I would end up in academia and that teaching would become my profession, I well might have followed art history—if I couldn’t teach literature that’s what I’d do now.)

Another early interest was science—very different from art. And I especially loved astronomy (with geology a close second). I studied astronomy so extensively that I felt, someday, it would be my career. I wasn’t sure how likely that was (I knew even then there weren’t a lot of positions for astronomers out there) but that’s what I hoped for.

On top of these interests were comic books. I loved them. Imagine: an entire portfolio of art for a dime. Incredible! But graphic art cannot be separated from the story that’s told, so I became even more involved with reading fiction. And since the comics I enjoyed most were science fiction, the interest I followed all my life became quickly and firmly established: the reading, study, teaching, and writing, of science fiction. Even when preoccupied with other subjects, I always come back to it: spaceships, other planets, future technology, alternate cultures, stellar vistas, the galactic sublime—I couldn’t get enough. And I wanted to write it—though my early efforts were horrible.

By the time I went to high school, the reading interests grew. I read other popular genres besides SF: mysteries, spy novels, historicals. And then, rather suddenly, I got hooked by literature. I had felt until then it was too “out of reach,” too difficult, too deep, too complex, but suddenly it made sense to me (I guess I had grown old enough). I related to Dr. Zhivago, I understood Lord Jim, Raskolnikov was fascinating, and even Hamlet’s dilemma seemed familiar—literature sucked me in, completely.

But I still believed that a scientific/technical career was the best to follow (my father had a lot to do with that). So my ideal was that astronomy would be my day job and writing science-fiction my night job (or “alternative” job, since astronomers work at night too). But there weren’t many colleges where you could major in astronomy as an undergraduate. Most schools said to major in physics instead (or electrical engineering), and then go into astronomy in graduate school. I enjoyed science more than engineering, so I chose physics. That was the plan, and I went to Carnegie-Mellon and majored in physics—though I took all my interests in reading with me.

I did okay in physics but I wasn’t outstanding, and it bothered me that I was pursuing a career in which I couldn’t excel. Yet, at the same time, I was doing very well in the few English courses I could take. Things weren’t right; I was working too hard for mediocre results. But I did nothing about it until the end of my sophomore year, when matters became obvious enough that I needed to make a change.

At the end of the semester, I had four final exams (and they were quite demanding at CMU, lasting three hours each): two in physics and two in English. I studied for a total of 50 hours for the two physics finals, and I got two C’s. I studied for a total of 5 hours for the two English finals, and I got two A’s.

I realized the universe was trying to tell me something, and I better listen.

Luckily, the physics program offered a double major in Physics and English—you decided which subject you wanted to pursue after graduation, and all your electives were taken in that subject. So I chose to double major, with the intention of pursuing English after graduation.

And I was immensely happy. Though my career seemed much less certain, I felt I could worry about that later. I lavished in literature. All the interests in art, science, and especially SF were still alive and strong, but for now they were secondary to my ravenous consumption of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Blake, Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Vonnegut, Shakespeare, Borges, the Romantics, the Realists, the Modernists, the Existentialists, and so many more. Comic books I had left long ago—branded as “kid stuff”—but even those were not forgotten, just on “hold.” I was too happy discovering what I felt were the great voices of humanity.

But the career? What was I going to do?

Continued in the next blog . . .

A Cover Reveal: Liz Coley

I want to give a plug for Liz Coley’s latest release, the start of a new trilogy for her. 

Liz is the author of Pretty Girl-13, an international best-seller (and I loved comparing all the covers of the foreign editions).  It’s a psychological thriller that’s appeared on two select lists for 2014, including Best Fiction for Young Adults.  Her other publications include the alternate history/time travel/romance Out of Xibalba and teen thrillers in her new Tor Maddox series. 

Her latest work is part of that latter series:  Tor Maddox: Unleashed.  The story involves 16-year old Torrance Olivia Maddox, a “self-confessed news junkie,” who figures out that a mysterious and deadly New Flu is spread by dogs.  She then wonders, “if the danger is that obvious to her, why hasn’t the government revealed the truth and taken action?”  Good question.  And her search for an answer takes her farther than she ever would have guessed.  “But then again, she never imagined that man’s best friend could become public enemy number one, that men in black might show up in her cozy suburban neighborhood, that she’d spend her sixteenth birthday as a teenaged runaway, and that her effort to save one dog would become a mission to save them all.”

And, though I’m sure you’ll never find a cover like this on any of my own SF books, I have to show it here because, well, you just gotta love it.  See it and enjoy:

I’m showing this to my teen nieces immediately! 

You can visit Liz at her website, LizColey.com, and you can follow her as LizColeyBooks on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Again, enjoy!  

Writing a Prequel

I’m currently writing a prequel.

            

But it’s not really a prequel.  Think of it as a long “flashback” instead.

            

A true prequel, along with taking place before the events of a previously published novel, should also be self-contained, separate, readable on its own.  It can contribute to the first book, helping us to understand the events and characters in it, but it shouldn’t matter if you read the first book or not before reading the prequel.  (I use the phrase “first book” to refer to the first-written and first-published novel).  Indeed, some readers insist on reading the prequel before getting near the first book. 

            

But I really don’t want people reading the prequel first.  The original novel, The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes, is the true start of the Mykol Ranglen series (of my special adventurer, poet, and loner in space).  The prequel’s events are related to the events of the first book, not in the sense that they provide the foundation for what occurs in the first book, but that those events are more understandable if the first book has already been read.  Though it’s not required for approaching the prequel, the reading might be more significant and rewarding if the book written first is also read first.  

            

The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes is like the first movement in a musical composition that has four parts:  a relatively fast and direct opening (the first novel), a flashback to crucial events in the character’s past (the prequel, In a Suspect Universe, which I’m working on now), then an “experimental” musical section that will be a published collection of Ranglen’s own poems (called Temporary Planets for Transitory Days), and then an ultimate “sequel” which will comprise the conclusion of the whole Ranglen epic (tentatively entitled Galaxy Time).  

            

Or, at least, the conclusion for now. 

            

The first novel even ends with two hints of both the prequel and the sequel, and we’ve already been told in that book—and shown—some of Ranglen’s writings.    

            

So the preferred order of reading is this:     

1.     The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes -  first written novel in the series

2.     In a Suspect Universe – prequel or flashback

3.     Temporary Planets for Transitory Days – poetry collection, authored by Mykol Ranglen, the protagonist

4.     Galaxy Time – sequel and conclusion to the series (for now)

                       

But even with this careful plan, all the problems of writing a prequel still arise, and need to be kept in mind when structuring and working the manuscript: 

·      make sure the events (and resolutions) of the first novel are not “given away” in the prequel,

·      do not contradict anything that happens in the first novel,

·      be very clear about your timelines when composing the book—make sure that the prequel has enough time and space for the story to unfold before the events of the first book. 

The temptation for any writer is to explore, in the prequel, more aspects of what has been created, the characters and their worlds.  But these cannot contradict what was learned about them in the first book, and we can’t reveal too much more knowledge of both the villains and the main characters because that might modify—subtly and unexpectedly—what occurs in the first book. 

            

I’m lucky, because the story, the specific events, for In a Suspect Universe do not take place on the same planets as The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes.  This helps to control any latent contradictions between the prequel’s “later” worlds (in terms of composition) and “earlier” worlds (in terms of chronology). 

            

And I have several narrative rabbits hidden in my author’s hat to counter paradoxes or subtle inconsistencies that still might arise.  Which—sorry!—can’t be discussed here. 

            

The biggest point to remember is that

·      you often have to hold back your creativity instead of encouraging it. 

The best plot twist might mess up the future and render the events of the first book impossible.  The most interesting detail about your character’s past might change the later personality of that character.  And the really fascinating new information about your world you might need to subdue, because it could transform your later setting into a different place. 

            

In writing a sequel, you feel like a person from a time-travel story who has gone into the past and must be very careful you don’t do anything to change your own existence in the future.  If, let’s say, your protagonist prevents his parents from getting together, then—good-bye,  protagonist.   So you’re not just governed by realism and believability when you write prequels, but also the need to keep the whole galaxy together, to avoid paradox and contaminated reality.

            

All in all, when producing a prequel, you still think about character and setting and plot and style, all the normal stuff you consider when writing fiction, but you also have to keep causality straight—you don’t mess with the Schrodinger equation. 

·      You have to be more than a novelist, you have to be a god controlling your universe. 

                      

Oh, the tall orders of authorship. 

Why Do You Write?

            At the graduation ceremony for Seton Hill’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction, I give, as co-Director of the program, several introductory remarks to the audience at the start of the ceremony.  The remarks this time involved a common topic that had been introduced for the entire Residency.  We provide such topics for each of the on-campus stays to provide focus for the activities that week, especially for the writing workshops where time might allow for more discussion. 

            The topic for this last January Residency was the question, “Why do you write?”

            At the opening Orientation on the first night I introduced the question and had the students write an answer.  I would have used their responses in my speech at the Commencement, but I need to write these remarks before the Residency takes place (in order to allow the administration enough time to review the script before the event).  So, when composing the remarks, I searched online and found a wonderful website, “FictionAddiction,” that already had collected a large number of answers to that same question.  I read through the answers there and used several of them, with some modification, for the Commencement. 

            The resulting mini-speech was successful enough that a number of students asked if I would reprint it here in my blog.  And it appears below. I hope you find the collection of responses as interesting, illuminating, and inspiring as my students said that they did.

            Good afternoon.

            We began this Residency with a question:  “Why do you write?”  And the responses to that question are many and varied.  “I write because I love stories.”  “I write because I like to build things.”  “I write to make up time I never really had.” 

            These replies vary from the simple, “I write because I can’t dance,” to the eloquent, “I write to dwell in compassion, to love the unlovable, to understand the humanity of those with whom I would disagree.” 

            Some answers are practical and blunt:  “No one but a blockhead ever wrote except for money” (that was quoted from Samuel Johnson, by the way), or “I write because I enjoy having a world I can control.” 

            Some are playful, “I write because you look funny if you talk to yourself,” and some are serious, “I write to stop time.” 

            Some contradict and yet oddly support each other, “I write to define myself” and “I write to get a break from being me.” 

            One of my favorites is, “I write because if I don’t I become narrow-minded and forgetful.”  And, perhaps the reason most direct, and yet profound, “I write because I have to.” 

            But a reply most pertinent to our ceremony today is, “I write because I can.” 

            You’re here to receive a Master of Fine Arts in writing because now you can.  You’ve done it.  You’ve written, revised, packaged, presented, defended, and concluded, the novel that you wrote.  And maybe you wrote more than one. 

            So, you can.  You did.  And, though there might be as many responses to the question “Why do you write?” as there are graduates here today—and as many as the large number of writers in this room right now—this graduation guarantees that one of your responses will always be true:  because I can.

            And to all you writers out there, I repeat that simple and yet wonderful statement: 

            You can.

The responses “quoted” (not always exactly to make the style consistent) came from the following writers, listed here to tally with the paragraphs above: 

1.     Amy Brill, Edmund White, David Whitehouse

2.     Diana Spechler, Ru Freeman

3.     Joshua Cohen, Adam Wilson

4.     Anna North, Jennifer Gilmore

5.     Said Sayrafiezadeh,  Allison Amend

6.     Caitlin Campbell,  Ann Napolitano

7.     A. Igoni Barrett

The full version of their answers can be found at: 

http://fictionaddiction.org/why-write/