Mary and the Lev Grossman Lecture

by mary alter

It’s Monday night at 7:22pm and I’m sitting down right after hearing Lev Grossman speak on how he became a writer. I’ll be entirely honest in saying that right before I had to leave to attend the lecture, I wasn’t so thrilled about going. I had a headache after a long day and would have been entirely fine just sitting on the couch drinking tea rather than getting ready to sit in a windowless room and watch a middle aged white man lecture for over an hour. However, I am very happy that I dragged myself out tonight in order to hear it, I think some of the things that he said my soul really needed to hear.

I read The Magicians in preparation for tonight. I’m always a fantasy fan, so I definitely enjoyed it, though I’ll fully admit that it wasn’t my favorite fantasy book I’ve read this year. That being said, I was excited to see what a successful author such as Lev Grossman had to say on becoming a writer. I didn’t know anything about him, so when I got there and opened the pamphlet to a blurb about him reveling he’s a Harvard and Yale graduate with his own show based on the trilogy of bestselling novels he wrote, I can’t exactly admit that I was completely thrilled. However, Lev Grossman really surprised me in many different ways in the hour that he spoke, and proved that facts listed on paper do not represent who a person is in essence.

One of the many valuable, and relatable, things that he spoke on was the idea of isolation for creativity. Since moving to New York City, this is something that I think about constantly. I cannot count how many times I’ve been sitting in class only to find myself staring out the window daydreaming about being surrounded by trees and mountains and endless skies. I have this small part of my brain that sometimes will take over when I’m more particularly fed up with the grime and chaos of the city that lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and begs the rest of me to join it there someday. I can’t pretend that I don’t give into that call on occasion, and my recent Zillow history of land near Breckenridge can account for that. I try to pretend that it’s just the fact that the house prices are so much lower there rather than the fact that I know nobody there and would be able to fulfil a romanticized dream of creative isolation. After listening to Grossman speak on the exact same feelings, I have come to realize more than ever that such a notion is pure fantasy. Nonetheless, it was valuable to hear that I’m not alone in such a desire. How he spoke forced me to think about the community aspect to writing, and the importance of interacting with others in order to write. If I write without experience, the writing isn’t going to turn out the way that I need it to, and isolation will only doom my already lacking dialogue and character relations.

Furthermore, something I thought was profound about Grossman’s lecture was how much he spoke on his early career in writing and how “not good” he was to begin. This idea is something that I struggle with constantly. I get very discouraged when I write and write and write and then when I go to read it back, its barely legible and certainly cannot be considered in any way good. I often feel, in those moments, that I should just give up completely. The same ideas apply to the next fifteen days of my life, for I will be applying to the creative writing concentration. I’m absolutely terrified. I feel as though I’m standing on the edge of a cliff and staring down at an abyss of which I cannot see the bottom. If I turn back, or don’t apply to the program, then I’ll not have to face the chance of failure, of falling down the abyss when I try to jump across it. Even writing it in such a way makes it feel pointless, because what’s the harm in turning back to avoid probable danger? However, the very essence of Grossman’s lecture forces me to not even consider turning back an option. He spent twenty years trying to write anything meaningful. He went to Harvard, sure, but there he couldn’t get published until right before he graduated. If he had tried to apply to their creative writing concentration, based on what he said, he wouldn’t have gotten in.

Nothing about Lev Grossman’s failures discouraged him enough to stop him from continuing to try. And he would try and try and try and fail and fail and fail until something stuck, and now he’s widely regarded, almost objectively, as extremely talented and extremely successful. If even one of those times that he repeatedly tried and failed he didn’t try again, he wouldn’t have been standing up there tonight and I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this, feeling more at peace mentally in regards to my writing than I have in weeks. For that, I am glad that I didn’t let the excuse of a long day get in the way of attending this lecture tonight. 

Mary Alter | @maryalter