Over the last few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on the teachers in my life. Yesterday I finished the first short story I’ve written since I was in my first year of college and submitted it to a contest. Today I found out that my first fiction writing teacher, Jack Driscoll, died from cancer. These things both are and are not related.
Driscoll is the reason I fell in love with writing fiction in high school. No matter what kind of weird nonsense of a short story I submitted to class, he always took it seriously. In one of my storage boxes, there’s a stack of paper with poems and short stories I wrote during high school scribbled with his edits and encouragement. In another, I have all my old report cards in which he wrote short essays about my progress. He rarely talked about talent—far more often was mention of work and putting it in. If I came to his office hours, he would talk to me as long as I had questions and no one else was waiting. He was the kind of teacher everyone should be lucky enough to have, one who gives back as much as the student is willing to put in.
What I learned from him was that being a writer meant putting time and effort into your writing. I learned that there were kernels of good in any poem or story or essay you wrote because you’d sat down and written it. I learned how much editing could change a story—turning a series of jumbled thoughts into something worth a reader’s attention. I don’t think he ever questioned whether a student was talented enough to be a writer (and we were in high school then so what does anyone know about how we’ll turn out) only whether they were willing to put in the work to keep going.
After I graduated, I took writing workshops in college. I thought the experience would be the same. It was not. In my fiction workshop, I put as much time and effort into my stories as ever but only got cursory comments from my professor. When I went to office hours, he had little to say to me. Meanwhile, two students—both male—joked with him after class and mentioned that he’d connected them with an editor to send their stories to. (It may or may not be relevant that the professor also paid little attention to the other young women in the class.) I was nineteen and worried about failure. I assumed the professor’s lack of interest in me was something I should pay attention to. I stopped talking in his class. I stopped going to office hours since he always seemed unsure why I was there. I never took another fiction class, transferring my attention to nonfiction because that was where I found encouragement.
Today, I wouldn’t let a teacher’s lack of interest persuade me away from something I wanted. I would know they were the wrong teacher for me (if not a bad teacher) and move on. But when you’re teaching young people who are trying to mold themselves into the shape that best suits them, you don’t have to be cruel to cause damage—all you have to do is refuse to take them seriously. I’m almost thirty-five. It took almost sixteen years after that workshop for me to want to write a short story again and feel like I could.
I try to remember this today when I’m talking to other writers, especially people who are new to it but have a story to tell. You don’t have to tell someone “you’re no good” for them to read it between the lines of your criticism or, worse, your refusal to take what they’ve written seriously. It doesn’t cost much to encourage each other.
Writers often make fun of the common editor’s line, “there’s a lot of good stuff in here” because it’s often a shorthand for saying that a draft is a complete disaster. But I’ve always taken it at face value. Driscoll taught me that a story can always be edited and that even the best artists have room to get better. More than a few editors have told me that there was a lot of good stuff in my drafts and, you know something, they were right. I just had to take the time to move a few things around, find it, and bring it to the surface.
I wasn’t expecting to write this post this week but I do want to say that in addition to being a wonderful teacher and human being, Jack Driscoll was also a great writer. He wrote four books of poetry, three short stories, and four novels. In an interview he did last year for the First Draft podcast, he said that people often asked him what his best stories were after doing so many of them over so many years.
“…I respond almost inevitably by saying, the best story I’ve ever written is the one I’m going to write next. It’s certainly the one I’m most interested in. And I tell my students all the time, if you don’t believe the story you’re currently working on can be the best story you’ve ever written, don’t write it, don’t even begin.”
His last book is a collection called Twenty Stories.
If you have stories or memories about teachers—official or otherwise—in your life, please share them.
-Tove
What a moving essay. I'm sorry to hear about Jack's death. He sounds wonderful.
What a great tribute to your teacher! I too, started out writing fiction and my English teacher quelled my passion by telling me I couldn’t name my characters what I wanted to name them and that my story wasn’t original enough. I wanted to name my main character, who was a dog, (surprise, surprise) Tucker and my teacher told me that would be a really bad idea because people would tease me and probably replace the T with an F. I change the name, but it took away my confidence in my own creativity. I have met so many dogs named Tucker and people named Tucker now I just laugh every time I hear it. I didn’t write again until 2017 when I wrote my nonfiction book. I have such great respect for fiction writers and I look forward to reading your stories!
I also had some amazing teachers who inspired my passion for science and music. It’s remarkable how one bad teacher can really steer you in a different direction in your life. Here’s to all of those fantastic teachers out there!