February 2010
Tiphanie Yanique is from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. She is an assistant professor of creative writing and Caribbean literature at Drew University. Her writing has won a Pushcart Prize and a Boston Review Fiction Prize, and has been published in Callaloo, American Short Fiction, the London Magazine, and other publications. She lives between Brooklyn and St. Thomas. www.tiphanieyanique.com

How do you start a new piece?
I’m always working on many things at once. Always starting new. I love revision but I also can’t resist new ideas. I let ideas breathe around in my brain—sometimes for months. Even years. The idea might be a person. I might have a character I can see but I don’t yet know what they have to say. I just hang out with her in my brain. Later an idea might be a place. A setting that captivates me. Sometimes I’ll see that person walking into that space. Then I’ll know I have a story because the character now will have something to say about what she’s doing in this place. I’m very curious about the relationships between things. People and the places they find themselves, or people and the other people they find themselves with…

What is more frightening: a blank page or a manuscript in need of a complete rewrite?
They’re dangerous, I know, but I relish both. It’s like with a graffiti writer…give me a blank space and I’m itching to tag it. I’m too curious to see what the page will reveal. For me a re-write is like being told you have been given a mission—perhaps it will all self-destruct or perhaps you’ll save the world! It’s frightening but exciting.

In Richard Hugo’s essay “Writing Off the Subject,” he states, “When you start to write, you carry to the page one of two attitudes, though you may not be aware of it. One is that all music must conform to truth. The other, that all truth must conform to music.” In your writing practice, have you taken a position on this? In your teaching?
Because Hugo has said this I think we as writers are now released from the hold of it. Now we can consider our inclinations (the music or the truth) and we can make conscious decisions to trump truth or music depending on what we think serves a particular story. Sometimes the language, the sound, the rhythm is why I’ve written particular characters. I wanted to hear something, so I created a character who makes that sound, who sings that song. Sometimes, it’s the opposite. Sometimes I have an idea I want to get to and I choose a tone that will get me there. As a teacher I’m also of two minds in this. In one class I might tell my students that they’re deities who must create entire worlds full of real human beings with histories and psychologies. That’s me asking truth of them. In another class I’ll read to them from a children’s book and ask them to remember the pleasure of being read to. Then we’ll talk about the emotions we receive simply from the texture of the language—ignoring meaning all together.

Sometimes this dichotomy is posed as politics versus craft. It’s suggested that if you want to write work that has a social impact that you’re not writing well. Or if you want to write well then you have to sacrifice social consciousness. I’m not positive that you have to chose, but even if you do I think it can be strategic.

How does teaching influence your work as a writer?
I love teaching. So really just doing something I love, something that energizes me, is good for my writing. When I talk to my students about books I am constantly being reminded why I treasure books, why I want to write them myself. Teaching creative writing requires me to figure out for myself what writing does and how it does it. It helps me articulate what I’m doing, which then helps me reinvent the process for myself.

What’s your favorite in-class writing prompt?
I’m designing a lesson on plot and scene, using excerpts from stories and their film adaptations as prompts. Right now it’s my favorite because I’m still figuring out how it will work…or even if it will work…

Are there any aspects of writing that you feel can’t be taught?
I don’t think any of it can be taught, but I do think it can all be learned. I tell my creative writing students that the class isn’t necessarily about making them better writers. It might make them better readers. It might make them better participants in or observers of humanity. It might make them better communicators or better lovers. But whatever it does will only be because they wrestle that out on their own. If the student has enough time, investment, hunger and bravery, it’s likely anything is possible. I’ve seen too many students who I suspected were sadly untalented make a decision to read new books, make endless attempts, study the craft, live their intense lives—and then they write good stuff. Are they untalented because it’s hard for them to write well or because it takes a long time? I know writers who have won Pulitzers who have the same process.

When you are teaching, what pet peeves do you come across frequently?
The one thing that makes me crazy is when students write narratives that fulfill their own biases: the religious student who writes about someone getting saved, the basketball fan who writes about joining the NBA and becoming better than Jordan, the boy who is secretly in love with a girl who snubs him and so he writes a story where she realizes that he’s a prince, but then he rejects her just for spite. I just don’t think it’s brave. I think you have to be ready to attempt something dangerous.