My first year at the Iowa Writers' Workshop I was lucky enough to draw the great visiting writer as my teacher. When he spoke in workshop it was as one of a long line, going back centuries. You could hear echoes of Tolstoy, of Chekhov, of Faulkner in his voice, of Colette maybe, but not Woolf, definitely not Woolf. His was a masculine take on the world. It was the fall semester and the big weekly event was Saturday softball. He hadn't played, he said, in fifty years but he was a good and competitive athlete and he asked me if I would work with him Friday afternoon before the game. Of course I would, and it became a ritual. Every Friday at four-thirty I'd meet with him and a few others and we'd take hitting and fielding practice. I'd pitch to him, tossing out bits of advice with my underhand offerings. I taught him the Charley Lau method of releasing the top hand after contact to increase bat speed, and he was a very apt pupil. At the start of the season the best he could muster were a few weak ground balls but by the end he was really rocking that apple. In our last game he slammed a drive in the gap for a home run and there was true joy in his face as he smacked down on home plate. That, in fact, was the last hit of the season because on the very next play I slugged a liner that Billy Peterman dove for and caught, breaking his collarbone in the process: Billy Peterman's greatest play. The visiting writer had a standing offer that anyone who submitted a story could meet with him after the workshop to discuss the work and one afternoon I took advantage. We met in his narrow office on the third floor of the English building. We were friends by then, softball buddies, and I felt a nice equality to our relationship; Friday afternoons I taught him hitting, Tuesday afternoons he taught me writing. I was by then a little older, already a lawyer, and not so easily intimidated. We talked about softball, about the class. He complimented me on my critiques. I told him I was learning a lot. It was all very pleasant, very congenial until the question emerged. I hadn't planned on asking it, but how could I not? It plagued us all during our time at Iowa, the question, there was no escaping it. Did I, we all wondered constantly about ourselves, have a future as a writer. For some it seemed the answer was obvious, those like Chris Offutt, Elizabeth McCracken, Tom Grimes, Charlie D'Ambrosio, Abraham Verghese, whose work showed brilliance even then, but for the rest of us, struggling still to find a voice, it remained a torment. It was in our eyes as we sat back and listened to the others have a go at our manuscripts, it was in our greedy excitement as we set up appointments with the agents who had come to Iowa City to troll, it was in the gothic emotions of the night after fellowships for the following year had been awarded, a night of tears and violence, of overturned grave sites and wrecked pick-up trucks. At Iowa, the question ruled. So there I was, having a friendly chat with the great writer, talking calmly of the class and softball and certain issues in my own story when, almost on its own, the question seized control of my heart and told me that this man, this great writer, could finally give me an answer. So I asked it, the question, phrased it informally, something like, "So what do you think?" something simple like that, but it was out there, the question, raw and open and so was I. And suddenly everything in that small room shifted. It was as if I had drunken a bottle of Alice's potion and I shrank and he grew and the distance between us accelerated geometrically until it became perfectly clear exactly what he was and I wasn't. It was an awkward moment, this shifting, for him as well as for me. He hemmed and hawed, offered some comforting platitudes, spoke about how impossible it was to judge a writer early in his career, but in the end, to his great credit, he gave me as honest an answer as he could. I can no longer summon the exact phrasing, the awkwardness of it all was too excruciating to concentrate on anything other than not falling off my chair, but the gist of it was that as a writer I was a pretty good softball player, but that was all. His answer killed me for two days, two bad days, days spent in despair, curled on the couch. Then I got off the couch and started writing again and kept at it. This was all in the first few months at Iowa and I was about to undertake dramatic changes in the way I wrote, in my voice, my rhythms, my subjects. He had been right of course, I wasn't then any good, and he had been right when he said he couldn't judge the future. In fact it is amazing how right he was and I've always been grateful for his honesty. I think it was one of the crucial moments in my life, when he told me I wasn't a natural and it was time to get working. And so I did, get working, and I still am. And I'll tell you something more, I never again asked anyone that damn question and I never will. William Lashner November 25, 1998 Published in: THE WORKSHOP edited by Tom Grimes Hyperion 1999 Back to Top