Writing is intimate. You let your readers into your life, even if your characters don’t share your precise identity. It’s daunting, and as rewarding as it is frighteningly vulnerable. Your audience doesn’t necessarily share the sensitivity you have for your characters, and they will offer opinions that you might not be prepared to hear.
When I emailed Alex Carpenter ’25 about Artist of the Week, I expected her to decline. To my surprise, she quickly accepted — in impressive prose, might I add. Ever since meeting Alex at a Small Craft Warnings reading last semester, I’ve looked up to her natural affability and unbounded intellect. Given that she’s an honors English literature major pursuing a creative writing concentration, I was interested to hear about when and how she began writing.
Alex shared, “I started writing when I was six or seven on computer paper. I wrote stories and sometimes illustrated them. My dad is an unpublished novelist, so when I was a kid, he spent a lot of time writing. So I thought that was what grown-ups did. I wrote poems about nature and kids in interesting, unusual situations. I’ve always written about characters who are similar to me, and that’s expanded as I’ve gotten older. My writing is not always true to life, but pretty grounded in reality. I root stories in my experiences, because I find that’s when they read as genuine.”
Although she’s been a lifelong writer, Alex told me that she has never submitted to writing competitions. “I was always shy about my writing, which has gotten better as I’ve gotten older. It was personal, and I always felt it was hard for me [to share]. I’m changing that formulation to my writing, where now I’m more interested in other people reading it. I want to say something that is important to say as opposed to using writing as a means to process. But it’s ultimately always been about me processing my experiences,” she said.
Inevitably, writing functions as a process itself, and as a means of processing. It’s deeply personal, to the degree that words can easily become painstaking. The idea of opening your wounds to the public for critique is excruciatingly frightening. So, you can imagine my surprise when Alex shared that her first workshop was an advanced seminar with entirely juniors and seniors.
“I had taken a gap year before college, and I spent most of it writing, so I applied for the Advanced Fiction Workshop [with Associate Professor Chinelo Okparanta] and got in fall [of my first year]. Honestly, looking back, I probably should have been more intimidated. But, I was a [first year]: I had no fear or sense of what was going on around me. I was on my own with all juniors and seniors, and it was really enriching. Chinelo was a great instructor, and is an enormously talented writer. We have a really good and supportive creative writing faculty.”
Adding upon that, she continued, “I didn’t take another writing workshop until my junior spring. I took some time off, and I was writing on my own. I wanted to spend some time with myself and my own writing. When I was ready to get some more feedback, I took [Visiting Assistant Professor Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s] workshop Breaking the Egoic Trance, and that was a totally different flavor than Chinelo’s workshop. They have really different approaches to writing, both great, and I really enjoyed [those differences]. Now I’m working with Moriel on a Directed Creative Writing Project [DCWP].”
But why a directed creative writing project over another workshop? Alex responded, “I wanted to put together a substantial portfolio. With my DCWP, I’ll have a large body of work that represents my college writing. It’s very lucky that we even have the chance to do that here, because I feel this opportunity is probably something that I may never get again. It’s a professional writer working with you individually every week.”
She continued, “Moriel is really familiar with my work. He’s been reading it for two months, so it’s nice to have someone who knows you over time giving you feedback. He recognizes my strengths and weaknesses and works with me to improve over time.”
The DCWP allows students to explore self-directed writing with associated faculty members. It requires a lot of initiative and passion, as it is largely self-motivated. I wanted to know more about Alex’s stories and what emotions she was working through.
She shared, “I’ve been writing a new story every week. I am always writing what I know, so I struggle with the plot, but it’s a lot of young women navigating their emotional landscapes and the complexities within their interpersonal relationships. I write about jealousy and longing. It’s a lot of internal fiction, if you could call it that. I’m very interested in how people are navigating their lives, and how it’s playing out in their relationships. I used to force the plot more, because I thought a story needed a plot. I’m starting to get more comfortable being character-driven and most of my favorite authors aren’t necessarily plot-driven either.”
Life is not neat. Arguably, it doesn’t revolve around a larger plot, and situations recur whether or not we’d like them to. Alex’s focus on portraying life as it is, with its complications and scars, is certainly refreshing. Most of our conflicts stir and resolve within our minds, never leaving the confines of our skull. However, how do you end an internal conflict that doesn’t feel completely finished?
Alex admitted, “I have a hard time finishing my fiction. That’s something I’ve always struggled with, partially because when I’m working through emotions in real time, I don’t know what the ending is. I write about conflicts that I’m having with friends or loss and uncertainty, and those things don’t feel like they have simple solutions. It’s hard for me to end my stories because I don’t feel there’s a neat ending in my life.”
From her description of unfinished endings, I was curious how Alex began her stories. She shared that she often begins with a situation or setting. “For example, I took this camping trip recently. It was totally fun. I thought, ‘Let me put a bunch of people on that camping trip and let’s see what happens.’ The story ended up expressing, you know, something that didn’t happen, but was truthful to my emotions surrounding a real event in my life. It’s helping me process through different experiences. I took the characters where they wanted to go, and I followed them there. I don’t outline my stories. I’ll start with something that I’m familiar with, and then I’ll see where it takes me.”
She clarified, “It’s not necessarily always that I got into a fight with this person, so I’m going to write. It’s more so about the experience. I feel guilty and betrayed, and those experiences make their way into the story, whether it’s with those exact characters or not.”
Since it is so intimate, writing becomes an extension of the self. In a practical sense, the workshops offered by the English department encourage public feedback. If you’re still working through emotions in real time, it can be difficult to reconcile with any comments, positive or negative. Real life situations are raw, ambiguous, and often lack any clean resolution.
Alex echoed this sentiment, “It feels so vulnerable. It feels like I’m pulling out an organ and placing it on the table in front of us. It’s a part of me, especially if I’m writing about an experience that I’m still trying to work through and someone’s commenting on that. Even if they don’t know it really happened, I’m still thinking about it while receiving feedback. It’s so hard, because it’s so personal. I get attached to my characters and I feel defensive of them.”
Whether the work is academic or creative, that vulnerability is inextricably linked to the writing process. There is a gradient of emotional attachment, but the feeling is always there. Writing requires us to sit, breathe, and sleep with that unmistakable presence.
“I’ve realized that being a professional writer is something that I might want to pursue. If I want to be a professional writer, I’m gonna have to submit, get my work published, and get a lot of feedback. Learning how to write was a very personal process. Developing some of my own style and figuring out what’s important to me is also really personal. Now I’m at the point where, if I want to take the next step with this, it’s gonna have to be shared.”
We’re all afraid of publishing our work, but maybe that’s why we need to share it. We need to know we’re not alone in our vulnerabilities, strengths and weaknesses alike.
Think it. Say it. Write it. Share it.
