Exploring the Writing Life

Like the anthropologist who weaves a basket to better understand the native people he studies, Jay Boyer writes, in part, to better understand his students.

The anthropologist does it to experience the trials of bending the straw into submission, the sting as the material pokes the fingertips or slips under a nail. Ultimately, the scientist wants to experience the pride that comes with beholding the completed product. Boyer’s experiences in writing are fundamentally the same.

“Finding the time to write. Finding the energy to write. Finding a place for that in your life and expecting your family to pay in a number of ways for the time you’re taking away from them. It is not quite what the movies would make it out to be,” says Boyer, a professor of English at Arizona State University.

Think of the familiar scene portrayed in the movies: a writer sits at a computer and begins typing furiously; the screen dissolves from one image to another; cigarettes build up in an ashtray; and, suddenly, a printer begins churning out a huge manuscript as the writer pops a bottle of champagne.

“As if it can happen in a matter of hours or days,” says Boyer. “It just doesn’t happen like that. The writing process is laborious. It is time-consuming. Not for everybody, but for most.”

While there is a hint of authenticity to the movie scene, it’s certainly a one-dimensional account of the writing life. So, too, is another familiar depiction, in which the writer is isolated, penniless, struggling for decades to befriend the muse.

Only through doing, perhaps, can one really understand the full scope of the writer’s life—the trials and the sting, the pride in the finished work. Yet, to assert that Boyer writes only to strengthen his teaching skills, to more deeply connect with his students, would be a one-dimensional account of this writer’s life, as well. For him, writing is also a joy, an exercise that buoys him against all the things that may go wrong in his life.

“It’s just a wonderful time for me,” he says. “To be alone with myself, to be able to write and think and imagine and play pretend in a way that most adults are never given the chance to do.”

Boyer came to ASU in 1976, after earning his master’s and doctorate degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He teaches mainly introductory-level undergraduate courses such as American Literature, Introduction to Contemporary Literature, and American Cinema, which he considers his specialty. Boyer also teaches some graduate-level courses and occasionally works directly with graduate students in the creative writing program.

“If I was on a baseball team I would be what’s called a ‘utility infielder.’ I don’t play any of the bases particularly well, but I do play a number of bases,” Boyer explains in a self-deprecating manner that is as sincere as it is unwarranted.

Keeping to form, Boyer holds the same modest theory with regard to his writing endeavors, though his published credits include books and scholarly articles on film and filmmakers, mainstream nonfiction work, short stories, and even a bit of poetry in publications such as Newsweek, The Nation, and The Paris Review. Boyer is also an accomplished playwright. His work has been produced and read in venues across the United States and around the world, including New York, Los Angeles, and London.

“I’ve dabbled with short stories and poetry and nonfiction—a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” he says. “I don’t like to talk much about my writing, because there are so many talented playwrights and novelists and poets in the program here, far more talented than I. I do it for the love of it, and I will continue to write plays, short stories, whatever it is that comes to me.”

When Boyer speaks this way, it’s easy to drift back to that ethereal scene in which manuscripts pour magically from the writer’s fingertips. Despite the somewhat romantic tone with which Boyer discusses good writing, he stresses that a great deal of time and research often goes into a writer’s work.

His play Poaching Deer in Northern Arizona is a case-in-point. Because he had never been deer hunting himself, Boyer set out to learn as much as he could about the subject to add authenticity to his storyline. He studied how to hand-load gunpowder into shotgun shell casings; he learned the proper way to field dress a deer so that the meat does not spoil. In the end, though, the vast majority of Boyer’s research sat on the shelf.

“I used just a brush stroke or two in the play,” Boyer says. “I wound up using a little bit about shell casings, and I wound up using a little bit about how you prepare a deer. But I was only comfortable doing that once I had learned probably enough about it to write a long and extensive article on each issue.”

That process of researching, drafting, and throwing away is more the rule than the exception when it comes to solid writing, regardless of the length or genre of the piece. It also is one of the most difficult parts of the job.

“For any book I’ve written, I’ll bet I have thrown away as many pages as I finally sent off to the publisher. I had done all that work and had all these important things to say. But when I got to the final draft, I realized it wasn’t all necessary after all,” he says. “And it’s anguish. You’ve taken all that time, all that effort. And you hate to throw anything away, particularly good writing.”

But that’s what writing is about, says Boyer, and it leads him to an interesting observation. Most people embrace an odd equation when it comes to writing—when they say writer, what they really mean is published writer; when they say writing, they really mean published writing. Publishing is one thing (or producing a play, for that matter), but writing is another.

In more than 25 years of teaching, Boyer has observed that many of his students—whether they are 20 years old or 80 years old—have less fondness for writing than they have for having written. Very often, they find the process of writing frustrating, tedious, and disheartening. Yet, they are very eager to have written the work; they want it somehow done.

“As I look out in the introductory classes I teach, I can almost tell you how many of those people will go on to write,” says Boyer. “I can’t much guess who’s going to publish.

“So I try to explain in a way that gets through. If you’re going to write,” I tell them, “you’re going to write with or without me, without or without this class,” he adds. “The writing will simply become part of your life and become important to you. And, insofar as you publish, God speed; but, insofar as you don’t, don’t think that somehow has kept you from being a writer.”—Jessica McCann