We Wanted to Be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers' Workshop

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We Wanted to Be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers' Workshop

by Eric Olsen (Goodreads Author), Glenn Schaeffer

3.69 of 5 stars 3.69 · rating details · 61 ratings · 21 reviews

We Wanted to be Writers is a rollicking and insightful blend of original interviews, commentary, advice, gossip, anecdotes, analyses, history, and asides with nearly thirty graduates and teachers at the now legendary Iowa Writers' Workshop between 1974 and 1978. Among the talents that emerged in those years-writing, criticizing, drinking, and debating in the classrooms and...more

Paperback, 320 pages

Published August 1st 2011 by Skyhorse Publishing

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Apr 05, 2011 Don Wallace rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've read about 100 pages of this in galley and it's unlike any book you'll ever encounter about creative writing in today's world. It takes a group of writers in the Iowa Workshop, 1975-78, and asks them what it was like, what did they learn, what do they think now looking back?

There are lots of big names before they were big, reflecting on what it's like to come up writing through the ranks. Lots of unknowns with good stuff to say. (Full disclosure: I attended the Iowa Workshop with many in t...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Dawn Cook rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: for-gifts

I actually requested this book for my best friend who has a great talent for writing. She is starting a book and I thought this would be a great tool to help her. I will let you know when she finishes the book what she thought. Thanks again for the book.

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Jan 19, 2012 C rated it 4 of 5 stars

'We Wanted To Be Writers' is a dialogue among almost thirty students and teachers of the esteemed Iowa Writers' Workshop, while they attended during the 1970s. At times, the writing seems like many people are in a room discussing the book as it is transcribed, with a section from one person that seemingly connects to what the last has said.. 'We Wanted to Be Writers' is named that for a reason -- not all of them actually went on to become writers. Though there are some amazing writers included h...more

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Nov 06, 2011 Diane Prokop rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ever wondered what your life would have been like had you attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop? I have but I don’t have to imagine anymore, because I just finished reading We Wanted To Be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop by Eric Olsen and Glenn Schaeffer. The bottom line is that I missed out on some incredible times, especially since I would have been there in the seventies - the golden era - when all the writers/teachers who contributed to this book were there.
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Ever wondered what your life would have been like had you attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop? I have but I don’t have to imagine anymore, because I just finished reading We Wanted To Be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop by Eric Olsen and Glenn Schaeffer. The bottom line is that I missed out on some incredible times, especially since I would have been there in the seventies - the golden era - when all the writers/teachers who contributed to this book were there.
Olsen and Schaeffer have put together a glorious book about the Workshop from an insider’s perspective. They graduated in 1977. Olsen went on to become a journalist and was at one time an executive editor at Time Warner. Schaeffer has had a very successful thirty-year career in the gaming industry. Both, no doubt, owe a lot of their success to the Workshop.
Together, they have amassed the best compendium of facts, anecdotes, gossip and history about what is inarguably the most-esteemed writing program in the U.S. They talked to nearly 30 graduates and teachers who were at the Workshop between 1974 and 1978. It is a big reveal that it is full of factoids and juicy details.
Right off the bat, I liked the conversational tone that pervades, which makes it an easy and enjoyable read. There is plenty of truth-telling full of gossip, drugs, and sex. But they also discuss what it takes to write, writer’s block, how they handled rejection and what success feels like. Talk about their initial fears, naivete, and competitiveness is personal and honest. They wonder about the stuff they learned and did not learn at the Workshop. They reveal who they liked as teachers and who left them cold.
The first thing I learned was something I’d been curious about for a long time. How did the Workshop with the most cache end up in the middle of the country - in Iowa of all places. Not New York. Not Chicago. Here’s one reason given, although it’s not the only one:
“Iowa was covered with prosperous family farms owned by folks who, maybe just a generation or two or three removed from Europe, held to the core values of the Enlightenment. They valued hard work and thrift, also education, and though they may not have had the time to read themselves, what with all the milking and planting and fence-mending to be done, by God their children would go to college and make even better lives for themselves! And so they paid the taxes, too, because back then values like hard work and honesty and community and literacy mattered. Back then, dumb wasn’t cool like it later became; back then, dumb was, well...dumb.”
You will recognize a lot of the contributors such as John Irving, Jane Smiley, Marvin Bell, T.C. Boyle, Sandra Cisneros and Allan Gurganus, to name a few. They each share their journey: How they came to writing; how they ended up at the Workshop; what their experience was like while they were there; and what happened after they left. Some became famous writers and some never wrote again, but I would bet that none of them, if given a do-over, would not do it again.
Marvin Bell, who now teaches at a low-residency program at Pacific University in Oregon, has so many great words of wisdom including: “One of the secrets in life is that if you do anything seriously long enough, you get better at it.”
You’ll also find interesting tidbits like this one: “...Workshops like Iowa’s thus became a refuge for young, developing writers in the absence of more support from anywhere else. And, of course, once writers started teaching other writers and got paid to do it, the movement went viral. From the official founding of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1936 until the mid-‘70s when we were applying to the Iowa program, there were only about a dozen programs offering the MFA degree in creative writing, many of them started and staffed by Iowa alumni. In all, including programs offering undergraduate degrees and PhDs, there were seventy-nine. At the time of this writing, there are 153 MFA programs and nearly 800 programs in total with more on the way.”
Most everyone had positive things to say about their days at the Workshop, but others were less effusive. Some were lonely and isolated and felt that they were left out or ridiculed. Perhaps they would have felt that way no matter where they had ended up. It’s certainly not a just a nostalgic look through rose-colored glasses. There were plenty of problems, although some seemed to become more evident in retrospect, no doubt. Drunk and lecherous teachers were considered more like a celebration of the times back then, but these days would not be tolerated.
The best take-away for aspiring writers who read this book is that there’s no right way to write. There is no secret to be imparted that will make anyone a bestselling author. Each of these writers found what worked for themselves and kept at it. What works for one, is anathema to another. Even boxing has a place. Yes, some felt boxing was “good for the soul,” but others just saw stars. Some techniques are stranger than others. Here’s what John Irving said about how he writes a novel: “I write last sentences first. I work my way backward from the end of the novel…”
Most writers everywhere would agree that a writer needs a community. In a section about that need Olsen and Schaeffer say, “If there’s any one thing that might have contributed to the quality of “our class,” it’s probably the simple fact that if you throw a lot of talented folks together in one place and give them the freedom to work and play together, not always nicely but nicely enough, good things are going to happen. But then this is the case for every workshop class, not just ours.”
This is a great read packed full of valuable advice and insight. I particularly like the Books By the Bed sidebars that give us peak at what each contributor is reading. This book is a must-have if you are a writer, a wanna-be writer or are simply curious about what goes into the making of a writer. If you read one book about writing this year, it should be We Wanted To Be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
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Sep 05, 2011 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars

As someone who has dappled with the idea of graduate school in creative writing, this book intrigued me because it highlighted THE school for creative writing -- the world famous Iowa Writer's Workshop. The book is set up in thematic sections (how each writer fell in the love with the craft, why Iowa, life at Iowa, life after Iowa, etc.). A brief narrative introduces the section (usually with long-winded pontifications about writing) followed by a series of direct quotes from the featured author...more

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Jun 27, 2012 Megan Henrich rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't worship at the altar of Iowa, but I sure do have a helluva lot of respect for the program, and when people DO worship Iowa, they are probably thinking about this four year period where Iowa's students couldn't lose. Or so it seems. Though it is true that literary greats like T.C. Boyle, Jane Smiley, Irving (student in the 60s, but teacher in the 70s),Jayne Anne Phillips, Joy Harjo, and so many more came out of this period of time, but not all of the students went into writing, and not al...more I don't worship at the altar of Iowa, but I sure do have a helluva lot of respect for the program, and when people DO worship Iowa, they are probably thinking about this four year period where Iowa's students couldn't lose. Or so it seems. Though it is true that literary greats like T.C. Boyle, Jane Smiley, Irving (student in the 60s, but teacher in the 70s),Jayne Anne Phillips, Joy Harjo, and so many more came out of this period of time, but not all of the students went into writing, and not all of the students who went into writing found the easy success that their peers did. Though it is easy to mythologize this time and institution, it is still easy to understand how this may be true because it is certainly true now. Not everyone who attends Iowa, or any of the other MFA programs, will see "success" with their writing.
So, I guess the secondary question for all of these contributors was something along the lines of: Well, was it worth it? Is writing worth it, to go through all of this?

There were some Scalia-like dissents, but all in all, I think the answer is yes. I enjoyed the book because it was a conversation between some great authors, and also, these people are great story tellers and they told a lot of great stories.

For the most part, the book was written more like a confessional than a tell-all. Most of the writers, while being honest about Iowa, didn't feel the need to hit below the belt. An exception to this was Sandra Cisneros. Her vehement dislike for Iowa wouldn't have bothered me if it weren't for the fact that she would not stop talking about her book, A House on Mango Street. It was relentless self-promotion and it really rubbed me the wrong way.

At the same time, there were a lot of surprising insights. The way Catherine Gammon realized she needed to get sober through writing a novel reminded me a lot of how Stephen King described (in On Writing) realizing the same thing while writing Misery, which is interesting because they are very different writers who both went through a similar experience in their writing.

I don't think a book like this can get 5 stars, just by the nature of what it is, but for what it is, it was definitely interesting.
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Jan 21, 2012 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

This took me forever to read. Not because it was bad or boring, but neither was it strongly propulsive. Chatty, is what I'd call it, but with a lot of good commentary from a lot of different angles about writing, the writing life, the pursuit of an MFA, etc. I just I kept getting distracted by all sorts of other shiny things.

It's a collective anecdotal narrative, with input from people you've heard of (T.C. Boyle, John Irving, Sandra Cisneros, Allan Gurganus) and then a bunch you haven't, becaus...more

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Feb 29, 2012 Tatiana rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, writing-related

Perhaps not the best book to read during unemployment. The first 2/3rds made me feel like a complete failure, but the last third has me on quite the kick of productivity, so maybe it was worth it in the end. And there are quite a few fantastic moments in the book, such as the below.

"...we had to write by the rules: twenty-five lines per page, double-spaced; no more than fifteen pages, max; no cross-outs, no handwritten corrections; and every story had to follow the Five-Step Formula: (1) open in...more

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Jun 20, 2012 Martha added it

I grabbed this book for an airlplane read and couldn't finish it. What depressing drivel. I'm interested in the famous Iowa Writers's Worksop, but this book was more about posers who wanted to be writers than artist/craftsmen who wanted to write.

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Apr 09, 2013 June rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: psychological-and-or-nonfiction

I finally finished reading this book. Woah, that sounds exhausted, doesn't it? And maybe I am.

Reading the collective memory of so many writers is tiring, but nonetheless very interesting. I learned a lot about writing culture in the US then and now.

This is not a book I could read quickly, though. A few pages at a time, then I had to take a break and put it down, sometimes for several days or a week, only to pick it up again and read another couple of pages. I know that others raced through it, b...more

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Jul 19, 2012 Jeff rated it 3 of 5 stars

Here is a link to my review of, "We Wanted to Be Writers": http://jchariscarlson.blogspot.com/20...

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Jan 15, 2012 Sarah rated it 2 of 5 stars

Composed largely of interviews with people who graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in the mid-70's, this book is not particularly elegant, but it has all kinds of interesting tidbits/opinions/insights about what it's like (or at least what it used to be like) to be a student in that MFA program. So much back-biting and politicking. I wonder if it's still like that. There's an amusing passage in which the authors and interviewees start to sound like they're imitating Hemingway, and it gets...more

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Oct 06, 2011 Jordan, The Picture Magician (aka Probie) rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: rip-my-eyes-out-bad

Not what I expected it to be. :(

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Nov 15, 2012 J Clement Wall rated it 4 of 5 stars

It has always been my not-so-secret belief that graduates of the Iowa Writers' Workshop occupy a different plane than I do, breathe rarefied air, write their final drafts first... in pen. Turns out, they're mere humans after all. In fact they're even more fragile than regular humans; they're writers. If you've ever been curious about the Iowa Writers' Workshop, this is a great read - honest, enlightening, funny, and in the end surprisingly reassuring.

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Nov 30, 2011 Gary Butler rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, memoir

26th book read in 2011.

number 196 out of 230 on my all time book list.

Follow the link below to see my video review:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y34PMG...

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Nov 04, 2012 Maeleen rated it 5 of 5 stars

I so enjoyed this book; it is an insider's view of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. One of the things I especially enjoyed was a listing of books the participant themselves were reading. What a wide variety of interests! It is frank and honest; famous and not so famous writers are very generous in sharing insights into the writing process. A great read!!

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May 27, 2012 Stacey rated it 4 of 5 stars

My latest literary matchup is a murder mystery (Tiger Lily's Orchids), a nature book (Remarkable Creatures), and this one, and believe it or not the Iowa Writer's Workshop trumps the other 2 hands down. And I was LOVING Remarkable Creatures. (I guess it's good to break your book into lots of easily digestible quotes.)

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Mar 02, 2012 Michele Mcconnell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I keep this by my bedside in hopes that it will bring some inspiration in moments of utter despair. I turn to a page and read about writing, and I find myself with my journal or the current work I am attempting to get on the page and I am writing.

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Oct 22, 2012 Mary Ford rated it 5 of 5 stars

When I won this via goodreads giveaway I was super excited. I'm a writer and this really resonated with me. It took me a long time to read it as I read it in bits and pieces but I feel like I actually got more out of it for that.

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Jan 19, 2012 Jasmin rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book read like dialogue in a writer's work shop. Great insights of both the vulnerabilities and the successes of these writers. Recommend to young writers who are doubting their skill.

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Jun 12, 2012 Bonnie is currently reading it

Shelves: we-wanted-to-be-writers

Love the traditions to the Iowa Writers Workshop. I like peeking into the thoughts of participants.

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Apr 16, 2013 Erin added it

Apr 13, 2013 Jade Mirissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Apr 04, 2013 Randy marked it as to-read

Shelves: writing-craft, non-fiction

Apr 01, 2013 Tiana added it

Mar 26, 2013 Palmer Cole rated it 3 of 5 stars

Mar 20, 2013 Marie marked it as to-read

Mar 16, 2013 Hannah marked it as to-read

Apr 14, 2013 Shazzer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: default

Mar 02, 2013 Jessica marked it as to-read

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About Eric Olsen

I was born and raised in Oakland—go A’s! California. I'm a journalist, editor, and occasional novelist. My sixth non-fiction book, We Wanted to be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was released August 1, 2011. It's a series of conversations about writing, the creative process, the lit biz, and more with nearly 30 classmates and teachers at the Iowa Writers' Worksho...more

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