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Name
Instructor
FYE Orientation
20 January 2015
2,408 words
Writing as Personal and Social Act: Finding a Voice of a Generation
Anyone familiar with creative writing knows the clichéd injunctions to “write what you
know” and “find your voice.” These instructions suggest that the writer’s experience and identity
should serve as her spirit guides on the path to success. Writing about the development of the
university creative writing program, Mark McGurl argues that these seemingly self-centered
koans are better understood as reactions against the institutionalization of creative writing:
dictums meant to romanticize and prioritize the self and its unique experience as the fount of
creativity. McGurl’s 2009 study of university creative writing programs, The Program Era,
enters into an ongoing conversation about the proper motivation for a writer: the self or society,
the writer or her audience. McGurl suggests that the writer is part of a larger culture of writing
that implicates the MFA student and autodidact alike, as well as their readers, pointing to the
more complicated dynamics that motivate and shape acts of writing. Like McGurl, I intervene in
this conversation to shed light on romantic myths about the one-way relationship between the
writer and her creation. Taking the character Hannah Horvath from the show, Girls, as my
object, I will argue that the belief that writing reflects a writer’s individuality keeps us from
recognizing how public and private uses for writing always shape what the writer puts on the
page.
Writers Are Just A Bunch of Narcissists
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It sounds like a truism to call today’s youth narcissistic; the “me generation” has been
called out for using new media platforms to stroke their egos, crafting ideal selves through
Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and Instagram selfies. While digital media may seem to
encourage today’s narcissists, the printed page remains a romanticized space for selfconstruction and self-promotion, and the status of “writer” maintains considerable caché. As
early as 1905, Virginia Woolf bemoaned “the invention of the personal essay” for encouraging
writing that “is not interesting, cannot be useful, and is a specimen of the amazing and unclothed
egoism for which first the art of penmanship and then the invention of essay-writing are
responsible” (1; 2-3). Her feeling that the culture encourages writers to subject readers to their
purportedly useless prose is echoed in more recent musings by Laura Miller, who reads the
motivational event, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), as a permission for novice
writers “to write a lot of crap” that they “insist…other people read” (3). Cristina Nehring takes a
similar stance in her essay about the status of American essays, citing the lack of “courage”
among writers to “address large subjects in a large way,” and focusing instead on the “Slowmoving. Soft-hitting. Nostalgic. [and] Self-satisfied”; in other words, on personal matters of little
interest to potential readers (2;3).
Woolf, Miller, and Nehring paint writers (or at least “bad” writers) as selfish and readers
as “selfless” (Miller 3). In the context of Miller’s essay, “the selfless art of reading…[has been]
taken over by the narcissistic commerce of writing,” which can wring more money from
wannabe writers who flock to how-to books and motivational writing seminars. Members of the
narcissism camp critique the self-interest ostensibly motivating writing and the market that
encourages such essays and fiction. To this end, Miller points out the “homogenous” tone of
today’s essays based on her reading of works anthologized in The Best American Essays
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collections. These anthologies produce a “composite portrait of the Preferred American Essayist:
Educated at Harvard, he or she has spent significant time at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference,
written proposals for New York Public Library Fellowships…and received medical attention at
Sloan Kettering Hospital” (3). Nehring’s essay suggests that there are networks of privilege
supporting the image of the writer that emerges from these anthologies, but she does not consider
where the target audience of such prose fits in relation to these networks. The stereotypical
writers in the Best American Essays anthologies are, ironically, the successful writers that
“wannabe” NaNoWriMo participates aspire to become. But what might we glean about the
narcissistic tendencies of writers if we looked beyond the myth of the writer motivated only by
her own self-regard, shrouded in privilege?
Those who focus on the writer’s self-motivation reproduce what James E. Porter
describes as “the romantic image of writer as free, uninhibited spirit, as independent, creative
genius” (34). Writing is not merely self-expression in this view; writing “what you know,” as per
the creative writing mandate, means writing what your discourse community knows, and also
recognizing when the texts you read are not quite accessible to you. Writing about the role
literature can play in the composition classroom, Mark Richardson remarks on the student’s
“reluctan[ce] to step onto hallowed ground” and engage in ongoing debates about the meaning of
literary texts. Students see literature as mythic and removed from their social world, much like
the romantic image of the genius writer; there remains a “hierarchical relationship between
student and text embedded in our cultural assumptions about truth, beauty, and art” (281).
Writing, then, is more than self-expression, even if the subject matter is the self; it is an exercise
in self-construction based on one’s social position and the kind of audience one hopes to address.
The market economy, and not merely the symbolic economy of truth, beauty, and art,
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also influences the conditions under which a writer or artist produces her work. Describing the
different kinds of television shows aired on network and cable TV, Derek Thompson explains
that “The economic structure of cable channels, which receive most of their money from fees
rather than ads, greatly relieves them of the burden of maximizing audience–and as a result they
produce television that is less formulaic, more attractive to the writing- and-reading-about-TV
crowd, but often less watched” (3). This economic logic is part and parcel of the “hierarchy”
Richardson describes; both difficult literature and less formulaic, premium TV shows appeal to
small, more elite niche audiences who have both the real and symbolic capital necessary to enjoy
them.
I want now to turn to the character Hannah Horvath from Girls whose education, family
background, and race make her the elite, tacit addressee of capital-L “Literature,” even as her
beginner’s status makes her an outsider to the writing establishment. Seeing how the show
complicates the myth of the “free, uninhibited” writer (Porter 34)—even if Hannah does have
certain privileges—sheds light on the institutional and economic factors that situate the writer
and motivate the kind of work she produces, whether consciously or not.
A Voice of a Generation
Girls follows the misadventures of aspiring 24-year-old writer Hannah Horvath who must
balance her desire to be an artist with her need to support herself in Brooklyn. The first episode
juxtaposes the fantasy of being a writer in New York City with the bleaker reality of struggling
to gain a foothold in the industry. The first scene shows Hannah in an upscale restaurant with her
parents, greedily inhaling food as she reminds them that she’s a “growing girl.” Though
Hannah’s remark infantilizes her, her parents want her to embrace her adult independence,
telling Hannah that, after two years of financial help, they will no longer “keep bankrolling [her]
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groovy lifestyle.” It is not inconsequential that this “groovy lifestyle” is the foundation for much
of Hannah’s writing. She is currently working on a memoir, a collection of essays that is
currently incomplete because, as she claims in order to maintain financial support from her
parents, she has to “live them first.” Immediately the show establishes the contrast between
Hannah’s own romanticized idea of the writer—in particular, the personal essayist—and the
economic reality in which she finds herself. In this image, the writer’s life is the foundation for
her art, and her art in turn creates her as a particular kind of person. As Hannah explains, she has
been “busy trying to become who I am”; she understands this “busy”ness of living as
coterminous with the business of writing.
But as the show goes on to explore, the notion that a writer can sit back and write about
her life as a writer, focusing intently on herself without thought of an audience or public, is a
myth even for Hannah, who TV critics repeatedly label a “narcissist” (Kay). The first episode
pokes holes in the fantasy of the privileged writer whose craft can support her lifestyle. Later in
the episode, the character Shoshanna remarks on a Sex in the City poster, debating which of the
characters she’s most like. The main character of Sex in the City, Carrie, was, like Hannah, a
personal essayist, but Sex in the City rarely showcased her financial struggles and Carrie was
already a professional writer. The first episode ultimately undercuts the myth of the successful
writer as at liberty to write only for and about herself.
In season two, episode three, Hannah’s first paid writing job—a freelance position for the
fictional blog jazzhate—reveals how the writing she produces, despite its focus on herself, is
nevertheless influenced by the blog’s audience’s expectations of scintillation and scandal. The
blog editor explains to Hannah that they’re looking for writing about events that occur outside
the writer’s comfort zone. Hannah asks if “there [is] something you want me to explore
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specifically?” “You could do a whole bunch of coke and then just write about it,” the editor
responds, which starts Hannah on an anxious rant about how drugs and her delicate constitution
don’t mix. Nevertheless, the episode revolves around Hannah taking cocaine for the first time in
order to drum up a story worthy of the $200 the blog will pay her. Hannah’s writing, and the
personal experience on which it’s based, is ultimately shaped by the demand of her public. The
episode traces the feedback loop between Hannah’s personal writing and the public for whom
she composes it. More than being influenced by her audience’s expectations, Hannah is
motivated by the money she needs to earn from the piece, suggesting the multiple influences that
shape her composition.
Despite my argument that Girls’s Hannah reveals the more complex motivations of
writers, it could be argued that Hannah remains the classic narcissistic writer that Woolf,
Nehring, and Miller describe. Even in her work for jazzhate, she writes about herself and her
experience, fancying herself the kind of person whose exploits are worthy of publication. But
Girls expands its view of writers and their art, moving beyond the writer-essay focus of those in
the “narcissist camp.” Girls is more conscious of the audiences that certain genres of writing
court and provides snapshots of the ways in which writing and writers circulate. Even Hannah is
able to see beyond her ego to recognize that she and her writing are not representative of all
writers or readers and may be of interest to (and representative of) only a particular public. As
she tells her parents in the pilot episode, in a last ditch effort for their continued financial
support, “I think that I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice of a generation”
(emphasis mine).
In the second episode of the first season, the show comments again on this difference
between the fantasy of a homogenous public and the diverse kinds of readers texts may
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encounter: the difference between “the” public “a” public. This time, the characters debate
whether or not they are “the ladies” being addressed in a popular dating advice book. After
discussing certain dating rules described in the book, Hannah asks her friends, “Who are the
ladies?” To which Shoshonna replies “Obvi[ously], we’re the ladies,” with Jessa retorting, “I’m
not the ladies.” By showing us how the public of a piece of writing responds to work that does
not seem addressed to them, Girls helps us understand a weakness in the narcissist camp’s view
that acts of writing motivated by self-interest or personal-gratification are necessarily useless to
readers. Readers make meaning of texts even if that meaning, as in Richardson’s classroom, may
initially be a meaning about their relationship to a text and not the text itself.
Girls helps us see the connection between Hannah’s personal writing and the dating
advice book the characters discuss; both are informed by particular discourse communities, and
not everyone may consider themselves addressed by those texts. Hannah’s prose may not speak
to the college writing students who are the subject of Richardson’s article, but even in her selfabsorption, Hannah recognizes this. She is possibly a voice of a generation, a mouthpiece for a
particular subset of her peers, but by no means is she wholly representative. This admission and
this self-awareness are what writers in the narcissism camp sidestep, remarking on the
stereotypical writer anthologized in The Best American Essays collections, but glossing over the
kind of public this anthology addresses. While the “big ideas” that used to be in essays are
presumably universal, Nehring overlooks the ways in which the seemingly narcissistic
“miniature” can be mined for insights about “truth” and the specific writer-public community
who consume texts. Though those in the narcissist camp want writers to strive for universal
truths that can be of use to readers, they disregard how the notion of “universal” is itself a
construct. Detractors of narcissistic writers glorify reading and universal truths at the expense of
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recognizing how their own motivations to do so are shaped by the more specific discourse
communities to which they and narcissistic writers belong. In many ways, the romantic myth of
the individual writer keeps us from seeing the more complicated dynamics shaping a writer’s
production.
Conclusions
Despite the drawbacks of the narcissism camp, their moralizing tone serves to reinvest
the act of writing with social value, suggesting that writing has a loftier goal than self-promotion
and self-satisfaction. However, even in its tacit suggestion that “good” writing has the
philosophical goal of tackling “big ideas” beyond the self, this argument overlooks how “big”
and varied an audience and their response to writing can be. Studies that pretend to know what
motivates a writer neglect how that writer’s very sense of self is shaped by myths about writing.
Girls shows us how finding your voice and writing what you know involves acts of selfconstruction and textual composition that are shaped by larger symbolic and economic networks.
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Works Cited
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Dangers of a Single Story”. TedGlobal. Jul 2009. ted.com.
Web. 2 Jan. 2014.
Girls. Seasons 1&2. Writ. Lena Dunham. 2012.
Kay, Lena. “Why I Don’t Like ‘Girls’.” The Huffington Post. 06 March 2014. Web 19 Jan 2015.
McGurl, Mark. The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing.
Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2009. Kindle file.
Miller, Laura. “Better Yet: Don’t Write that Novel”. Salon.com. 02 Nov. 2010. Web. 29 Dec.
2014.
Nehring, Cristina. “What’s Wrong with the American Essay”. Truthdig.com. 29 Nov. 2007.
Web. 29 Web. 2014.
Porter, James. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community”. Rhetoric Review. 5.1
(Autumn 1986): 34-47). jstor.org. Web. 29 Dec. 2014.
Richardson, Mark. “Who Killed Annabel Lee: Writing about Literature in the Composition
Classroom”. College English. 66.3 (Jan. 2004): 278-93. jstor.org. Web. 27 Feb. 2012.
Thompson, Derek. “Why Nobody Writes about Popular TV Shows”. The Atlantic. May 2004.
theatlantic.com. Web. 29 Dec. 2014.
Woolf, Virginia. “The Decay of Essay-Writing”. [Source under review]