Jennifer Crusie | Argh Ink | Blog

One of the best teachers I’ve ever had was Ron Carlson. He’s now director of the MFA Fiction program at UC Irvine, but he came to OSU as a Visiting Writer back in the nineties, and I got him for one incredible week. I took copious notes but there are two things I remember most.

One was about writing. He said he’d been working on a book in which a character was studying in the British Museum, and he was writing along and realized he didn’t know anything about the British Museum, and he thought, Don’t look down. Because you can always go back and look up the British Museum. (That’s where I got my Don’t Look Down draft explanation, which is also how my first book with Bob ended up being called Don’t Look Down.) I cannot tell you how many times I have told myself, “Don’t look down” as I started to panic over something in a draft. It’ll be okay, just keep going. Ron Carlson said so.

The other was about living. After his last presentation and reading, the grad students took him to Larry’s which is a dive bar across from campus that was the English grad student hangout. He got his first drink and then we watched as he moved from table to table–and most of the people in this bar were not English grad students–and sat down with strangers and said, “I’m Ron Carlson, tell me your story,” or words to that effect. By the end of the evening, he’d drunk every grad student under the table–not an easy thing to do with MFA students–and he’d talked to everybody in the bar. He just absorbed people, absorbed experience, intensely interested in everything around him. Freaking amazing man.

Also, he can write. Read “Bigfoot Stole My Wife.” And if you ever get the chance to take a class from this guy, grab it. He’s not gentle, he’s not tactful, but damn, he’s good.