I went to Elmhurst University back when it was still called Elmhurst College. Class of 2000. During my last two years there I worked on the newspaper and the literary magazine. I was a double major, English and philosophy, so naturally I took a few courses taught by Ron Wiginton. He also advised the newspaper, so I worked with him there, too.
Almost no one reading this will remember, but back then I had a writing partner on the paper, my high school friend, Jesse Russell. Together we were GonZo and THE STRAIGHT, and we investigated the primitive underbelly of Chicago. We called ourselves, unsurprisingly, Primitive Underbelly. Today I got a text from Jesse notifying me that Ron Wiginton had died of a heart attack on his way back from vacation. My first thought was, "At least he didn't make it back to work first."
But I thought I should talk about him a little tonight because of all the creative writing teachers I've had, he had the most influence on my writing.
I remember when I first met him. It was for an American Lit class. He was a bald guy with a ponytail, and he didn't have a lot of teeth. He looked like an aging hippie, but aside from his love of playing bongo drums, he didn't act like one. I remember thinking, who the hell is this guy?
I think he came from Tallahassee before he got his job at Elmhurst. He'd worked there as a journalist, if memory serves correctly, which made him the one and only creative writing teacher I ever had who made a living as a writer. He was a no bullshit kind of guy. He was harsh, but he was that way because of love. He wanted his students to be the best writers they could be.
Now that I think about it, I've mentioned him before in Goodnight, Fuckers. He was the professor in question from this column. He believed in tough love when it came to learning how to write, emphasis on the love part of that. He taught me to be tough with my own work, so I thought I'd list a few things I learned from him as a memorial tribute.
I made a horrible blunder while I was reporting for the Leader. I was assigned a masturbation story. I swear it was not my idea. It was the editor-in-chief's idea. It's just, well, you all know me. Who else would work on that kind of story? I was supposed to interview people about how normal masturbation is. Part of that was interviewing the college minister. The minister wanted to see a copy of the article before publication, and I said I'd do it. I was lying a little bit, though. I figured I'd slip it under his door the morning the paper was supposed to be printed so it would be too late to STOP THE PRESSES! STOP THE PRESSES! I did that only to learn that there was a problem with the printer, and he was able to stop the presses and get the article kicked out of the paper. Dr. Wiginton took me aside and told me to never do that again under any circumstances. The subjects of your article should read it in print, not one second before.
I also wanted hate mail pretty badly. Yeah, that's kind of a weird thing, but that's what I wanted. I never got anything UNTIL I wrote a negative review of The Blair Witch Project. Everyone on the planet at the time was talking about how awesome and scary the movie was. I said that I'd give it an A if it was a student film, but as a movie it did nothing for me. I finally got hate mail for that, and I wanted to respond, to open a dialogue (which was code for "get in a flame war over something that doesn't matter"). He told me to never respond to hate mail. NEVER. If you're responding to hate mail, you're fucking yourself as an author. Never do that. Ever. Did I mention that you should never respond to hate mail?
Now for some creative writing stuff. When in doubt, cut it out. If something doesn't fit into a story, get rid of it. It doesn't matter how brilliant you might think it is. If it doesn't serve the story, it has to go.
Character motivations are important. That I already knew, but he wanted me to constantly ask myself this question: Why today? Why did the character decide to do the thing today instead of yesterday or tomorrow or whenever?
He also said that you've always got to care about what you're writing. It seems kind of obvious, but take a look around. Think about the things you've read. You can always tell when a writer is phoning it in, right? When you catch one red-handed (and, I might add, he was a big crusader against clichés), you always have to wonder why they bothered. If you don't care, don't write it.
He gave a lot of other advice, but those are the big ones.
Most of my creative writing teachers focused on teaching their students how to express themselves. I suspect that's because getting students to commit to that kind of thing is like pulling teeth, especially if they're just there for an easy course credit. Of them all, Ron Wiginton alone wanted to teach me to be a better writer. For that I will always be grateful.
Thank you, Dr. Wiginton. Rest in peace.
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