How Harper Lee helped me to gain admission to Harvard's Creative Writing MFA

‘The only time I ever came close to Jesus was the calm after her orgasm.’ This was the first line in my portfolio of stories.

During lockdown, I created a new identity as Teri Lodge, an ex-nun from off-grid Mount Angel Seminary, and gained acceptance to Harvard’s Creative Writing (MFA) programme. All I had to do was to pay $35 000 fees and act creatively in finding the paperwork. I’d previous here, about thirty years ago, when I was around eighteen, I’d been accepted on the Prince’s Trust Programme to go somewhere, and help somebody do something, but I wasn’t sure what.

The Prince’s Trust sent me all the paperwork, and I was to find sponsors and two referees. My left hand acted as one referee and gave a glowing report of my capabilities. Only for it to be outdone by my right hand, who had an instinctual grasp of paperwork. The only thing stopping me from going to Peru, and changing the world, was being in YO (Young Offenders).    

Even having the money, and not having to sell your Peruvian donkey,  the odds or gaining admission to a prestigious writing programme like Harvard are 1500 to 1. My kind of odds.

Everybody loves an underdonkey story. Mine had sexual dysfunction and a sad ending. Jesus wept. And I did too.  

The prose was so clear and shiny, I levitated from my desk and bumped my head on the ceiling.

But I had to be careful to write in American English. Colour looks differently in Americanese. I didn’t want to blow my color. Jargony words were a no-no. And I had to learn how to punctuate like a Yanker. The debate about where a full stop fell, after extended he said/she said speech, ‘ends here.’

Dialogue was simply an extension of The Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird.

‘Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mother superior.’

Clichés are like cold sores, I waited a few days until they cleared before I sent away my portfolio. Many writers are a lousy judge or their own work. The best thing I’d ever written was at three o’clock in the morning, dead drunk, but didn’t cut the cheese. The best way around this obstacle was using someone else’s work and claiming it as my own. You don’t need to be Ernest Hemmingway. I figured, in fact, it was probably better if you’re not.  

Amateurish material can be salvaged with the dictum, there’s no such thing as writing, just re-writing. But my reputation as a virginal, lesbian, sex-addicted, ex-nun could not. Once a sheep-shagger, always a sheep-shagger. Once a plagiarist, always a plagiarist. Old-school philosophy of be careful what you steal, and make sure the lights are off if you’re not wearing wellies.

By writing what I didn’t know about not knowing, I became, briefly, part of the American elite of Bush and Bush, but not Trump, who couldn’t write, although he claimed to have written a number of bestsellers, including The Art of the Deal. Never write,

‘The end.’

Because it never is and it always looked amateurish.

The end.