Program gives students space to grow as writers

By Shinelle Espaillat
As told to Ted Boscia

Second-year creative writing student Shinelle Espaillat, teaching her “Creative Writing: Fiction” class, worked as a legal secretary in Manhattan before coming to Temple to focus on her creative craft and teach. The experience of helping Temple students improve their writing “makes me think about how to make mine better, too,” she said.

“Before I came to the creative writing program at Temple, I used to think I was fortunate when I could find 20 minutes a day to write. At that time, I was an English major with a concentration in creative writing at Hunter University. While I was going to school, I was working full-time as a legal secretary for Skadden-Arps, a big Manhattan law firm right on 42nd and Broadway.

“Going to classes and having a full-time job can be very stressful, but, luckily, the law firm would let me configure my schedule and work around my needs at school. At my job, I became very adept at switching back and forth between work and school. I’d be writing a story and the boss would come over for copies or to have me edit something. I got pretty good at minimizing the window, doing what needed to be done and going back to my stories while keeping my original train of thought.

“But it was difficult to be interrupted. Sometimes I’d be at a breakthrough moment in a story and would have to get up and make copies. My situation definitely lent something to my writing — for one thing, I learned to work on deadline. You can accomplish quite a bit in 20 minutes when that’s all the time you have.

“Coming to Temple has allowed me to focus just on my writing. The fact that I’ve had time to write and produce for more than a year without distraction has been very beneficial.

“It’s great on a couple of levels, really. I’m a teaching assistant here, so I’m able to get teaching experience as well. It’s invaluable. Teaching literature is amazing because it’s another opportunity to look at writers who can influence my work. Helping students with their writing makes me think about how to make mine better, too. I’ve found it’s much easier to manage time as a teacher and a writer than as a legal secretary and a writer.

“Being exposed to literature courses has opened other doors, and I’m far more serious about pursuing a Ph.D. than I ever would have been.

“Finally, this program afforded me the peace of mind to go ahead and start a family. Now I can be a mother and still get my writing done. My husband — a law student at Temple — and I are expecting in November.

“Temple’s program is just small enough where students can be intimately connected with each other. It’s a new type of community I wasn’t part of before. I’ve definitely formed relationships here that will continue long after my time in the program is over. These bonds make our workshops very valuable. We’re looking at each other’s stories more intensely than if we didn’t want to help each other learn and grow as writers.

“I know it’s a cliché, but I think I speak for everyone in the program when I say this: Nobody with any sense goes into writing thinking that they’re going to make any money out of it. You do it because you have to, you’re driven because you have stories inside you to tell. The way [English professor] Joan Mellen puts it, there are particular truths inside you that you want to illustrate, a telling of events that the world should know. Writing is a very solitary process; there’s a lot of rejection. I’ve been submitting stories since day one and dealing with that rejection. But I don’t stop because I feel the need to relate what’s inside me.

“That process has become a little easier now that I’m not limited to 20 minutes at a time.”