A Shared Truth: Reconciling Creative and Academic Narratives

"And now, I couldn't write a single creative word. Was my creative magnet degaussed?Narratives have hypnotized me since I was little. Although I didn't read much as a kid, I found myself drawn toward friends, teachers, and family members who were storytellers. At times, it felt as if somewhere in my chest there was an industrial magnet and that the concrete, visceral details of the stories were metal filings.This led me to major in English during my undergraduate studies, and soon after, to complete an MFA degree with a concentration in fiction, hoping to craft narratives of my own. But as much as I relished the MFA experience, I felt a lingering absence, a wan ache during and after the MFA process. This ache, however, dwelled in a different place than my creative magnet. This ache lived in my head.I decided to pursue an academic PhD after completing the MFA degree to abate this feeling. Moreover, the creative and academic realms have seemingly always been at the opposite ends of a binary, and one of the most important lessons I've learned in my years of schooling is that, if you want to be entirely informed about a topic, know all sides. Now I sought to not only know how to build, but to professionally examine narratives.Anyone who has attempted this path in the order in which I have attempted it, starting with the creative degree and then pursuing the academic degree, knows the difficulties one faces when asked to, in some ways, eviscerate narratives akin to the narratives I had just spent years constructing. Thankfully, this pain only lasted a semester in graduate school, as there is no time to mourn the death of creativity in academia. Furthermore, the most difficult part came not as an emotional pain but as a philosophical one.In every theoretical course I took—Critical Race Theory, Modern Critical Theories, Gender Studies—students were encouraged to challenge, question, and scrutinize narratives, as any good school should encourage students to do. However, I soon came to realize that a "narrative" in the academy is very different in some ways than the fictional narratives I was accustomed to. The academic narratives are often historical, unstable, and culturally, racially, and politically entrenched. These are actual and have real consequences, not on other fictional characters but on real people with lives and families.So when I realized that I would be scrutinizing narratives that often perpetuated inequality and traditional power structures, my anxiety partially dissipated. With a focus on contemporary American short fiction and gender studies, I was asked to examine the American masculine narrative, the white privilege narrative of the hegemonic structure, the insecure heteronormative narrative, and more.But what had happened? Where was my fictional narrative of yesteryear?

Our job was to look inside for truth, to create, to trust, and to produce.

I spent some time revisiting all of the notes I took in my fiction workshops and seminars and comparing them to theory I was learning. In the creative workshops, there was such encouragement in sharing one's fictional narratives. There was such care taken in constructing them. Even during the workshops, there were specific guidelines on how to critique the narratives. The only person who would be "harmed" in the creation of the narrative would be the writer herself. In most workshops, we were asked to avoid asking if parts of the story were "true" and asking the author, the creator herself, any questions about the story. Our job was to look inside for truth, to create, to trust, and to produce.In contrast, during my theoretical doctoral classes, there was a healthy competitiveness, a guarding of unique and significant ideas. Professors asked us to challenge the origin of information, question sources, and identify political implications, hypocrisies, and biases of established narratives, and for good reason. These types of narratives had the potential to harm large groups of disenfranchised, oppressed people. Therefore, our job was to look outside for truth, to de- and reconstruct, to distrust, to dissect.During the first few years I started the PhD program, I had not had much time to create many new stories. So during the summer of my second year, I decided to simply revisit some stories I had written in the MFA program, to edit, to reconnect, to remember what I had felt while constructing creative narratives. I returned to an old story I had written about a 20-something white male whose girlfriend leaves the house one night to spend time with her friends. He is consequently left home alone to contemplate his life, his new home, his relationship with his family, and his still nascent relationship.But now, all I could see in this story were the academic narratives I had been scrutinizing: "how financially privileged he is," "how easy it is for him to earn that job," "how sexist he is that he feels 'left alone' by his girlfriend who merely needs time to reconnect with those who know her best." Not only were the academic narratives embedded in my creative stories, but I was implicated. The stories I had constructed so carefully were egregious indications of the aforementioned perpetuated narratives we had been criticizing in my theoretical classes. And now, I couldn't write a single creative word. Was my creative magnet degaussed?

And yet, despite how radically different these perspectives are, they share a common purpose: a search for truth.

This led me to think more critically about the two perspectives on narrative. They seemingly could not be more different in terms of process, language, structure, and content. And yet, despite how radically different these perspectives are, they share a common purpose: a search for truth. In both the construction of creative narratives and the examination of academic narratives, individuals seek to expose personal, cultural, and/or historical truths that, when exposed and shared, offer potential. Whether the narratives themselves are fictional, biased, oppressive, politicized, or historical, they offer potential for discourse, and as a teacher, I know discourse is the crucible for change.It is this communal component of narratives, whether it be sharing or scrutinizing them, that seems just as significant to me as the narratives themselves. For can truth have meaning unless shared and examined? For whatever reason, the thought that these perspectives on narrative don't have to be at odds with one another offered me great comfort, and gradually, my creative magnet remagnetized as I grew closer to finishing coursework.After having been exposed to these different perspectives on narrative, I have developed a type of hybrid in my own writing discourse. I can now only see truth as the need to merge these perspectives and to explore the implications that arise from this.

T.E. Hahn holds an MFA in fiction from Fairfield University, and he is currently a PhD student specializing in contemporary American short fiction at St. John’s University, where he is also a research fellow. He teaches literature at Great Neck North High School and St. John’s University on Long Island in New York, and his fiction, poetry, and non-fiction are featured in Bright Lights Film Journal, Temenos, Headlock Press, a special edition of Cold Creek Review, and textbooks on craft. Thomas' novel, Open My Eyes, was a finalist for a book prize through New Rivers Press, and his short story, "Boy's Night In," was a semifinalist for the Norman Mailer Award.