Thomson: A lot of people are really critical of MFA programs. How important do you think they are in the development of writers? Do you see potential drawbacks to them?

Kinder: Well, there can be drawbacks, of course. Sometimes people come away with too high a sense of themselves, they've been flattered too much. A lot of it has to do with, like any kind of community, the cliques that are formed--MFA programs have all the inherent problems with something like that. There are teacher's pets, there are teachers--no one I can think of here, but I can think of people I've met in the past--who like to have their little coterie, to enhance their own self-esteem, I guess. So there are pitfalls. As I said, you can be flattered too much, to the point where you're not really looking at your problems. One thing I learned a long time ago, and I've probably mentioned this in workshop, was that I was always bringing only my very best stuff to workshop, stuff I knew was good, so that I'd get the winks and blinks from the chicks, you know, whereas Ray, for instance--I really learned from him. I'd read his outside stuff, you know, he'd been publishing in small magazines, so I knew how good he was, yet he'd bring rough stuff to workshop, and he really, really wanted to find out whether it was working or not.

But all that is sort of beside the point. I think that--and not just because it's my day job, conducting workshops--they were awfully valuable for me. Besides that, I met some of the best friends I ever made in my life and fell in love with some of the best chicks I've ever known in my life, which is all really good. Nothing wrong with falling in love in workshops...

It's a really nice community of fellow writers. You're in competition, surely, but on the other hand everyone seems to have a...well, we're kindred spirits. And you get feedback, you know, you're in a community that cares about what you're doing, what they're doing. Competition's good...it depends on the workshop not to let it get destructive, which it can be, I know. What else can you do? There's this fantasy of working a nine to five job, then going home at night, no other writer buddies, except maybe the bartender down the street...that's just bullshit. I mean, Hemingway had Paris--Gertrude Stein, he had Ezra [Pound] before he got too crazy--I mean, they had their communities. Now, those communities are in the universities.

Thomson: What do you think of the publishing market now, as opposed to when you first started?

Kinder: I think it's probably a lot harder--but my so-called "publishing career" has been so erratic and so strange that it really doesn't address legitimate concerns. I know that when I published my first couple books, eighty-seven years ago or whatever, agents would come to Stanford to recruit us. They would come, and that's how I made my first connection with an agent. She came to campus, and I gave her my manuscript, and within a week she'd read it and wanted to handle it, and in about a month, Alfred Knopf bid on it, and it just happened like that. On the other hand, there were other classmates I had who had manuscripts and it didn't happen so quickly. Scott [Turow] pretty much quit writing and went to law school. He worked on a novel while in law school and only later, after he was an attorney riding the train in and out of Chicago every day for seven or eight years, did he finish up Presumed Innocent. So, it was different then. And, as I said, this time around Scott was pretty much my agent. I had a friend at Alfred Knopf, and old editor friend, and he didn't know what to do with it. For one thing, he was also Ray's editor, and some of the material was sort of too close...but I hadn't sent Honeymooners around. I don't even have an agent now. You know, I have various agents who are in contact with me now, and I can kind of decide who I want to go with, but I didn't even have an agent.

I do know it's different. It's harder. For one thing, there are so many more writers. When I was at Stanford, there were maybe half a dozen, maybe a dozen, writing programs around the country--Iowa, Columbia, here and there. But now, there are like 360 or 380, and there are so many aspiring writers. Plus it's changed in the sense that most of the publishing houses aren't as independent as they once were. It's common knowledge that big conglomerates have bought them up, so it's sort of different. They're looking for more of a bottom line, I think--books that can make bucks. It's harder to break in now.

Thomson: What would say to these aspiring writers who are trying to publish now?

Kinder: Well, that's one thing good thing about the MFA programs, because the bottom line is, you're going to have to have a day job, and the best day job in the world to my mind is teaching. Preferably on the college level. Even the community college level, though that's really hard--a lot of comp classes. I'd take that valuable, precious time you have as a so-called student and just bust butt on your book. Get that manuscript done, and put all your heart in it. Then you come out with an MFA degree, you gotta have that degree--with the idea that you're gonna want to have a good day job, teaching. You come out of MFA programs with a degree, you come out with your manuscript. I would spend at least another year or two on your own, working on that manuscript. I would start submitting it to contests, like the Drue Heinz contest, the Flannery O'Connor, or the contest at Iowa, there are a lot of contests out there. I would apply for anything--fellowships, whatever. There are a lot of those, too. You look in the Writers' Chronicle. You do all these kind of linear things, and of course try to secure an agent or an editor, as opposed to even sending it out. Listen to what the editors have to say. Be astute, and listen, and don't write just so that you can sell it, but do listen. Again, it's just one foot in front of another--no real news or philosophy here. Just one foot in front of the other.

          I only have a couple of students, from all my years of teaching, who make their entire living from writing. Virtually everyone else I know, I mean really talented people, have to get a day job. Most of them are teaching. For better or worse, sometimes that means a kind of extended graduate school-level life...so, it can be a little scary, but--so what?