On September 18, Staff Writer Ashlyn Darley attended Patricia Lockwood’s lecture on craft in creative writing. The lecture was part of Columbia’s School of the Arts’ Creative Writing Lectures Series.

Let me set the scene. You’re walking on the beach when you see two horseshoe crabs engaging in carnal behavior. They are stacked on top of each other, the larger female on bottom and the smaller male on top. Suddenly, the male flips onto his back, his shell covered in the result of his own orgasm. What do you do? 

Well, if you’re Patricia Lockwood, you write about it. Or, you type “horseshoe crab orgasm” into the Google search bar, and then you write about it. 

On Wednesday, Lockwood recounted this story as well as many others that have influenced her writing in a lecture delivered as an installment of Columbia’s School of the Arts’ Creative Writing Lectures Series. Lockwood is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. She is the author of four works, including the bestselling 2021 novel No One is Talking About This.

Before sitting in on her lecture, I had seen her novel around everywhere, haunting me in such a subtle way that I had barely noticed. I would see her novel sitting innocently on a shelf in a bookshop or on a table in a library. I would swipe through Instagram or Youtube and see the novel’s cover glancing up at me from my phone screen in between moments of endless scrolling. I’m pretty sure my high school journalism teacher and I had a conversation about this novel once, but the details sit right on the edge of my memory in a space that’s inaccessible to me. 

There are some things that tend to follow you around. For me, this novel was one of them. Safe to say, when I learned about Lockwood’s upcoming lecture, I was intrigued. 

When sitting down in 501 Dodge, I was a little thrown off by the ordinariness of the room. I wanted to look around and say, “Guys, didn’t you know this is Patricia Lockwood? She’s been following me. No, not in a weird way, in a funny way. No, not literally – okay, you’re missing my point. My point is that they put her in what looks like a miniature high school gymnasium.”

The environment quickly proved itself to be part of the charm. There were nowhere near enough chairs, and people quickly found other arrangements—on stools, on tables, on the wall, or on the floor. Chatter filled the room as everyone filed in and stood in line for finger foods or Sprite. In a way, it was communion. Here we were, all of us chattering and eating, united in a single interest, sitting way too close together in a hot room. It’s a special feeling to know that every person you are sitting next to has an interest in creation. It was almost hard not to look around and ask the person next to you, “What are you creating?” 

Lockwood opened her lecture with the phrase “Kinko’s ecstasy,” a phrase she uses to describe the stage when you are almost done with your novel and you must fundamentally alter it to see it best. As Lockwood described it, this phase includes going to your local Kinko’s and printing your manuscript before traveling to your local Staples or Michaels to buy a hole punch and a three-ring binder to place it in, effectively “[bringing] a book of the mind into the hands.” 

This phase can also include changing the font of your document (she recommends Grotesk) or changing the title of the file that you are working on (she recommends crazytown_butterfly) in order to make the editing process less serious, allowing you to add and delete text at need be. She described the ending of a novel as the time to let yourself, as an author, be crazy. 

“Every time you get to this point,” Lockwood said, “you think that you’ve forgotten how to do it, but you haven’t… Right when you want to throw [the manuscript] out or burn it, the next morning you usually have a breakthrough.”

Lockwood also stressed the importance of changing your own mental state when trying to finish a novel, which could mean anything from traveling to a new location, taking mushrooms, or trying a new bagel flavor. She encouraged her audience to go out and experience the world, take that experience, and then write.

Lockwood offered many other tidbits of advice throughout the rest of her lecture, most of which were a result of eager audience questions. This advice included insightful and thoughtful ponderings, such as “it’s good to be reminded that there are other beings in the world, and sometimes that’s just a cat” and “do not try to change the title of your book when you’re on your period.” 

My personal favorite snippet of the lecture was her brief discussion on character names. She claimed that authors have a problem with trying to make their character names too beautiful. Instead, she said, “You should be naming your characters Denise.”

This advice seemed like a silly one-liner upon first delivery, and it wasn’t until much later that I truly thought about the implications of it. Now, I think her advice signifies something greater. I think that Denise is a representation of the ordinary. You meet people every day that are named Denise, or a Denise equivalent. There is something so ordinary about Denise, yet you should still be writing about her because within the ordinary moments of Denise’s life, there is still beauty. Maybe that beauty could come from being subtly followed by a novel for over a year, or maybe that beauty could come from sitting in a room with eager strangers, laughing and sipping Sprite. 

Overall, Lockwood’s lecture offered Columbia’s creative writing community a welcome reprieve from the average Wednesday afternoon. Full of passion and clever witticisms, Lockwood conveyed both the joy and the absurdity of writing in a world where so many of our thoughts are no longer our own. She proved to me that even the ordinary can be made into art if you are responsive to the world around you. 

Maybe I should read her novel.

Patricia Lockwood via Flickr