Adjunct Faculty Member of the English Department Tyler Grimm’s students might be surprised to learn that Grimm did not know he wanted to be a writer until his junior year of college. Grimm revealed this and much more at his presentation, “The Working Novelist,” on Friday, Oct. 31 in the main lobby of Myer Residence Hall as part of Fantabulous Fridays. He described his journey to becoming a writer, which started when a roommate introduced him to the world of writing. After talking with his roommate’s poetry professor, Grimm realized that writing was the career for him. However, he did not follow that career path until May of 2012, when he earned his mater’s degree in creative and professional writing from Wilkes University.
Prior to that, he graduated from Shippensburg University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and immediately went back to school to earn a master’s degree in counseling psychology. “I just thought that was what I was supposed to do,” he said. Grimm also took an internship working with abused children. He ended up dropping out of graduate school due to health problems. Grimm then worked as a therapist and turned to writing as “a way to work through” his own problems. His girlfriend convinced him to apply to a writing program, and he was accepted into a program that only takes 25 applicants per year. Grimm described how overwhelmed he felt being surrounded by so many accomplished professors and peers. At times, he thought, “I shouldn’t be here.” A fellow student also felt that way. That was Adjunct Faculty Member of the English Department Jeff Minton. The two became good friends, and now they are both professors at Elizabethtown College.
Grimm’s first job after graduation was writing feature articles for Celebrate Gettysburg Magazine. Then, Richard Fellinger, faculty fellow in the Writing Wing of Learning Services, who also graduated from Wilkes University with a master’s degree in creative writing, helped Grimm earn a job at Etown. Grimm eventually went on to get his master’s in fine arts degree (M.F.A.). In May 2013, he completed his M.F.A. master’s dissertation, and he described this year as “the hardest year of my life; it was brutal.” After that, he wrote a short film, but the funding fell through on the project. He also helped do research for the Virginia Safe Coast Report, which illustrated the effects of global warming on the Virginia Coast.
Describing his writing process, he said, “everything I write is inspired by something in my life.” He often takes scenarios that went badly and rewrites them in a way they could have gone better and vice versa. He went through a period of not writing, and he recalled Fellinger’s advice to him: “You just have to write through it.” Grimm then had days of intensive writing. “I go on these great binges where I write, and then sleep for a few hours, and then write again,” Grimm said These can last for three or four days in a row.
His first piece of advice for aspiring writers was, “you have to actually write.” He also said being a novelist is the “most vulnerable experience. When I’ve spent months, years, on a novel … I send it out there and people start ripping it apart.” He noted that companies often view a writer’s work as a product, not something “you just poured yourself into.”
With writing, he said, “you get to work with a lot of great people, but you have to trust them because you’re putting a huge part of yourself in their hands.” Grimm also commented on the current state of the publishing industry, saying that it is not adapting to consumer needs like the music industry has done. “Amazon has absolutely gutted the publishing industry,” he said. The industry is rich in part because of ebooks that sell for as low as 99 cents. His number one piece of advice for aspiring writers is to network. This has helped him countless times in his career.
Despite the difficulties Grimm faced on his path to becoming a writer, he knows he has made the right career decision. Grimm has known ever since he got accepted into that writing program, when he described himself as feeling like, “I was finally where I was supposed to be. I was with the people I was supposed to be with.”
