When Princeton students hear the word "thesis," after the initial cringe, they must think of the 120-page behemoths that plague most Princeton students' nightmares, and imagine months of slaving away in a subterranean Firestone carrel, only crawling up to the normal world for a few brief and discouraging adviser meetings.
A fever of stress overtakes the senior class around the month of March until the pressure is released department by department in April as the deadlines come one by one, and the post-thesis celebrating can finally begin.
There is another kind of thesis, however, that takes shape through a different, though just as arduous, process: the creative writing thesis. These theses number around 20 each year and come in many forms — short stories, novels, poetry and translations.
In order to qualify for a creative thesis, a student must have taken at least two creative writing courses in the genre of writing in which he or she proposes to write, and must also, as the program's website says, "demonstrate talent, potential, discipline, skill at revision, and ability to make good use of criticism."
A typical fiction thesis is around 100-200 pages, although some have been turned in at over 500 pages, while a poetry thesis is usually between 20-40 pages.
I spoke with several creative writing students this week and learned about the timeline of a creative writing thesis, and the character of the thought and work that go into their thesis projects.
Each of the projects I learned about was, as might be expected, ex-tremely individual and personal. Each student really had the freedom to de-termine his or her own project's direction.
For instance, Sasha Linney '02 wrote a mainly biographical poetry thesis titled "Inner Skin," employing various styles of poetry, while another poetry student, Eric Bland '02, calls his thesis simply "a collection of poems."
Bland describes his thesis as "a grab-bag, no particular style or voice I've committed to. The poetry begins focusing on time, like the normal narrative poem, and strays from there into space. This compartmentalization allowed me to include pretty much anything."
The prose theses for this year include a novel by senior Rakesh Satyal about castrati (castrated males who sang in the soprano range) at the Santa Maria di Loreto music conservatory in 18th century Naples.
Another fiction student, Christine Lee '02, wrote "a collection of five short stories, each of which deal with love and alienation."
The student-adviser relationship is central to the project. Students work very closely one-on-one with their advisers throughout the entire year, shaping and reshaping their works.
Of the adviser relationship, Linney says, "The best part about it, besides having a full collection of poetry at the end, is working weekly with a faculty member at 185 [Nassau Street]. Probably never again in my life will I be able to meet with, talk to, email, call, and generally 'dialogue' with a published, highly regarded poet."
Bland concurs, saying, "What I had to learn was how to critically examine my own work and rewrite effectively. Susan Wheeler, my adviser, was a great teacher. Inspiring, encouraging and smart. I think I learned patience and found something out about my own voice from working so closely with her."
According to the several students I talked to, a consistent work schedule also seems to be a necessary component of the writing process, both in poetry and in prose.
"Perhaps some writers have a muse singing into their ear every night, but most, I believe, must force themselves in front of their laptops for a set amount of time every day," says Lee.
The program encourages this process, both with weekly "tutorials" between students and their advisers, and by demanding that a student put in a lot of work over the summer before senior year.
"I got to do extensive research in Naples this past summer, which infused the story with much more detail and imagery than if I had simply written it here, researching in Firestone (which I certainly did enough of too)," says Satyal.
While some of Satyal's research was factual, a creative writing thesis demands self-evaluation as well — a form of research more difficult and complicated than that demanded by most academic programs.
Writers must constantly examine their own ideas, creativity and powers of language, continually writing, revising, criticizing and evolving.
Reworking is the key to the creative writing process according to most students, and while the deadline for submission is past, several of them still consider their projects as unfinished.
Lee explains, "I'm very proud of what I accomplished this school year, but still consider the stories in my thesis as works in progress. Even holding a bound copy of my work doesn't convince me that the editing process is finished."
The other thing which all of the students I interviewed, across all the genres of the writing program, agreed on was that, though hard, the process is worth it. "Writing a creative thesis was a very difficult, but rewarding, process. When I applied, I didn't realize how emotionally and mentally draining it would be," says Linney.
Though taxing, the creative writing process is also extremely productive, and part of this seems to be because of the collegial working environment of the creative writing program itself.
"It is a closely-knit writing community, and I feel that all of us who did creative writing theses bonded over the experience and fed off of each other's artistic energy," says Satyal.
Perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects of doing a creative writing thesis is the chance to share one's work with the University community in readings arranged by the creative writing program. This year's readings promise to showcase a group of theses as rich and diverse as the minds that created them, and should be a valuable experience to all involved.
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