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Students of Mona Simpson’s English seminar, “Literary Study for Short Story Writers:

For serious writers of fiction, as Mona Simpson calls them, taking a crash course in writing is not nearly enough to become a real writer.

But if there was such a course, Simpson’s English Seminar 180.2, titled “Literary Study for Short Story Writers: Finding Your Own Mentor, Dead or Alive,” could be it.

“Part of what you want to know when you’re a student is not only the philosophy and aesthetics, but you want to know what it’s like to be a writer,” said Simpson, a UCLA creative writing professor. “Is it viable to you? Does it seem tangible? What other jobs does the writer have when they’re in their 20s?”

Offered once a year, the class meets on Tuesday evening every week this quarter for three hours for students to discuss reading assignments, engage in writing exercises, and share their writing. But perhaps the most interesting facet of the class is that the students are afforded the opportunity to mentally, as well as literally, step out of the classroom every once in awhile.

The UCLA Hammer Museum, which offers a number of reading series featuring professional writers, is the site where Simpson’s class meets several times a quarter to gain insight into the writing process. “Some Favorite Writers,” a series organized and handpicked by Simpson herself, provides a private Q&A with the writer and the class before the reading takes place.

“It’s not like going to read at a garden club, or a regular show when the host hasn’t read their books,” Simpson said. “There are so many book clubs that seem very marginal to literature, but students care about literature and writing, so they’re going to ask questions writers are happy to talk about. It’s a good match.”

The class’s first meeting this quarter took place outside of the classroom and was spent attending a reading by renowned fiction writer Robert Cohen, author of “The Organ Builder,” “The Here and Now” and “Inspired Sleep.” Cohen also teaches creative writing at Middlebury College in Vermont.

“I enjoyed the session quite a bit,” Cohen said. “I was very impressed with (the students). They asked all sorts of intelligent and challenging questions. Others noticed certain patterns about the work and had questions about the approach. Every writer gets a boost just from sitting with intelligent, earnest, thoughtful people who have read their work. Anyone who comes into Mona’s class is going to be delighted by that process.”

But the process in question doesn’t deal with writing assignments and field trips alone.

Simpson said she pushes her students to engage diligently with their writing on a regular basis and uses the classroom sessions to expose them to authors who explore a variety of themes. The course load itself is no less than regular English classes offered in the department.

“I’m giving them a barrage of writers,” Simpson said. “I’m encouraging them to find writers whose method they can relate to. We’re starting out with what kind of ideas work, where writers get the ideas that they do, and what sort of changes they make when they take them from life.”

However, students aren’t instructed to copy a writer’s style, but rather to be influenced by it and gain insight into their own writing process.

“We’re skipping over centuries and continents,” Simpson said. “Denis Johnson, Faulkner, Deborah Eisenberg, Hawthorne.”

During fourth week of this quarter, for example, Simpson and her students discussed the subject of time and the different ways the week’s stories considered time. Simpson asked her students to methodically work through the stories’ themes.

“Do they use flashbacks? Are they all set in one time period? Do they flash forward? What is the purpose of past and present? I don’t have my students copy the style, but I have them emulate a technical aspect,” Simpson said.

Academic focus aside, the fact that the class steps out of the box of a university classroom model is an activity that lends itself favorably to the reality of post-university situations that a regular classroom can’t train writers for, Cohen said.

“A lot of what happens to writers has to do with the life of the writer,” he said. “How does it feel when nobody out there is waiting for your next story, and you have to come up with your own motivations and your own structures outside of any institutional umbrella, then what do you do? It’s hard to do that in college because you still have this structure. You still have people telling you to turn this in on time,” Cohen said.

“Mona is also very attentive to the long-view stuff,” Cohen added. “She gets the students comfortable with talking about these life issues and takes them to try to get them to see it as a location rather than an academic course.”

In addition, Simpson asks on the course Web site that all prospective applicants be “serious writers of fiction” and, during the course of the class, asks students to divulge how often they engage in the creative process outside of school.

“To be a serious writer of fiction is to be somebody who is doing it regularly, somebody who cares about it greatly and thinks this is something they want to continue doing,” Simpson said. “From the title (of the course), I wanted it to seem different from scholarly courses. There is definitely a practical aspect of writing. It’s a way of life, and I want to emphasize that.”

Students have been very receptive to the model of the class.

One example is Rowan Wood, a third-year art student who is taking Simpson’s seminar this quarter and plans to pursue a master of fine arts in creative writing and art after graduating from UCLA.

“Getting insight with established professionals rather than peers ... can offer things that an average writer can’t,” Wood said. “Rob Cohen talked about his life as a writer and habits as a writer, and Mona gives a lot of insight into her own life. I like to ask her about her habits as a writer, and it’s nice to have a model, so to speak, that one can refer to for reference and give reassurance and learn how to become a better, professional writer.”

The next classroom field trip will be on Dec. 12 with Chang-Rae Lee, also part of the “Some Favorite Writers” series.

As for guidance for becoming a professional writer after graduation, Simpson offers her own personal advice.

“What it takes to get into a college these days is almost antithetical of what it takes to be a writer,” she said. “There’s not one way to do it. Some people go to writing school, some go on a merchant marine ship, and some join the Peace Corps – whatever is going to inspire you and help discipline yourself to write as a daily practice.”