All language subtitles for MasterClass Walter Mosley Teaches Fiction and Storytelling - 01. Meet Your Instructor

WALTER MOSLEY: Fiction
is one of the few things

that we can do in the
modern world in which you

make something from nothing.

You could be the grandmother of
four children living in a cabin

up on top of a mountain.

And the four children or
visiting you, and they say,

"we're bored."

And you say, "Well,
let me tell you

a story about a little girl
who that set upon by a bear."

Now, there's no little girl.

There was no bear.

It's just this woman
making up a story

for these little children
who in turn are making up

a story in their own minds.

That's making something
out of nearly nothing.

Writing and storytelling,
everybody does.

Without the fictive
imagination, there is no growth.

Everything remains the same.

When you're an
artist, when you're

a writer, when you're making
up different ways of seeing

the world,
understanding the world,

considering what happened,
what didn't happen,

you are actually changing the
world whether they know it

or not, whether they
read the book or not.

The beautiful thing about
any day is it can happen.

Today, all of a sudden
you realize, hey,

my wheels aren't
spinning anymore?

They are spinning, but I'm
actually moving forward.

I'm not sitting in place.

My name is Walter Mosley.

I'm a Black man in America.

I'm an artist.

I'm a writer.

I guess I mostly think of myself
as a novelist, because that's

what I do day in and day out
and have done for nearly half

of my life.

I think in this period of
time that we have together,

you will learn how to plumb
the depths of your intellect

and your soul to find the right
words, the right structure,

the right story,
the right characters

to create the
novel that's in you

and that will take you
forward into the world.

I wanted to teach
this MasterClass

because I want people to
understand that a novel isn't

putting the left front
tire on the Volkswagen

on the production line.

The novel is creating
a whole new mode

of transportation,
a whole new mode

of understanding the world.

And I think that over the last
30 years of being a novelist,

I've learned how
that's worked and I've

made a commitment
to it, and I would

love to talk to you
about that commitment.

The hardest thing
you're ever going

to face in writing
a novel is believing

in something that has come
from seemingly nothing.

I hope what you take
away from this experience

is the confidence that if you
do what we've talked about here,

the novel will appear.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm Walter Mosley, and
this is my MasterClass.

I was born in Los Angeles,
California, 1952 on January 12.

I lived in what they called
South Central back then

in Watts.

And you know, I had a Jewish
mother, a Black father,

pretty good life, very
easy, pretty simple.

We were poor, but not that poor,
kind of lower-working class,

and we had a really good time.

Both my parents worked for
the Board of Education,

and so they sent me
to a private school.

But when I say
private school, it

was a school called
Victory Baptist Day School.

I think it cost $9
a week to go there,

and they taught
me way back then,

you know,
African-American history,

African-American literature,
all that stuff, you know,

plus everything else
that you needed to know.

As an only child in Los
Angeles in the '50s,

television was a
big part of my life.

I watched a lot of television.

I learned a lot from television.

It kind of guided
me in many ways.

I used to sit-in there and
watch TV and draw pictures

and tell myself stories.

And I often think to myself that
that moment of telling myself

stories, of putting myself
into books that I read

and comic books that
I read and television

shows that I saw, making that
a part of my life I think

is a lot of me making
myself into a storyteller,

though I had no idea that
that's what I was doing.

I went to school at the
University of Massachusetts

in Amherst.

I graduated and I
just was a programmer.

I lived in Boston.

I lived in New York.

One day I was at a job.

I was working for
Mobile Oil in New York.

It was a Saturday.

Nobody else was there.

So instead of writing
programs, I wrote a sentence.

I wrote, "On hot sticky
days in southern Louisiana,

the fire ants swarm."

And I went, wow,
that sounds good.

I've read many books
that start like that.

And it's fiction because
I'd never been to Louisiana,

nor had ever seen a fire ant.

So I was making it up.

I could be a writer maybe.

And so I started
writing, and I think

was the first time I ever
really started doing anything.

When I wrote the sentence
on hot sticky days

in southern Louisiana,
the fire ants swarmed,

I was 34 years old.

In my head and in my heart,
my life was a failure.

I was never going to get
much beyond where I was,

but that's OK.

I wrote the sentence, and
I wanted to write then.

But I never before thought
of myself as a writer,

certainly not a novelist,
some gigantic, you know,

tome of words that told a story.

But that didn't matter
because I wasn't

expecting to get published.

I wasn't expected to get love.

All I wanted was to write
the beginning, the middle,

and the end of a story.

I knew that that's how stories
were structured, most stories.

I wanted a beginning,
a middle, and an end.

If I could do that, then I felt,
well, I succeeded at something.

Even if nothing
else ever happened,

I was a programmer for
the rest of my life,

it didn't matter because
I had written a story.

A lot of people
who become writers,

who want to become
writers, they've

been wanting to be writers
since they were six years old.

They've been writing little
stories in their notebooks,

and they've been writing in
their journals, and doing this,

they're doing that, and
they want to get published,

they want to get published,
they want to get published.

At the age of 20 or 21,
they're in graduate school

and they're studying
writing, and they

expect very much
to get published

and to be out
there in the world.

It's great that
people want this.

It's quite problematic,
though, because when

you're 20-21 years
old, you haven't had

a lot of experiences in life.

And so I find that coming
to writing at the age of 34,

I had already done most things.

I had already been through
a lot of experiences.

I had, you know, been a hippie,
been poor, lived, you know,

like in a tent, hitchhiked
back and forth across country.

I'd done a lot of
things, not everything,

but I had done a lot of stuff.

And so when I was
writing, it felt more

like a full experience.

And so if somebody comes up to
me and says they're 30 and 40

and says, you know, I'm
too old to be a writer,

I say, no, no, no, you're
just the right age.

It's time.

And if you're
younger, you know, you

might want to give yourself more
time because it's not a race.

Probably you're not going to
be the greatest mathematician

if you started in
your 50s or 60s.

Probably you're not going
to be the best boxer if you

start in your 50s or 60s.

But most things,
most things that

take the mind, the heart, and
what is creative, you can do.

I can become a writer at 34.

I'm could have become a
writer at 44 or 54 or 64.

I've published just
about 60 books.

It is my hope that if you
take this course of study

seriously, that you
will be able to write

the novel that's in your heart.

If you're afraid to start
writing the novel, OK.

Write the novel.

I'm not asking you
to not be afraid.

That's not going to help.

Be afraid, but take the jump.