Michael Workstel
by V.E. on August 10th, 2010
filed under personal, thoughts
I met Michael in June of 2007. I had just finished my B.A. in English and History at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and had been searching (nearly in vain) for something to do after graduation in May that year. Wilkes University was the answer. I was accepted into and enrolled in the Master of Arts in Creative Writing January 2009 cohort, which began in June 2007.
The program at Wilkes is low-residency; here’s how it works: every six months, starting in either June or January (for me, it was June), members of the program stay at the school for an extremely intensive week of readings, writing, and getting to know other writers (professional and aspiring). Then, for the six months after the residency, each student works with a mentor or in a class via the internet from home, where ever “home” is for them. It requires a lot of phone calls and instant messaging since most times students and teachers live in different states, not to mention different time zones. Then, everyone meets back at the school for another week-long residency and the cycle starts again.
It was at that first residency in June of 2007 that I met Mike. There were actually two Mikes in my cohort, and I was admittedly soft-spoken and on the shy side, so at first I couldn’t even tell them apart. Eventually, I was able to parse Mike Workstel from the other one because he was physically larger and could play guitar very well, and often did at his cohort members’ request. (I learned much later that he was even in a band and wrote music, some of which you can hear at his ReverbNation page.) I didn’t have much interaction with Michael until later in the program, even though we were both in the same cohort and even took the Writing Nonfiction class together the semester after the first residency.
When we got to the point in the program in which we had to start writing our own work (as opposed to writing assignments given by teachers), he chose to write his fiction manuscript with a mentor who was well-suited to him. I heard him read some of Saving Joseph in early 2008 and was floored by his creativity in taking an old story and making something new and interesting out of it. It was like he’d reinvented the opening of a flower. I even told him so, which is unlike me. But I remember being so impressed by his language and content that I had to say something, even if it was stilted and fan-girly (which it no doubt was). He took the awkward compliments well, though, and we started up a strange friendship. I also opened up more fully to the rest of my cohort, and they to me.
I chose to write nonfiction (a memoir) and struggled against my subconscious belief that what I was writing about probably wasn’t even worth recording, much less that I was doing it well. In a moment of desperation in July or August 2008, I told him in an instant message that I was about to throw in the towel and just give up on the whole M.A. thing all together. Having read some of my assigned work in the genre classes, he vehemently opposed this and suggested I send him some of my thesis work so he could read it and possibly give me some fresh ideas about how to handle it. Convinced that he’d agree with me once he read the crappy work I’d written so far, I sent him the entire manuscript. It was the first time I’d given anyone (besides a professor) anything I’d written in earnest that was long enough, and revealing enough, to really be able to tell if I was actually a good writer or not. It was more than a hundred pages, and it wasn’t very good.
I didn’t hear from him for a few days, maybe a little over a week, and I thought that was the end of it. I hadn’t really expected him to read it seriously anyway (I wouldn’t have seriously read his manuscript, for example, if he’d sent it to me), and I wasn’t hoping for much. Then, he sent me an email with some notes and his thoughts on my writing. (You can see the entire picture, from which the detail at right was taken, here.)
“This is really good, Viannah,” he said, “It’s still rough, I’ll give you that, but it’s good. Really good. You’re a talented writer. Don’t forget that, and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.”
It brings me to tears to write that. Here was this person, this guy I didn’t really even know who was old enough to be my father, a guy to whom I’d sent my writing on a whim, who had actually read it, and who thought it was good. The first non-professorial person to ever read what I’d written (and a true story, no less) and he liked it. He believed in it. Maybe he even believed in me.
Maybe, if this guy could see the good in my writing… maybe I could, too.
At the moment when I most needed someone to believe in me, to believe in the path I’d chosen for myself, he was there. He gave constructive criticism and was honest, and he still said I was a writer. No one had ever called me that. No one ever had reason to, since I’d never shown them anything I’d written, after all. But, if he said it was good, I could have hope that I wasn’t a lost cause.
I don’t know if Mike really believed I was/am a talented writer (though, I like to believe that he did), but he knew what to say to a person who was at the end of her rope and the rope was starting to fray. He believed in me long enough to show me that it was okay to believe in myself and my own talent. He was a friend.
On 12 July 2010, I received an email message which began: “Michael Workstel died Saturday after a long battle with kidney disease.” For a moment, it felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I flashed back to his email in my mind: It’s still rough, I’ll give you that, but it’s good. Really good. As soon as I could breathe again, I wanted to scream. Not fair! Not fucking fair!
Later, his mentor elaborated on his death:
I talked to Michael’s wife, Carly, this morning. She was crying so much that I couldn’t understand everything she said, but this is what I understand happened: Although the kidney transplant operation was a disaster and never completed, Michael wanted to have the operation to repair his fingers so he could write and play the guitar. He had that operation, and it was successful, but complications developed, and he died of cardiac arrest the next day (Saturday, July 10) before being released from the hospital.
Michael and I hadn’t really kept in touch after we graduated in January 2009. I decided to continue on to the M.F.A. program (another year for a terminal degree), and he moved on to other pursuits. He visited the cohort the following June and January when we met in Wilkes-Barre for residencies, and I even met his lovely wife and two daughters, Rachel and Zoe. But our major interaction was those couple of days in 2008 when he told me I was a writer, maybe even just as good as he was, when encouraged me not to give up. At those moments, he saved me. I’ve been saved by other people at other times for other reasons, but then, it was him. At just the right moment, he said just the right thing.
And now he’s gone. All I can hope is that I can be that person for someone else in the future.
As one of your characters in Saving Joseph liked to say, Mike, “Be happy, make music, eat garlic.”
I miss you, Michael Workstel. 4 May 1954 – 10 July 2010.
