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Place

“Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.”

            -John Ed Pearce

As writers, we’ve been told that setting is a necessary component of imaginative writing. It not only establishes where and when a story takes place, but also becomes an essential part of the characters. And I would argue that setting has an intimate relationship with the author as well. Not all writers enjoy imbuing their stories with autobiographical facts, but I think it’s inevitable that who you are and where you come from will play an important role in what you are able to write.

 That being said, when I was younger I never dreamed of returning to the place I grew up; in high school I couldn’t wait to get away—far, far away—from Florida. I was the fledgling that’d caught scent of a world beyond my sticks and mud and was ready to stumble out of the nest, fly across the ocean. When you live in one place for so long, you start to forget what it means to you; you stop noticing the particulars. I thought Florida was stunting my growth, suffocating my muse, and obscuring my potential. The first time I tried to run away, I only lasted a year. I decided on Boston for all the wrong reasons (mostly my flight-is-right syndrome), and in the end I returned to my nesting grounds. The second time I left home I was more prepared and I think I had some vague understanding that if I left, this time Florida would be coming with me.

Moving to New York wasn’t an easy choice. My first attempt at leaving had taught me that I was far more attached to my home than I wanted to admit. But there was still this desire in me to get away from what I was comfortable with. After having lived here for a year, I can admit that I feel an even deeper connection to the place I came from.  Florida has infected my writing in ways that I never would have recognized before. And I think it is because I’ve established this distance between myself and my home, both physically and psychologically. The beach, the ocean, the smell and feel of salt air will always be in my blood. I know the heat, the humidity, the way cicadas sound, the darkness of a power outage during a tropical storm. These are a part of me and they will seep into my fiction whether I intend it or not. The longer I am away from them, the more I feel them calling to me like an abandoned mother. I think I will go back—I want to go back. Not now, not after I graduate. But eventually, when I’m ready, I’ll go back to the place that made me.

What happens in New Orleans...

I have been out of town the past two weekends and it has completely thrown off my schedule. The first weekend I went home to Florida to visit family and even though I brought an entire tote bag full of work to do for school, you know I waited until I got back on Monday night to do all of it. The second weekend I took a mini vacation with my roommate to New Orleans. I’m sure you can imagine how productive I was that weekend. And now here I am, wondering how it’s already the seventh week into the semester and I have to post the first draft of my thesis by midnight tomorrow night. Am I stressing? Nah, not at all.

I was doing so well. I had a routine. I would get all of my busy work done during the day, and then have the entire evening to do yoga, eat stir fry, and work on my stories.

But routines can be the death of creativity. I kept hitting the same rut over and over in one of the stories I was working on. You think I would’ve tried to go around the pothole the next time I passed it, but somehow I never managed to. It’s the first piece I’ve written where I’ve had to do an extensive amount of research on the topic. It’s set in the earlier half of the twentieth century, roughly 1917-1920. I’ve never written a story that takes place that far back in time, but I wanted to challenge myself. My problem was that I got so caught up in the historical facts that I forgot to tell the story. I won’t argue that my trips to Florida and New Orleans were the catalyst for a brilliant solution to my wandering storyline, but I will say that sometimes you need to take a break and shut up for a minute.

As a writer, I feel it’s my job to say something important. But forcing the words isn’t always the right way to go about it. Although I did set myself back a bit by choosing to take a vacation in the middle of the semester, I honestly think I needed it. Not only for my sanity, but for my muse as well.

Thank god for tropical getaways.

My ill fated time management attempts

Hello there. I know the MFA blog has been fairly inconsistent as of late. My apologies. I know all of us are going round and round with our thesis and work and what have you. So I will try to update this right now. 

We've started the second year at Adelphi. It's exciting. I've been paired up with my Thesis Advisor to rip apart my play, then put it back together, then rip it apart again, and so on. I've spent the better part of this afternoon writing. Though I realize my efforts should not be spent writing a play, at this moment, but instead writing the story and mapping out the scenes, then filling in the dialogue. I have never been the best at story. My plays tend to be filled in with lots of dialogue and character but little story. So I really need to sit down and bang out this story and answer all of those nagging questions I still have in my head.

I did start answering many of those questions today. By answering the questions, I was able to give myself some research. For example, I decided that two of my characters went to Occidental College (my play is set in Los Angeles), so I looked up Occidental to see what their majors were to make sure it was possible that two people could have the majors that these characters have. I have started filling in their back story and how everyone is connected and how everyone met.

I don't think I've worked like this as much in the past. Even in the first draft of my play, I just sat down and hammered out the script in a couple weeks. However, now I'm having to battle against all the unevenness in the play and the unanswered questions that loom so heavy.

Starting today, I am putting myself on a more strict writing regiment. I have been fairly sloth-like in my first month back, spending far too much time writing in bed, or rather, not writing in bed. I've given myself a wake up time (7 AM) and a writing start time (8 AM), with a two hour writing/reading period. One hour for writing, one hour for reading (whatever that may be: plays, theory, etc). I may have to move around the time slightly if I have to go into work in the morning (though I'm never scheduled earlier than 9:45). But this way I can sit down and really get this play together, and also touch up some of those one acts and story ideas I've had kicking around. My day need not always surround the thesis, as long as I am writing. Anyway, speaking of work, I must finish getting ready and rush there.

Balancing Act

It's not easy tackling multiple responsibilities all at once, especially when all of them are extremely important. And I'm finding the ability to handle all of them at once to be more difficult than I thought, not necessarily because the work is hard, but because there just aren't enough hours in a day.

At any given moment in the day, I'm a student, a professor, a leader of a writing group, and an editor's assistant, and a thesis writer. I'm as diligent as possible in taking on each of these roles, doing everything that I'm responsible for within those roles and I remember everyday that I put those responsibilities on myself for agreeing to take them on. But now I'm finding myself literally running and/or speeding from place to place, exhausted by the time I get there. There are little things I've been overlooking lately, to the point where midnight or 10 minutes beforehand seems to be the only time to get them done. And I find myself tired all the time, barely having enough energy to enjoy myself when I get a few moments to do so.

Am I insane? Maybe.

But at least I can take comfort in knowing that, so far, I'm doing well in all of my roles despite feeling spread immensely thin. And I keep telling myself that it's only this semester that I will be so bombarded by my schedule. In the spring things should ease up a bit before graduation, partly because I don't want to collapse at the finish line...I'd rather just cross it with my arms raised.

Oh well, we're already about a month into the semester. But the real challenge is going to come in October and November, when the workload will keep rising. Here's hoping I can survive until the end of December, still in one piece.

Mad Mad Mad Men

So the other night the Emmy's were on and like most awards shows, I have my own private Kanye West moments (the only difference being that I'm not sitting next to the stage). But there was something said at the awards show that I thought was really interesting, and of course it came from Matthew Weiner, the creator of 'Mad Men'. He said, "When you get something like this, it makes writing look fun, but it's not." Now, I'm aware that many young writers would look at that quote and be puzzled by it. 99% of people who choose writing as a career, think of it as something fun when they're starting out. But that quote really stuck with me because it shows me that while writing can be incredibly rewarding, it is something incredibly difficult. People who are not writers, tend to look at writer's and think, "oh, how fun, you get to write. I have a great story idea," and then also, "I have to work for my money." Well, writer's have to work for their money too (though I make no money writing, at this stage I just become further in debt). But what I can attest to is the hard work that accompanies the inspiration. Anyone can come up with a good idea. Yet, how to translate that idea into a meaningful story is something everyone struggles with.

 I think about screenwriter's and wonder how many drafts they do. Well, let me rephrase, I think about people like Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino and think, "how many drafts do they go through before they send it out?" If you listen to interviews with both of them, they make it sound as if the thing comes out in one fell swoop and then they pass it on to their agent and voila! Philip Seymour Hoffman loves it and is starring in it, or Brad Pitt is in it.

At this point, I don't feel like I can say "well this is how I do it," because who am I? What have I had produced? Oh, that's right, nothing. I am no one, but I am okay with this fact because I'm working towards something. And I must take motivation from anywhere I can get it, like working as a salesman when I really don't want to. The motivation comes from thinking "I really don't want to be doing this for the rest of my life." However, it's not the type of feeling that "things would be so much easier if I were a writer," because I know the exhaustion that occurs when extensively revising and rewriting a piece. Writing is something many people in the general population take for granted. Having Matthew Weiner say those words, that writing is not something fun, just changes everything in the public opinion.

You may be thinking, "well if it's not fun, then why do it?" And, this is where things get tricky. I don't think Weiner is saying that it's awful, soul crushing work that he loathes. I think what he's saying is, it's not always a party. There is a lot that goes into writing something of quality. When you look at the show 'Mad Men' just think about how much detail and care is put into each episode. The amount of research everyone has done for that show must be astronomical. Things of quality very rarely get accomplished in one draft and with little effort.

 In closing, "BEYONCE HAD ONE OF THE GREATEST VIDEOS OF ALL TIME!" And don't you forget it!

Calvino and the Universe

''If I had to say which fiction writer has perfectly achieved [this] aesthetic ideal of exactitude in imagination and in language, creating works that match the rigorous geometry of the crystal and the abstraction of deductive reasoning, I would without hesitation say Jorge Luis Borges. . . . I love his work because every one of his pieces contains a model of the universe or of an attribute of the universe.''

                -- Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the New Millennium

It always amazes me how moments of coincidence can turn into flashing red signs.

I’d been reading Italo Calvino’s book, Six Memos for the New Millennium, which concerns issues of craft and the value of literature, but wasn’t as fully engrossed in it as I felt I should’ve been. It could’ve been that I was reading the book mostly on the train and subway, so I was always a bit distracted by the people and noises around me.  But when I read the final chapter alone in my bedroom, suddenly I was neck deep in understanding. What had hovered over my head for most of the time I spent reading the book became as clear as my handwriting on a sticky note as I copied a passage from the final chapter.  Calvino wanted his reader to understand that ultimately our job as a writer is to “squeeze out of speech everything it has to give, to make it into an instrument of penetration” (Robert Coover, New York Times, 1988). I finished the book with a greater respect for the significance of Calvino’s advice, and made a note to myself that I needed to read the stories of Jorge Luis Borges.

This past weekend, the name Borges came up again. I was speaking to a stranger at a bar in SoHo, explaining to him that I was getting my MFA in fiction and that I loved South American writers like Marquez. He then asked if I had ever read Borges. I said that I’d just finished Calvino’s book and that Calvino raved about Borges, and now I really wanted to read him. Nothing more came of the discussion, but I couldn’t help but wonder why I was suddenly hearing Borges’ name everywhere. I’m sure his name has been dropped in literary conversations before, but I never paid it much attention. Now, it seems like I am waiting to hear it in every exchange. I’m not a superstitious person, but I do believe that the universe gives us little signs when we should pay attention to something. In this case, it is the next author I should read. In other instances, it could be an idea for a story, or something of more consequence like advice for a major decision. The world is always speaking to us; we only need pause for a moment and listen.

To Stress, or Not to Stress

So now that I’m officially two weeks in to my third semester as an MFA student,  I must say I’ve been  impressed with my ability to moderate my stress levels. I should be freaking out. This is my last year and over the course of the next eight months I have to produce a substantial body of work that represents my best efforts as a writer. It doesn’t sound that bad when you say it out loud or read it in the MFA handbook, but when you actually think about how much time will go into the whole thing, it’s downright horrifying. As a fiction writer, I need to produce over 100 pages. Yes, it’s double-spaced, but that’s still a lot of writing. I mean if I sit down and really put my mind to it I can crank out that many pages in no time. But that doesn’t guarantee that the writing will be any good. And it certainly doesn’t mean than I can hand it in without spending hours and hours reworking the mess of a thing. I guess the most daunting task that lies ahead of me is the revision process. By the time we reach the end of our second year, I’m sure most of us will have changed the same sentence twenty times. And when we hand in our manuscripts, some of us might never want to look at them again (at least not for a couple of months). But I can’t wait to have that stack of paper in my hand and be able to say, ‘I did my best and I am awfully proud of it’.  

I guess part of me is still freaking out, but I just keep telling myself that everyone else is going through the same thing, and we’re all going to be pulling our hair out and losing sleep and walking around the halls like zombies. But if we’re in this together, then we all have something to fall back on; that in itself is comfort enough to subdue my initial fears. We are all going to be reading each others work in the Thesis Colloquium and providing feedback that will, in the end, influence the final manuscripts. Maybe that’s why my blood pressure hasn’t jumped through the roof yet. I trust my colleagues and know that they have only the best intentions for my work, even if they may not be my reader per se. When you have ten other sets of eyes helping you find the weaknesses in your work, then the burden doesn’t have to be entirely your own.

Up and At Them!

Hello. Hello. Hello. How are you? Are you feeling well? Yes, yes, thank you. 

 It's been a busy, busy summer. Or rather, "what summer?" I spent my days living out a less intense version of a David Mamet play, lots of men drinking and selling major home appliances. It was interesting to step almost completely away from the MFA lifestyle and go into something so basic. It was the life of 40 hour weeks, coming home exhausted and vegging out in front of a John Wayne movie. Which is incredibly helpful, by the way. Something about The Duke just works after a hard day. Keep that in mind. 

 Though I did read my fair share of plays and short stories and collections of poetry. I even managed to pump out a rather mundane first draft of my thesis play. The story is interesting, the play is not, yet. I seem to have forgotten something called "dramatic action." Well, I'll be back in the saddle soon with it.

This semester I will be taking a class on Anton Chekhov, Bertolt Brecht, and Caryl Churchill. All three playwrights I am incredibly under-versed in. Though I have read Churchill the most. I'm incredibly excited to be studying such unique talents over the course of the semester. I am also taking the thesis class. It's incredible that I'm already at that point. I look back and see a lot of plodding along, working things out, trying and failing. Though, all of that was useful. I now feel like I can work on my thesis play with more vigor and tenacity. I had to use that year of getting ideas out and feeling out my own way as a writer, to hopefully make this play something unique. Plus, I have a few ideas that I will return to that already have a first draft.

 Well, we're back to the blogging. Good day.

What I Did Last Summer

I can’t believe that summer is already over. The month of August flew by me and now I am facing my final year as a graduate student. I always manage to get myself pretty worked up over the idea of beginning classes again—was I productive enough over the summer? Am I going to be able to handle the workload? Do I really want to sacrifice a good chunk of my free time? Etc. The answer to all of these questions is usually (hopefully) yes. But I’ll get more into my thoughts about being a second year MFA student in my next post. For now, I want to talk about what I did this summer.

From the end of May to the end of August, I interned three days a week at a Literary Agency in Manhattan. I’d never worked in an office before, so that experience alone was invaluable. The position was unpaid, as most internships are nowadays, but the hours were decent (10-5) and the exposure was incredible. Before I started working for the agency, I had a limited knowledge about the publishing industry. I had some vague concept of how a manuscript was submitted, who reviewed it, and what happened to it if it was accepted. But the finer details of what went on behind closed doors had never been revealed to me. And I don’t think you can really understand until you experience it for yourself.

I read most of the unsolicited manuscripts that came into the agency. If anything, this taught me how to write a proper query letter. We received countless manuscripts that had obviously been part of a mass mailing. The salutations were vague and it was clear they hadn’t done much research on the agency or the type of work published there.  I also did most of the mailings at the agency so I learned about the role that editors, co-agents, scouts, publishing houses, and foreign agents play in the publication of a book. I was able to read through book contracts, magazine contracts, and foreign rights agreements. I read countless reviews of works published by the agency’s authors and took home copies of their new books.

Probably the most rewarding aspect of the internship was my proximity to talented authors and their work. The agency represented names like Lydia Davis, Francine Prose, Kevin Canty, Gary Shteyngart, Aryn Kyle, Reif Larsen, and Karen Russell, to name a few. Some of these authors I had never heard of before, but they are all making waves in the literary world. I read magazine articles, book reviews, short stories, novel excerpts, and book proposals by the agency’s authors. I was surprised to learn that even successful authors can struggle with the process of publishing their work. It was also encouraging to read a piece by a published author (short story, article, book proposal) at its beginning stages and know that they were putting just as much effort into revising and improving the writing as I do with my own work.

Even though I don’t intend to become a literary agent, I think my experience at the agency helped to further immerse me in my love of reading and writing. It also enabled me to explore the business side of publishing and learn a great deal about what it takes to get published. I think internships are a good way to see what kind of jobs are out there in your field and make connections with people who can be a valuable resource for you as a writer. Connections are how you make your way up the ladder. Start making them now!

The agency I interned for: http://www.deniseshannonagency.com

Here We Go Again

The semester has started up again, and this time I find myself playing two parts--teacher and student!

I'm currently teaching my first class, Intro to Creative Writing, in addition to taking my third poetry workshop and the Thesis Colloquium. I'm particularly nervous about the Colloquium, only because this is the first place where my 35-page thesis draft will see the light. I'm happy that I'll have two attempts to put it together and revise it so that once the spring rolls around I'll be that much closer to completing it.

As for teaching, so far it is an experience unlike any other! I'm alone in a room teaching 20 undergraduates the basics of creative writing. Though leading discussions about writing to undergraduates is not alien to me (I still am the unofficial leader of the writing group I'm active in outside of school), being in charge of their homework assignments, grades etc. is where the unfamiliarity comes in. So far, two classes in, it's going pretty well. I've been able to get the attention of the class, have gotten them to laugh quite a bit, and have surprised myself at how calm I am during those 50 minutes in the room (compared how much of a nervous wreck I am in the hour leading up to and after teaching it!) And I think the combination of doing my own homework for my other classes as a student along with preparing/grading homework as a professor is what has me a bit on edge, considering it's as if I'm taking a third course with much more responsibility placed on it. But hey, I asked for this opportunity and now I'm out to prove that I can handle it and perform well. I hope I was right in thinking I could do this!

What also has me on edge is the fact that I have a second job on top of all this. So I feel like my schedule has little room for error if anything should ever come up. I'm thankful it's only until December, after which my schedule should loosen up SEVERELY! But in the meantime, fitting in last-minute items or sudden emergencies is going to be a big challenge.

I was breathing free and easy over the summer, so I guess now I need to hold my breath in a bit until I can let it back out over the holidays!

A Moment in the Lights

In my previous entry I mentioned that July was probably going to be the busiest month I've ever had...

Well...I was right.

But it was also featured one of the most exhilarating moments of my life. After months of preparation and weeks of rehearsing and fine tuning, I along with five of my fellow writer friends participated in a poetry performance in Manhattan last week. The show, entitled "Words," depicts a recently successful poet who's suffering from writer's block, so his muses appear...literally...to help him break through and to remind him what he's capable of...that is, if they can actually put aside their differences and work together. The script consisted of poems written by each performer (myself included) and one collaboration. I played the poet, while the others each played a specific muse with its own personality and approach to writing.

We performed to a sold-out (technically, oversold) audience and we received a standing ovation upon the show's conclusion. Afterwards, at our reception, we were approached by many people and told how much they enjoyed the performance and our poetry in general. I felt all the doubt and negativity I had been feeling for the bulk of this year just melt away in that one night. I truly feel that my confidence has returned since then.

It was such a blast to work on this poetry performance! I couldn't have picked five better writers to join me on that stage. And being in a show for the first time since I was 11 years old (not counting poetry readings) gave me an incredible rush. I hope this is not the last time this play is performed. But for now, I'm happy the insanity is over and I can look forward (hopefully) to a very peaceful August, one that will find me wrapping up my thesis poem drafts and taking my time to enjoy the summer while it lasts. I will be grateful for August, especially since the fall will find me in the most hectic schedule I've ever had!

Hustle and Bustle of July

This July is probably going to be the busiest month I've ever had during the summer. In one week I have my first rehearsal for my upcoming poetry performance. In two weeks, it's Hell Week (five straight days of rehearsals). In three weeks, it's the show. Sprinkle in some 4th of July fun, a graduation party, softball games, and a birthday/cast party at the end of the month and I have myself a packed schedule. Kind of ridiculous since summer is supposed to be my time of rest (though I got a decent amount of it in June and will get much more in August as the summer winds down).

I find myself in a tad bit of writer's block (not good considering I should be writing everyday) so I've been trying to use the basics to get back into it. I've also been pleasantly surprised to be finding more and more of my old poems popping up everywhere, the ones I thought were lost when my computer went under. It seems my old habit of printing tons of poems and then never throwing them away came in handy BIG TIME!

I've also been getting much more walking done lately (now that the weather has allowed for it after the monsoon that was the entire month of June), and it feels good to be moving around and such. I hate it when I'm stuck in my room with awful weather and an inability to pass the time. I'm cheering for a lot less rain this month. I'm officially sick of precipitation.

I just recently bought DVDs of Lewis Black and George Carlin stand-up...maybe they'll help pass the time too and inspire me to get my writing going again.

Back from my Trip, and Back in the Swing of Things

I've just returned from my road trip to Baltimore, to catch 2 Orioles-Mets games. It was a lot of fun--Camden Yards is beautiful, both games were very exciting and it was great to just get away for a couple of days. Not to mention the people are way more friendly in Maryland than New York, by far.

Lately my writing has come back to life after my computer viruses wiped out almost my entire collection; in fact I just finished a couple of poems earlier today. At the same time, production continues on an upcoming poetry performance I'm taking part in at NYC's Gene Frankel Theatre in July. Thankfully my writing for the show's script is finished and now I'm waiting for the director to give us the finished script in a couple weeks so rehearsals can begin. I'm extremely excited for the opportunity to perform my work in front of an audience in a theatre show. At the same time, I'm also very nervous about memorizing the work and performing for the first time since I was 11 years old. Here's hoping all goes well!

The show's premise is a poet gone insane calls on his muse (or rather the 5 different personalities that make up his muse) to help him snap out of his writing funk. The characters fight amongst themselves to try to influence the poet to write their strengths. I play the poet being inspired. It should make for a great show and we're hoping it sells well...not for money, but so that more of our friends and family get to see it.

While the show has added to my workload, it has helped keep my creative juices flowing. It keeps me inspired to write more, especially with the loss of all of my older poems. I'm hoping the my new works will make up for that loss and will be a strong enough new beginning for my writing identity.

When a Writer's Computer Withers

What a nightmare these past few days: my computer was attacked by several major viruses at once and since I don't have an external harddrive I lost a ton of files, including almost all my poetry files,  as a result. My computer's back up and running now, but it's been stripped almost down to its bare parts (the only thing that could be salvaged was some of my photos and music files).  Other than during the semester, this was the worst time for this to happen since I have so many things to accomplish this summer and they all were at least started in Word files that no longer exist. So now I have to go through the process of replacing my files and trying to get back on track...but so far I feel very frustrated and a bit helpless now that a lot of my computer resources are gone.

*sigh* I can't stand technology at times like these. You can seemingly get viruses in every corner of the internet and most systems that promise to help keep your computer safe wind up infecting your computer themselves. I guess there couldn't be any bigger indication of how much USB drives and external harddrives are a good investment.

So as i begin to go through the process of rebuilding, I'm praying for no more setbacks in my personal and academic writing goals this semester...I'll be honest, I don't think I could afford another episode anywhere close to the magnitude of this one.

Catching Up on Things

Now that the semester's over, I realized how much I have to catch up on.

For one thing, my poor bookshelf hasn't gotten love since the end of February (though with a summer reading list, that shelf has expanded a fair amount). Granted I read during the semester but I haven't gotten to read some of the books that have been on my shelf for several months, like some of my Neil Gaiman books and the  Sin City graphic novel series.

Another thing I'd like to catch up on: some TV and movie watching. I barely watched that much TV during the semester, and though I don't normally watch all that much in general, there are still a couple of shows I keep an eye on and thanks to the internet (Surf the Channel specifically) I'm not that far removed. As for movies, I've been to the movies twice thus far in the young summer. I hope to do that more as the months roll on.

One last thing: taking walks. I love taking a walk, especially when everything becomes so busy and my mind is so congested I don't have the ability to focus on any one subject at a time. Walking also tends to help my writing because I observe so much and I try to record as much of it as possible. It's a great way for me to remember what the world looks like so I can write it down.

Speaking of catching up on things, I'm going bowling and getting some ice cream with friends for the first time in awhile. Should be fun.