Phosphorescence

In the history of ink, which is rapidly coming to an end, the ancient world turns from the use of India ink to adopt sepia. Sepia is made from the octopus, the squid & the cuttlefish. One curious property of the cuttlefish is that, once dead, its body begins to glow. This mild phosphorescence reaches its greatest intensity a few days after death, then ebbs away as the body decays. You can read by this light. ~Srikanth Reddy

Last to be first, lose to find, die to live. These, the paradoxes upon which we build our lives. It's fascinating and mysterious to me.

This week, I read the above excerpt from Facts for Visitors, which reminded me of the paradoxes inherent in the life of a creative writer. We delve into our pain and brokenness to create beauty. Sit sequestered for long periods of time to help build human connectedness, the effects of which we seldom see. 

I love the image of death creating the phosphorescence of words. There really is such a powerful, phosphorescent quality to writing—we illuminate the inner workings of ourselves and the contours of each moment to help others do the same.

It’s hard though, isn’t it? I really resonated with Sarah Schock’s description of art the Editor’s Note of this spring’s Inkstone issue as something that requires a battering ram to the heart. It hurts. And takes a lot of guts.  

I just want to take a moment to thank you each of you for the sacrifices represented in the pieces you have shared with me and others in our classes. In this year’s classes especially, I have really seen you all (and the others in those classes) step out and take deeper risks, growing in vulnerability and a willingness to tackle the tough or taboo topics.

Seeing how much I’ve been personally impacted and blessed by hearing from the depths of your experience has really challenged and inspired me to pursue vulnerability myself. It’s such a profound blessing to realize that you’re not alone. To understand yourself a bit more clearly through the musings of someone else.

So, thank you for the courage that your writing this year required. This will probably sound weirdly maternal or cliché, but I’m proud of you. As Hougen says, you are beautiful people, more than you know. Please don’t ever stop.   

be okay

This week I am learning what it means to be okay. To be okay with imperfection and uncertainty.

I’m sure at this point in the semester we feel as though everything should be coming together. But, as always (right? there’s nothing new to the end-of-the-year/semester scramble) we are panicking and wondering what we got ourselves into as we struggle to find motivation and enough coffee to keep us awake late at night.

However, strangely so, I am finding that it’s easier for me to work on Capstone now. Not that my pieces are coming together or anything (not even close!), but I think I am over the fear of having to create something new, from scratch, that will be fabulous and glowing and ready for that May 8th afternoon. I am okay with not knowing what’s going to happen. I am even okay with how my pieces are growing and changing and are unfaithful to me, throwing temper tantrums and running away and forcing me to ground them. Haha. Do you ever feel like they are your children, your babies (maybe only you girls will relate with me here), and it hurts to see them grow up but is so rewarding all the same? I dunno, maybe I’m just being too sentimental again.

I read a short story for my Non-Western Lit class about a Bengali woman who lives in Seattle with her 3-year-old son and travelling husband. Her father, who has recently lost his wife, comes to stay with her for a week, and the story flip-flops between both their point of views in a personal essay, first-person-narrative form. I found it interesting that it kept me thinking about my  Capstone pieces rather than the theme of “West meets East” for my class. It kept showing me that writing about the ordinary in a meaningful way is so possible. It doesn't have to be some revelational moment in your life. It just has to be beautiful.

Check in time. How are you guys really doing? Are you okay with uncertainty? Are your changing pieces slowly turning into something you know you'll be proud of?

Tweaking, Tinkering, and Taking Apart

Lately I've been trying to rework my capstone poems, and to be honest, I'm not making a ton of progress. I often have this problem when revising poetry--I feel semi-okay about my first draft, but when I try to reenter the poem to make improvements, I just can't find the inspiration. It's like I'm trying to touch up a watercolor painting with oil pastels--the end result is patchy and inconsistent, as though it's been created by two different artists.

Not this kind of tinkering.
Though let's face it, this would
probably be more fun.

I'm attempting to do two different kinds of revision for my poems: tweaking/tinkering with my "Shopping with My Mother" piece, which was slightly more polished, and practically taking apart the other, which needed a different direction altogether. (Yep, the alliteration was intentional. I'm very cool.) Both types of revision, I'm discovering, are equally difficult. Obviously, it's hard to basically start from scratch--I mean, where do you even begin? But minor editing is challenging too. It can feel like you're simply slapping Band-Aids onto open wounds--the changes stand out in an ugly way, and they don't even really fix the problems in the first place.

I guess my biggest issue here is cohesion--creating a common tone throughout the poem, a common thread tying everything together. For some reason, I have a really hard time doing that when I'm revising. I'm not very good at stepping back from the poem and reading it with fresh eyes to see if it makes sense. Instead, I wind up either inserting new images that turn out to be irrelevant and/or off-tone given the rest of the piece (if I'm tweaking/tinkering) or taking a few of my favorite lines and trying--futilely--to make them flow fluidly in a new poem (if I'm taking apart). As a result, my poems often end up feeling a little superficial--feeling almost perfect, but not quite (cue Shel Silverstein).

How do you guys handle the revision process for poetry? How do you enter back into the world you created in the first draft? Any tips for tweaking, tinkering, or taking apart a poem?

Happy Endings...Or at Least Hopeful Ones

One of my Capstone goals was to successfully execute a poem with a happy ending…or at least a hopeful one. The trouble is, I don’t know how.

As I discussed with many of you in Advanced Writer’s Workshop last fall, I feel like the exhortations that I’ve kept hearing the past few years to avoid overly “tied up” endings and clichés has caused me to produce mostly pieces that focus on the confusion/chaos/pain side of life.  I can only think of one thing that I’ve written my entire college career that has a hopeful ending.

While I really appreciate the way we’ve been encouraged to delve into the complexities and brokenness of our world in our pieces, not all of life is broken. There are certain moments that are happy and hopeful and conclusive. And I want to capture those too—but I’ve avoided them the past four years because I know they’re much harder to capture in a way that doesn’t sound cliché.

My poem that I submitted for critique this week was my attempt at writing a more hopeful poem. The idea was to show my childhood surprise at how the sweetness or syrup hid a bitter taste (life isn’t as rosy as we think when we’re kids), but then point to how bitter sap can be turned sweet (the hard things produce an unexpected sweetness). I liked the idea, but it ended up coming out more bitter than I intended. And I don’t know how to add the more hopeful ending that I had intended in a way that doesn’t sound sappy.

I know that if I’m to write about happy or hopeful themes successfully, I need to find some good examples to follow, but I’m not sure where to find them. Lately I’ve been reading three books of poetry that McCann gave me Bread Without Sorrow by John Hodgen, After All by William Matthews, and Facts for Visitors by Srikanth Reddy. They all contain some beautiful and varied poetry, but I can’t find any with hopeful endings.

Can you relate with my struggles to capture an artistically hopeful ending? Do you have any techniques or tips to offer? Do you know of any examples of quality writing (poetry or personal essay) that has a hopeful ending? 

The Trouble with Poetry

"Write what you know."  This advice leads to a lot of writers scratching their heads: well, I know about writing…I’ll write about a writer!  Such works often turn out derivative or form meta-narratives, where the work calls attention to the process of writing instead of the story the author is trying to tell.  I even remember a unit on “Poems about Poetry” in Intro to Lit Studies. I try to avoid this in my own work, but I did find one writer who takes a humorous and original twist on this tactic.

Billy Collins, one of the few modern poets I enjoy, has several poems about poetry. The collections I borrowed had “The Trouble with Poetry” and “Workshop,” but I also stumbled across “Introduction to Poetry” online.  “Workshop” was my favorite, with lines like

And what’s an obbligato of snow?

Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets.

At that point I’m lost. I need help.

             It makes me think of our workshops, how we have some nice things to say, but there are parts that just confuse us, and others that speak to us, along with the obligatory disclaimer that maybe the poet knows better than us.  Likewise, “The Trouble with Poetry” admits the fear of running out of new illustrations and images.

             One thing that makes these pieces work is the implication that the reader has experienced similar situations himself. I mean, my younger brother who prefers history would not understand “Workshop” at all, but the situation is immediately clear to any creative writer.  Another technique the author uses is a straightforward tone, almost conversational. There’s no deep psychological musings about the process of inspiration or the author’s duty to readers—it demystifies the process by laughing at itself.

             While I don’t have any poems like that, I think the techniques are useful for any topic with an internal focus. For example, my essay on letter-writing doesn’t have scenes in the sense a story about waterskiing or vacation would, so I should acknowledge that fact and use it to my advantage. Which of your pieces do you think would benefit from slight self-awareness?

ps. I have no idea what's up with the white box.

Breathing while you're up

I've been in a few musicals, and from them I've learned one or two things about singing. One thing I remember is that you are supposed to time your breathing, so that you know where you are planning on stealing a gulp of air. I was never very good at that. I would see the long note coming, panic, and end up breathing early. Then, when the long note arrived, it showed up just as I was about half-way through my lungful, and I would wimp out about half way through.

Writing can be like that sometimes. It's important in a busy, busy schedule, to plan when you come up for air. If you breath too early, you might not have enough time to do what you need to get done.

The 29th of March is my twenty second birthday, and this week was all about holding my note. Staying on task, keeping my eyes on the prize so that I can go home over Easter. And it wasn't easy.

When we work on our capstone projects, sometimes we have to push. To force our minds to wax creative at the absolute worst and hardest possible times. To meet deadlines and expectations, we just keep squeezing, hoping to find the proverbial golden egg amongst our many thoughts. This week was like that for me.

But! It gets better. Pushing has it's rewards. First and foremost, when you finish pushing... you have something. It might not be good, (or have a beginning, middle, and end), but it is edittable. Some of my best work has come out of edits. I read what I wrote, sometimes weeks ago, and I just know what I wanted to say. Editing prose is hard, but the trick is remembering the goal. Visualize what the finished product will look like, try to keep the emotional journey in you mind, and just push.

Does anyone have any other tips for editing prose? Editing poems is great because I can see everything I want to do, and work with; but prose is too big for that. It's easy to get discoraged as I try to write within the box I've created for my self. Any ideas?

the thread of your life

It's interesting how in life we have all these expectations for ourselves when we start something new. I realize this is a general statement, but at the moment it applies to my spring break. I went in expecting to spent a ton of time reading and re-writing old drafts and, of course, writing new ones.

But then I worked two jobs, did homework for other classes, and went out of town for half of the week. And in the midst of all of that going on, every time I sat down to write or edit, I got angry at the document.

I got angry because my expectations were holding me back. I expected spring break to be freeing, to inspire me, and to validate me as a writer. I thought I would be finally good at this since I made it halfway through. It took me a few moments to see that perhaps I had set my goals too high. Perhaps I had elevated Capstone into such a "grown-up" thing that it was hard for me to see it as something that I could use for my journey instead of an unrealistic goal that I realized I could never achieve.

Last night I gave up on Capstone reading and went to Barnes & Noble to look at magazines for my new class. I was distracted by Writer's Digest, which contained an article about writing memoir. Thinking this applied for my life much more desperately than finding a magazine to write for, I delved in to the main things in memoirs and how to write one in the best way. These included plot, theme, character, setting, and dialogue. It was theme that stuck out to me, since this is what I've been striving for in my writing (especially my personal essays/memoirs about Italy).

"We are shaped by what we decide to do with the circumstances of our lives," rather than the circumstances themselves. It hit my like a slap of that winter-wind out there right now. The article went on: find out how you've grown, changed, acted and reacted to what you've been through, figure out what it looks like in hindsight from your perspective now, and how will you continue to change because of this? What is the thread of your life?

It occurred to me that I've been trying too hard. I've been trying to be something I'm not, write about something I'm not, and go about it in a something-I'm-not way. I need to think more about how it fits into my life now, and maybe how even Capstone will fit into my life as an experience I will never forget.

Are any of you feeling this way? That perhaps there is more to these Capstone pieces than golden words on silver platters? That maybe our pieces will be dirty and messy just like our lives, but that's okay?