Progession or Regression?

Revision is difficult if there isn't enough time to reflect on what works and what needs work in the piece. I wrote about six nonfiction pieces and finally wrote one that satisfied me yesterday, and it's hard to revise because I haven't had enough time away from it. However, the fiction piece is easy to revise, because I've had a span of time where I didn't change or read it. Because of that, I was able to go back and add/delete things that needed changing.

"Asphyxiation" isn't perfect by any means, but it seems as though with every revision, it is developing into something greater and greater. I don't mean in length, but I mean in meaning. It feels as though the message is becoming clearer and stronger, and I'm happy about that.

As for the nonfiction piece, it's not where I want it to be. I'm not really sure if it will ever get to a point where I'll be somewhat satisfied with it. Maybe it's because I don't like writing about myself; I always find it hard not to trip on my own words and sound either incredibly angry or self-deprecating. For some people, writing nonfiction comes easily, but for me, I can't seem to do it. I also don't like talking about myself to other people in normal conversation, so maybe that's part of it too. In any case, nonfiction is killing me.

As for the poetry, I'm pretending I never wrote that. It feels sappy and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I wish I could write poetry like Billy Collins, but I can't boil down my emotions to concentrate and mold it into poetry.

I hope to edit the nonfiction as best I can, but I may change my mind again. I've been doing that a lot recently.

High School Puts Me in a Bad Place

When Caroline was in high school, she took a Creative Writing class her senior year. She was annoyed with almost everyone for their Peter Pan complexes. She knew she could write, and she hated receiving critiques from these people. She thought they couldn't understand anything larger than what was blatantly on the page, because for the most part, it was true. She hated their pretentious attitudes, but was it really them who were pretentious? Or were they hostile towards her writing? Or perhaps they were too scared to realize that writing is sharing a part of themselves, and that the constructive criticism given to them was seen as a personal attack?

There were three other people who felt the same way about that class; it wasn't their lack of talent that couldn't help their writing, but they had a lack of purpose. Caroline doesn't like it when writing doesn't have anything under the surface. Writing isn't meant to be shallow, but that's what everything seemed to be. Their writing was the epitome of high school - all about impressions and nothing about reflection. And that's why she hated high school; everything was based on the best facade. She's a cynic. And she had no faith in most people.

Italian 110, Draft 1

“Buongiorno!” my part-time Italian professor would say if he were still here, adding a dabble of French. But he's not. He was thrown in jail in the beginning of November for the possession of child pornography. In America, that's a felony, especially if one person possesses over 100,000 photos of adults raping children covered with duct tape. And it's definitely not a mistake if these photos are organized into specific folders.
Girls.
Boys.
Duct tape.
This guy had the nerve to go to George Washington University, where he also worked, with his external hard drive in hopes of wiping all the viruses from it. Instead, he received handcuffs and a lot of disgusted students. “I can't believe this guy!” a twenty-five year old woman in my class shouted.
Well, at least you don't have the body of a twelve year old girl at the age of eighteen.
At least you didn't think he was a decent human being in the first place.
The night before next class, I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned and finally decided to get out of bed at three in the morning. I wondered if I should've gone to class; I didn't know if I wanted to take Italian anymore. I really thought I hated this guy. Who could ever enjoy watching someone rape a child? All I could think about was child pornography and Italy. Italy and child pornography. I wanted this guy to rot behind bars. I wanted Italy to burst into flames.
A lot of child molesters or abusers were molested or abused as children. These victims either grow up and stop themselves from hurting others, or these victims find that what happened to them as children is okay.
There was an alcoholic father who had two sons; the first son grew up to be an alcoholic, and the second son grew up to be a normal guy. The second son said, “I saw what alcohol did to my father, and I didn't want to end up like that.”
The first son said, “Well, I guess I learned how to drink from my father.”
I don't know my Italian professor's back story, but something else could've attributed to his possession of child pornography. Maybe a family member molested him; it's not impossible.
After three weeks of trying to forget about him, I realize that I don't hate him anymore. Our new Italian professor told us he was cooperating and was now wearing house arrest jewelry. He had a five mile limit in D.C. “He could totally come back and teach us!” someone shouted as a joke. There was some nervous laughter.
And now that it's Thanksgiving, I can only imagine what he would be doing. He's probably home alone in his apartment complex on a day that millions of Americans drive for miles and miles to see their families. He's probably miserable—staying home, wearing house arrest jewelry, mulling around his apartment with nothing to do. Nothing's open on Thanksgiving. Almost everyone's out of town.
Fasolini, have a Happy Thanksgiving.
Wherever you are.

Guilt.

Church's "I'm Just Getting to the Disturbing Part" mainly includes imagery--the Barbie pool, the mountains, the lake, and his interactions with his son. His imagery in the beginning is playful (the swimming pool and how he's too big for it), but it starts to become more powerful towards the end and evokes sympathy (his son and his fear of swimming).

Like in most creative nonfiction, Church has a lot of introspective monologues through out the piece. Towards the end, he discovers something about himself that he didn't know before; he realizes why he was frightened the day he tried to look for a drunk, drowning man at the bottom of a lake. This epiphany moment about his fear and his cowardice makes him seem more realistic; Church doesn't make himself out to be a hero for attempting to save this ultimately doomed man. He knows he didn't try his best to save him, because he had his dead brother in the back of his mind.

when he dove in to try to save that drowning man, he felt closer and closer to his deceased brother. Even though he couldn't do anything to prevent his brother's death, he still felt guilty. All of us always think that we could have done more to save someone who is no longer living, but with some situations, that sense of guilt never really disappears and reveals itself every so often in other things that we do.

"New Love Is Easy Art"

“The unspoken fear of so many artists is the discovery of true love. Not the kind of love that burns hard and fast, but the kind that smolders with no end and wouldn't let you go if you tried. I can't speak for all writers, but I know I speak for many when I say that it is a secret fear amongst us that with this smoldering comes the death of an atomic dream. New love is easy art.”

I really wish I could write like Andrew McMahon; when I shared this with a friend last night, we were both wide-eyed and a little lost. What did love mean to us? Did the love we have for others burn hard and fast? Or did it smolder?

There is no way to measure love, and yet we try to do it all the time. Right after the question “do you love me?” comes the follow up question “how much do you love me?”. Why is it never enough to know that you are loved? Why is anything ever enough?

New love is easy art, because it's simple to create something new, and it feeds our hunger to be loved. We always look for the easy way out instead of fixing our current problems. I think that's also why the divorce rate is high—no one wants to compromise. We're so focused on ourselves that we often forget that there is someone else in this relationship.

That smoldering love is ourselves finally realizing that we must develop relationships; anything that disappears like fireworks is nothing worth keeping.

Superfluous? Not at all.

I read "The Palm Reader and the Poet" by Greg Bottoms, and I thought it was great. First off, he writes in present tense, which isn't really common in writing and it's wonderful that he takes that risk; writing in present tense allows us to feel that we're there. Also, each character has depth, even though this piece is fairly short. The characterization he gives the girl in the story is clear and easy to see. Her character feels oddly familiar.

I love how he writes "white as an egg", "almost feral", "sick thin", and "hallucinating Olympian"--these phrases so different that they stick, unlike cliches. I especially love "sick thin", because it's so clever; at first, I thought it said "stick thin", but when I saw it again, I was glad it wasn't.

The story in itself is not out of the ordinary, but the way Bottoms writes it makes the story worth reading. I really love that about some writers--they make the ordinary extraordinary. I wish more people would see that writing doesn't always have to be about some crazy idea that stems out of the depths of Planet Unique; I think writers often forget that it's really the small details and sometimes encounters we slough off as superfluous that make a story.

Every seemingly ordinary encounter we have is special and important, but I feel as though we choose to ignore that. I'm glad Bottoms doesn't take this for granted.

Is this Real?

Is experimental poetry considered lesser poetry or not?

Poetry is poetry. There's prose written in different styles, but that doesn't make it any less prose than other works of prose.

Experimental poetry may be strange, and it may not be as openly appreciated as "classic poetry", like Robert Frost, but it is not lesser than the works of Billy Collins or E.E. Cummings. Experimental poetry is not what most people consider "normal poetry", because it is nothing like what most people think poetry is: strictly structured, rhyming, and hard to understand.

Experimental prose is more well received than experimental poetry. In fact, experimental prose, or different prose, is usually expected from authors; novels should have different, distinct voices.

But poetry is expected to be the same. No one expects poetry to have a distinct voice. No one expects poetry to be open about its meaning.

It's strange how we have preconceived notions of what poetry should be, and yet we are open to any idea of what prose can be. Experimental poetry should be received with open arms, and yet we are unwilling to consider it poetry.

If it's not poetry, then what is it?

Neil Perry

I always wonder whether this is what I am. I feel so unsure of myself and so self-deprecating; this doesn't feel like a safe place, but this is what I know.

I remember walking around during sunset, watching the sky burn as my neighbors' yards smelled of coal and charred meat, I thought about what I needed. I often stared at my feet as I walked by men walking their dogs, women jogging past. They seemed so satisfied with their mediocre lives in suburbia, but I never felt complete here. College was supposed to be the answer to my prayers; college was supposed to be the Grand Escape. But college was just another mediocre part of life that was no longer about the name branded inside the graduation booklet--this was another four years of learning about things I didn't care for.

I often wonder if college is even right for me. I always dreamed I would go to some art school where half the men were flamboyantly gay, and most of the student population thought doing drugs and art were synonymous. I thought I could finally do things my way; I no longer needed math or science or foreign language. I dreamed of living in New York City and listening to obscure indie music and drinking tea and reinventing myself.

Sometimes I wonder how much of a disappointment I would be if I didn't finish college; I feel so much pressure to destroy who I am in order to become something I can't be.

Neil Perry, you and I have so much in common; your father and my father wanted us to burn our dreams and to watch the ash float away as they handed us the tuition to become doctors. But you and I know what we were meant to do, except I will succeed. But I really wish you were real.

I really wish we could make this journey together.

Marianne Moore

I love Marianne Moore's "The Fish", because it reminds me of when I went snorkeling almost a decade ago. She uses beautiful imagery and compares the sea to jewels; that image of her experience seems to glint and shine in the sunlight. However, the end of the poem shows not the ocean's beauty, but the abuse we humans inflict on the sea. It's terrible to think that we ruin things that are so beautiful. All those marks and grooves seem to give it character, whatever "it" may symbolize.

I've read another poem by Marianne Moore called "I May, I Might, I Must", and "The Fish" doesn't seem to have the same impact as "I May...", because that poem has helped me adjust to college life. It disappointed me a little bit; I wish she had more of her strong voice in this one.

Marginalia by Billy Collins

Marginalia by Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

I love Billy Collins' poetry, because it's so vivid and beautiful. I love the description he uses -- "greasy looking smears", "cold scriptoria", "splayed footprints". He's not overly detailed with his words, but there's enough detail for us to see what Collins wants us to see. Also, I love his change in tone from the playful beginning ("Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!") to the sorrowful ending (a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet). I love Collins' writing style; he always has a line in his poetry that I wish I wrote. That jealousy makes me love him more.

lost.

I have no sense of time. The day accelerates from evening to midday. I can hardly keep myself grounded, and yet there you are, unchanging. You are the one who seems to make time pass so much faster, and without you, the minutes drag so slow that I feel as if I could catch and bottle them.

I've never felt so dependent on anyone in my life. Half the day feels like I'm floating in space; nothing seems to connect or make sense down there on Earth. The Earth is just a glittering mass of sapphire and emerald, and I'm not part of it. I'm living too much in my own mind, thinking about you and wondering why this is happening. Nothing seems to be right; nothing seems to be wrong.

I don't know where I'm going. I thought I had everything figured out, but now I have nothing. All the pieces slipped through my fingers, and now I'm struggling to find them. You've made something so easy into something so difficult; you're destroying me, or what used to be me.

I'm feeling myself fall apart. You are deconstructing me one brick at a time.

Same Same but Different.

I really wish something interesting happened, but not much has been going on. Our floor recently received an actual piece of furniture most likely found off Craig's List's "free section". I'm just happy we have a couch. Now our ingenious cardboard couch has been kicked into the corner, ignored. So much time collecting those boxes, and now we pretend it doesn't exist.

You really wish something interesting happened, but not much has been going on. Your floor recently received an actual piece of furniture most likely found off Craig's List's "free section". You're just happy you have a couch. Now your ingenious cardboard couch has been kicked into the corner, ignored. So much time collecting those boxes, and now you pretend it doesn't exist.

She really wishes something interesting happened, but not much has been going on. Her floor recently received an actual piece of furniture most likely found off Craig's List's "free section". She's just happy they have a couch. Now their ingenious cardboard couch has been kicked into the corner, ignored. So much time collecting those boxes, and now they pretend it doesn't exist.

The first paragraph ("I") makes the story sound personal, because I'm talking about myself and what happened this week. The second paragraph ("you") has the story sound very commanding. You did this. You did that. The third paragraph ("she") makes the story sound detached; there's no closeness, unlike the first two. For the most part, the meaning of the story doesn't change.

Do what you feel.

Creating a believable piece has nothing to do with plot or genre. Science Fiction and Fantasy can feel believable; anything can feel real. I think a lot of people forget that if you can relate to characters and have enough imagery to form a universe, it doesn't matter where you are or who the character is.

In creating a believable piece, you have to create characters that feel real. This person can't be a Mary Sue; even Superman has kryptonite. Why would anyone want to read about someone perfect? That's why there's such a distinct hatred for Twilight – there's no flaw in the main character, and almost every male character falls in love with her.

This does not happen in real life.

Stephanie Meyer's Twilight may have been a New York Best Seller, but literature-wise, it's a train wreck. Not even Forks, Washington feels real, and it exists.

Creating a universe that you can imagine is also important; if there are missing pieces to your world, even if it is a real place, it will ruin the effect you're trying to achieve.

When developing a character, do what you feel is right, but remember that flawless characters are the downfall of literature. Remember that you want the reader to see what you see and feel what you feel.

Self-loathing is never the answer.

There's no specific pattern you can follow that leads to the perfect piece. This is why writers always give “writing tips”--they're tips, because even after following their methods faithfully, the end result is unknown.

A friend and I have blogs, and she tells me she rewrites constantly for her audience. She wants to perfect her craft, because she fears her readers won't understand and lose interest. She rewrites and rewrites her words, changing, deleting, adding. She doesn't do what I do—put out “raw writing”. Not revising. Writing something within minutes and posting.

This friend is definitely more successful than I am; people are in love with her writing. Her words are powerful. Beautiful. I envy her patience, her imagery, her emotions. She envies my description, my understanding, my varying points of view.

We're always picking at our own writing, believing it's not good enough. I remember reading a piece that won me thirty dollars six months after I wrote it.

I wanted to burn it.

Some nights I wonder why I even bother putting pen to paper. I wonder why I don't just listen to my parents and become a doctor. And then I realize that this is really what I want to do—I want to write in order for people to understand each other, but also feel they've been saved.

I think ultimately, that's success. There are so many people who can pat you on the back and say “that's good”, “I like it”, et cetera. They only say that because they want you to do the same for them. I love hearing people tell me they can relate to characters I created. Sometimes, I feel like there's a "thank you" hiding in their words. These characters aren't just made up people anymore. They're pieces of ourselves, extensions of us we're willing to share with people we don't know.

And if they connect with you, then the pain of wondering why you write goes away.