Then the presumptuousness struck me. Maybe the tools I had acquired in my skill-box from working for a newspaper and building a portfolio got me to New York, but those same tools won’t get me from New York to my next goal. Now, I need to re-evaluate these tools and cultivate new ones. I have to adapt to my shifting environment, and the ability to reinvent myself is the answer. Like any good RPG game–new level, new rules.

So I’m experiencing some turbulence in my life. But that’s okay. Instead of fighting to stand, I’m going to return to my seat and fasten my belt—wait it out. Meanwhile, what I have in tools of fiction dialogue might shift into a mastery of exposition. My short-lined poetry might become long-lined prose (it has already). Even my interests in multicultural genres have been ambushed while outlining ideas of magical realism. I have to remind myself that I haven’t stopped, or even slowed. I am working on a foundation. I might labor and at times feel there’s nothing this instant to show for it. But the foundation that is never visible from the outside is what holds up an empire.

Questions to ask for 2012:

What are you doing to build a foundation?

How are you planning to reinvent yourself to become more relevant and successful today?

What are the tools you are working with? Do you need to add more to your repertoire or use your old ones in a new fashion?

Are your projects in line with your goals? Slow steps in the right direction are better than fast steps towards the wrong one.

Sharif Shakhshir: AA Language Arts, Mount San Antonio. BA English/Creative Writing, University of California Irvine. Poetry Instructor at El Sol Academy in Santa Ana. Jar Prose/Poetry Editor. Graphic Novel Enthusiast. Contact sshakhsh@uci.edu

Ron Carlson is intense.  My workshop with the man was the most hilarious and fucking frightening class I’ve ever taken. The biggest thing that I got from Carlson is a philosophy of looking at a story as characters interacting within an interactive physical environment. An example: every room has a temperature, which may or may not impose itself upon the characters and their fighting/loving/tire-changing.  Most beginning writers fail to keep these environments alive.  If a room is unbearably hot on page 1, then the writer needs to keep reminding his reader that it’s hot through page 10. Using story memory to bring back these conditions and repeated objects (in screen writing these things are called “complications”) makes one’s imagery dynamic. From Carlson, I understood that story memory gives one’s characters agency or antagonism, and most importantly it gives the writer agency.

I think the biggest mistake that I’ve seen from conversations with web cartoonists as well as my experience with fiction is that people do not see imagery as being a part of the writing.  It’s a chore for the sake of decoration or believability, rather than a device for storytelling. However, the writer’s imagery creates subtext (talking about it without talking about it). Imagery makes commentary on your characters or situational changes over time. For example, if a man goes to his elementary school he went to as a child, he will have a different experience as an adult.  The difference matters. You know the whole “Songs of Innocence and Experience” deal.

ph. by Erin Rose

The writer who sees imagery as something he must do to ground his work rather than as an opportunity, lacks proper perspective.  Possessions define characters (Is he a Mac or a PC?).  Possessions also become a part of us–gaining sentimental value so much so that we feel very personal pain if we lose it. I mean, I baby my car.  It’s a gold 1993 Saturn SW2.  My parents were the first owners.  We went on our trips to the beach back when my family was happy to see each other for reasons other than a needed favor. There’s some illogical belief in me that when this car is gone, that the last bit of this old family will be gone as well. Then, what slowly tears at me with every rattle and every worn belt is that GM stopped making parts for my car. This dent-resistant little trooper that I used to race against my friends with old Honda Civics on Pomona streets is slowly falling apart.  And at that point I will feel like I’m throwing away my youth, or what my family used to be. That’s what this item, this scene, this piece of inventory can be if a writer knows an opportunity when he sees it.

Few years back, I’d write some stuff down, dream journal things, and I called it poetry. Somehow, I’d thought poetry was a mess of feelings on a page. Mostly, that it wasn’t creating anything new like free sketching. Poets used the same look, language. So writing a few lines given this medium seemed simple and redeemable.

I like the idea of control because it had stayed with me from my Dantist studies. Control allows one to mediate their appetite for noodles, sex, fame, whatever ring of hell one prefers. I still continue to observe what this lack of control or excess does for the soul. Boethius says it better: “The joy of human happiness is shot through with bitterness; no matter how pleasant it seems when one has it, such happiness cannot be kept when it decides to leave” (1962 Macmillian Pub). He goes on to say, we find happiness not in excess, but in controlled reasoning. Reason allows us to be content with what we have, rather than seek more. Reason is the key to mediation and human joy.

As I became more acquainted with the craft, I found a similar philosophy behind poetry. Poetry is about taking that mess of feelings (the excess) and refining them.  I seize literary device and selection to control the mess on the page. By doing so, something incredible happens. Other people can read it too. The audience gains access into the poet’s writing because it’s no longer a mess. And all the poet can hope for is that the reader doesn’t feel he has wasted his time.

It seems juvenile, but some of my edits are simple, one word. It took me a week to change the line, “she stepped” to “she ran.” Quickly, we notice the differences in tone, in agency, and sometimes these different words allow ourselves to realize how we think, or how we blame. It becomes a self-study. I frequently write about my mom, it comes naturally and it has served as a vehicle to write about myself. I find Boethius’happiness in mediating my emotions towards her and am content in doing so. I must have the most selfish (and luckiest)  job of all, being a poet.

This must have been my first poem. Frui is one of the two defined loves in Dantist study. It is to love someone, not for themselves, but for the source of their creation. (Frui previously appeared in Qarrtsiluni and received the Bret Baldwin HM)

Frui

Mom always loved the rain. She loved the sharp edges of the stones
washed with it. Because she liked things clean.

It cleans every alley, she said.
God must like things clean. She was sure of this

more than the broken zippers
and the washed take-out boxes she saved in the pantry.

She loved to bleed.
I hope she finally sensed God’s cleaning in it.

I purchased: “The Everything Guide to Writing a Novel” by Joyce and Jim Lavene, “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers” by Renni Browne and Dave King,  and “Best-Selling Secrets from Top Agents” by Rick Frishman and Robyn Spizman.

All of which deterred me from the most important thing: writing my story. I suddenly became concerned with who my audience was and how to write query letters. It would ultimately cost me three years before I could forget everything I had read and begin writing.

My first failed attempt at a novel had been untitled. After five months of drafting and a week in Jeju Island for research, I dropped it. There was no “I” actually, the draft dropped itself. It wasn’t going anywhere eventful, it wouldn’t budge.

My second attempt was more successful. I finished the book. It took two years to draft and seven months to write. I sent it over to a few editors my mentor had recommended. They tore it up. Problem 1: I was not talking enough (my 200 pp could have easily been 400). Problem 2: the draft was over-planned.

I decided to start all over. I went back and signed up for an Intermediate Fiction Workshop, meeting twice a week. To progress more quickly, I consulted with the instructor an extra hour each week about my new draft. This one contained the same basic themes as my last attempt but I was starting without a plan or direction. One of the valuable lessons I had learned: “Don’t write something meaningful, let the scholars pull meaning from your work. Just sit down and start to write about real people.” I am now two chapters in after eight weeks.

I guess it took me more than three years to write these two chapters (24 pp). Even now, I wonder what would happen if my third attempt ended up going nowhere. How do I continue to commit myself to such long term projects? I think I persist because my characters have become as real as the world around me. I am not willing to let them go, let their lives go because I am not a good enough writer. I’ll just have to get better.

Beyond our desires of an Active Life and despite the steps we take towards one, the Life of Contemplation is undeniably one of superior form due to the reflection and ability to use high-wisdom in our greatest asset: the rational soul. This rational soul of love and will is so great as it is not infused by semen, but infused by God. To exercise this spiritual self is to be most God-like. As He is our origin, it is to be the most like ourselves.

I am slouched over, an old raisin of a man in the little corner of my room. I do not play much, not nearly as my peers. Instead the joints of my fingers ache in the morning and the right side of my neck becomes unbearably heavy midday. But never have I felt so involved in Life and what I could possibly discover. How could I be judged by the physical context or locale of the body in the world of matter. Rather, I be judged by the strength of my spirit, the shine of my light. My passion to understand the truly real, the world of mysterium.

And this is something I am still raw to, this understanding that applies to the literary realm. The unacceptable use of catachresis in man’s language (the lake of fire). How is that possible as water douses fire and fire dries up river? It may sound absurd, but it does not when describing the mysterium. How do you describe the indescribable with man’s mundane language? One must break the barrier, say there is a place where fire rises from the water, existing with perfect harmony in the heavenly world. You must be able to see that this is possible and envision it in your mind as fire and water carry only their identity and can exist without clash. This applies to Kogawa’s relationship of the Avenues of Silence existing on the Avenues of Speech. I am a firm believer in breaking past Literary Priority and Rules of Decorum, to me, there is no such thing as indescribable.

How can I connect this concept to Arithmetic? Does not the spiritual world also question what man knows in these terms? But then how can there be three in one God. Three does not equal one and one does not equal three; there is no two and one in one and one is not of two and one. IT IS A SCANDAL! And so we must constantly challenge ourselves to go beyond this world and what we know. The lateral world into one of the vertical order, it is our greatest challenge and our greatest adventure. It is the most magnificent mountain we can conquer.

Writing is not to be taken lightly. It is an excruciating task of inner discipline and constant reflection, one of pain and tears. It is a great journey that takes years of life. And like all things, it cannot be carried out alone. I begin my novel with a prayer and as I pour my energy and will into this journey, everything I know and everything my subconscious needs me to know. I may not have my Beatrice but I know that one would surely reveal themselves to me. I feel as though I am Dante, having stepped foot at the gates of Hell, my spiritual self ready to declare hope before I enter. And when I return, I would be worthy to wear the imprint of the crescent moon, having mastered my higher impulses and having conquered the hindrances of the lateral world.

To Professor Chiampi, for your inspiration
and your contagious passion