The Writing Life!

Seems that may of us were published in The Writing Life. I thought it would be fun to hear thoughts/ideas on what we wrote. Hopefully it doesn't suck :p

Here's my non-fiction piece.

Writer's Block

I have yet to find my place in the writing world. At twenty, I assume this is normal. Write what you know is the mantra espoused by every writing teacher I have worked with. They don't seem to realize that what I know is greatly affected by what I do not know. An unfortunate thought to barter with when betting your livelihood on one-upping fellow writers in the eyes of a publisher or a professor.

Writing came to me by accident. During my freshman year of college, I wrote a five-page autobiographical essay for an English professor. I spent a total of an hour and change on the paper, lying my way through the uninteresting parts. In retrospect, I assume she wanted the paper to be 'true', but I was not yet privy to the rules and regulations of creative non-fiction. Upon the essay's return, I nonchalantly turned toward the expected meaty comments on the paper. I had always been a decent writer; my grammar was correct, and I was pretty sure my spell check worked, so I arrogantly assumed an A. The A, the Oscar of the academic world, was handed to me on a platter chiseled with more than a 'good job' or 'neat-o vocabulary choices'.

"This is the best student essay I have ever read."

The comment glared at me. I read it over and over again, relishing the slick red ink gracing my masterpiece. If it had lips, I would have kissed it. The professor had not just boosted my confidence, she had opened a door to furious ego masturbation: I was the best at something.

Several English literature and creative writing courses later, I am slowly coming to terms with the small chance that I am not, in fact, the best student essayist. I may get As on my work or win scholarships for especially poignant pieces, but I am by no means the best. Arrogance and self-absorbedness aside, I have been unwilling to take the plunge and fully accept this notion. Having counterfeited the confidence of my idols for so long, I found a spark of genuine self-assuredness in that comment. Granted, I took that confidence to the extreme—everyone makes mistakes. It didn't really hurt anyone but me in the end, though, because I focused so much on being Kerouac, Sedaris, Lewis, and Adams that my writing became a product of what I wanted to know, not what I knew.

When I look at the pieces I have written over the past four years, I sigh in relief. At least my writing is growing. The greatest fear of any artist is that their work will become stagnant and cliché; in this sense, I am lucky. I haven't experienced enough life to be shoved in a box, labeled, and sorted. All too often that's what happens with writers—they become a victim of their genre. I'd much rather float on a cloud of creative freedom, plucking through the idiosyncrasies of life and transplanting them to an eternal medium. If anything, I'm keeping a record of a grammar conscious twenty-something in the twenty-first century. That in itself should guarantee me a Pulitzer.

Short story?

I don't know if we're allowed to post short stories, but since I have no new poems that I like, here is an excerpt from one of my short stories. And maybe I'll post more later?


For the Boy in the Photograph

          In Dalat, the only people still roaming the streets at one in the morning aren’t prostitutes waiting for potential clients or junkies looking for a fix.
          No, in Dalat, one of the two people still awake at one in the morning is a tiny woman preparing for business on a curbed, uneven sidewalk on the corner of Duy Tân and Minh Mạng. Despite her dark, woolen coat and her lumpy, gray scarf, she shivers as a sly sliver of brutally cold wind slips through her armor of clothing. Under the towering streetlamps, partially dimmed by the drifting fog, she crouches to straighten three plastic tables the color of over-chewed bubblegum. She lines matching colored chairs along the edges of the row, four chairs to each table. All her plastic furniture neat and orderly, the woman sits by a large tin pot atop a small clay stove and begins to stir the brew with a ladle. The pot is filled to the brim with steaming soymilk, perfect for warming the stomach on this toe-freezing night. Apparently satisfied that everything is ready, she leans back in her uncomfortable chair and waits patiently for her first customer.
          The other person still awake at this hour is me, the awaited customer.
          The woman smiles at me, her crooked front teeth illuminating her weary face. I stroll towards her and pull out a chair, careful not to knock anything out of place.
          “One glass, please.”
          She nods. Lifting a tall glass from her tray of empty glasses, she holds it close to the pot. She tips her ladle over the mouth, creating a waterfall of soymilk. The sound of the warm liquid crashing onto the surface seems loud in the middle of the empty night.
          While it is natural for everyone to be asleep at 1 AM in the morning, I can’t sleep. It is 11 AM, yesterday, in California: home.


Good luck on the rest of your finals and have a wonderful break!

Green is the new Black

We're forward thinking,
economists of a new millennium,
selling hymns and psalms on
polyester t-shirts, 2-for-1
specials with complimentary
plastic bags, stained
with smiley faced suns
and neon flowers hugging trees.

Taking your welcomes

Stuffed faces with eyes bigger

Than their guilt forget to thank whoever for the diseases the pilgrims brought.

Rape and pillage have no place in poems,

Ghostly men having ghastly children.

We all eat, eat, eat.

Feed, feed, feed.

Grace your tables and face your partners,

Drink, drink, drink.

I used to wonder why we had to tell everyone what

we were thankful for. We already know:

Uncle Paul thanks business

Uncle Saul thanks his mistress

And Uncle Sammy thanks me.

Does dry turkey mean bad intentions?

I act like it's Pesach and keep the door open

and wine in his glass. Was he there

when the women were piled upon

like loose footballs?

Welcome

Welcome everyone and welcome myself! Good writing to all of you.

David

Welcome to the blog!

Hi all-

Welcome to the new and improved poetry blog for SJSU poets!

You're probably here because you took Soldofsky's Engl 131 course in the spring. The blog was such a great way to read the poems of colleagues, and get great feedback, that I decided to keep it going.

Post away friends!


Your quintessential liberal,

Amber