Work Ethic

I am lazy. 

Writing is hard work, and I make it harder by avoiding it and putting it off. I wait for inspiration like I wait to win the lottery: hopeful that something good will happen without ever taking action(including never buying a ticket). 

But inspiration doesn’t strike like lighting. It doesn’t call attention to itself. It’s tiny, like the turn of a phrase. It’s the thing you glance at, then have to look again. It’s a small, surprising detail, and it doesn’t wait for you to sit and write it down. It can be gone before you even catch it, a fleeting moment of something that flees before you know to reach for it.

I have let countless moments of inspiration slip away through sheer laziness. Often, I make a mental note to make note of it later, but after several hours, all I remember is that I was supposed to remember something. Even worse, I remember the something, but not the spark of it: the momentary understanding of why it is interesting or worth exploring. The metaphor that can be mined, the deeper realization behind it. Suddenly, inspiration sits like a lump in the form of a word, an image, an event, a simile.

Because I’m lazy.

My laziness manifests itself in my inability to start something new. I find it much easier to obsess over pieces that are several years old, rehashed to the point of being blind and deaf to the big picture of it. I dig in so deep to the tiny things that the large gets lost. I am never finished with anything. When I should be writing something new, I am going back over the same 20 poems, the same 20 short stories that I’ve clung to. 

Once every two months, a new short piece emerges from the haze of sloth that surrounds me. It, too, will never be done. It will weather over time under my endless revisions, small pieces getting chipped away until the essence of the thing is lost to me.

My longer projects, however, sit untouched. Their revision is far too big a task to be tackled in one or two sittings, and therefore, I avoid them. A screenplay and a novel percolate constantly, and new notes are added for background, but no structure is considered, no new prose is written.

All of this because I’m a lazy asshole.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got excuses: Teaching and grading, reading endless entries for this magazine, being a mentor, conducting interviews, working a menial job, reading stories at a nursing home, exhaustion. It all sounds good until I consider all the time I’ve given to the things that aren’t included in the list above: hours in the office chatting with coworkers, evenings and nights spent out with friends, evenings and nights spent in with friends, hours-long skype conversations, endless Youtube spirals, Netflix and television viewing. 

There are always reasons we can give to not get work done. But if we’re serious about writing, we’re the people who look at both those lists as, ultimately, time wasted. Writing is the priority. It has to be. If it isn’t, there are plenty of dedicated people who will make different choices of what to do with their time, and they are the ones who will be worth reading.

So, if you’re lazy like me, consider that there are really two options: Either develop some self-discipline, quickly, or start looking for a new career. If you need me, I’ll be desperately scrambling to make better use of my time.

-Jake Little, Managing Editor

A Season For Arrogance

So Christmas is over. Time to exchange the gifts that you hated, put the lights and decorations in storage, and put away your tense smile until the next time you have to sit through a meal with your relatives. Think of the thank you notes you have to write now.

When I was younger, I used to write stories for my relatives. Terrible stories. The sort that were awkward for everyone to read, because they obviously featured me as the protagonist getting everything I wanted: scoring the winning goal in the Stanley Cup Finals, punching a guy in the face, and impressing numerous ladies. Think of the embarrassment I have to live with now. More importantly, think of the hubris it took to think everyone else wanted to read something I had written about myself.

               Perhaps this is just the mindset of a child. But I think recently, I’d argue something different: this must be the mindset of a writer. Perhaps there’s a little more self-awareness now, but I’m still writing these days, still trying to get good enough that others will be interested in reading what I put on paper. I’d like to say this goal is realistic. That is my hubris speaking. I’ve cultivated this confidence, ignoring all evidence that indicates this will never happen for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly aware that I need to get better, but my madness may well be the certainty that I will get better.

               Ultimately, this is the belief that all artists must cultivate. It can be bleak and terrifying to attempt this. There’s no one path to success. Some people achieve their goals as early as their twenties. Others continue to work in anonymity for much longer, somehow willing themselves to spend another weekend in, working on their manuscript’s 30^th draft.

Forget relatives. Christmas is a time to inflict another year of goals on yourself. It’s another year of questions: What are you doing with yourself these days? You still writing? When are we going to see this book in print? Do people from this century still write poetry?

               'Tis the season for the gritting of teeth and getting through.Tis the season for another year of horrible, misguided hubris. Tis the season for believing your work is worth it.

"People don't forget what you tell em."

There's no use trying to hide it: my life is all over my writing. I dress my poems up in clothes that reek of me. A friend reading my fiction will eventually come to a page (more sooner than later) and say, "Hey! This is me!"

I'm a terrible liar. I'm sorry. And I'm not. 

I begin writing with what I know. I keep a notepad in my back pocket and every day I jot images and lines. There are pages of dialog in a notebook from a conversation I had with a homeless man at the park down the street from my old neighborhood. My imagination appreciates the head start memories give it. Each project is like a relay race. Once the memories run their laps (with enough discipline) my imagination kicks in, ready for the baton pass, warmed up to continue the course.

That homeless man I mentioned just now, his name is Frank, and we met entirely by coincidence. I just happened to be at the bench he was at the day before, where he left his book. He didn't mind me taking down our whole conversation once we got started. He even told me that I dropped my pen when it fell and I reached for another so as not to miss anything . I transcribed the conversation knowing it would be difficult to write a piece about a homeless person because I have never been there and I don't want to write a cliché "dirty, smelly man in baggy, tattered clothing mumbling nonsense" type of character. I want him to come through how I got to see him.

In a TED talk about humanity, my former professor Chris Abani explained how, in order for us to be human, people have to reflect our humanity back at us; we must see it in each other. He referred to this philosophy as "Ubunto".  Abani said that there is no way for us to be human without other humans.

This is what I know about Frank: he smokes cigarette butts to the filter. Even though he drinks his beer from a plastic bottle he keeps a lemon to peel and squeeze the juice into. He carries a book on Christianity though he knows most people don't like to hear about religion. Frank wanted to be a marriage counselor when he was nineteen.

I believe art, the written word in particular, works along the lines of "Ubunto". Stories should give the reader some reflection of themselves when they read them. This is why I write my characters as human as possible. I get as close to them as I can. I write what I know then I begin to explore what I don't yet understand. What I don't understand, at first, is what pulls at me to write what I write, though I know there is something significant in the fact that two totally different men are able to share words for a moment in their lives.

It's been a few days since I met Frank and I've gone through many drafts of story I can put him in. I keep revising and passing the baton from memory to imagination. I won't stop until Frank comes across the page as he did when he dropped the kickstand on his mountain bike and took a seat across from me. 

-Michael Torres, Operations Manager and Poetry Editor at Blue Earth Review

Can I Have That?

A few months ago, I’m at an Indian restaurant with my friend Jason. We’re eating curry and paneer and naan. He’s smelling each dish, each forkful before he takes a bite because he literally smells everything. And I mean everything: when we’re at my apartment weeks later, he’ll smell the blanket he’s wrapped in; he’ll smell the pillow he leans against on the couch. At the restaurant, he declares, between sniffs, “My blood is going to run turmeric.” I laugh. Then, thinking how great the word turmeric sounds —the way you bounce off the t quickly just to get caught in the u— ask, “Can I have that?”

The degree to which Jason loves scent, I love sound. I think this is how I fell in love with writing. When I was a little girl, never quite the average kid, I went through a phase in which I said, almost exclusively, manure. I loved its sound. The way its syllables rolled around like marbles in my mouth. The shocked looks I received after it had rolled out from between my lips. I went through a similar anus phase.

But really, I’d like to use this post to discuss what we take from the people/world around us—whether it’s a single word: manure, or an image: a vein filled with spice.

Because I write, and I think this is true of a lot of people who write, there are two things you have to accept of me: one, nothing is sacred; and two, everything is sacred.

One: Nothing is Sacred

If it happened, if you said it, it’s fair game. Sorry.

Lissa, one of our Blue Earth Review editors, recently wrote a piece on this blog about people requesting (er, “offering”) topics for your writing. Similarly frustrating, what happens when a friend/a family member declares a topic off-limits? How do you write about people you care about honestly without hurting or insulting them in some way? Having taken nonfiction this year for the first time in my life, these felt like concerns I had to face. Unlike with fiction, or even with poetry, I couldn’t claim the character was only loosely based off of someone. These were real people on the page, no edits, no amalgamations.

Ann Lamott once wrote, “You own everything that’s happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

Ms. Lamott has a point. When it comes to writing, what you are placing gingerly on the page is from your life experience, and to hell with pleasing everyone. Not possible. Never possible. If it’s honest, if it sounds real nice aloud, I say success!

So, no, nothing is sacred, nothing is off-limits. Not sorry.

Two: Everything is Sacred

Because everything in life is contradiction, why should writing be any different? Beyond sound, what I love most about writing is how the small, the seemingly mundane daily moments become sacred through the written word.

About a month ago, I’m at a local organic shop, looking through the shelves. A round woman with short brown hair comes over to help me. She’s the owner, or one of them. She lists the items they carry: serenity tea, intensity tea, shampoo with no sulfides or parabens, essential oils, organic perfume. Then, she tells me, they do not carry nail polish. Never nail polish. She tells me, we breathe through our nails, did I know? I’m thinking, this lovely stranger has no idea she’s speaking poetry. I’m thinking, I cannot forget a word she says. Is it any surprise she and her nail breathing end up in a nonfiction essay of mine a week or two later? Somehow, against all odds, she has made nail polish and fingernails and a stranger at a small local shop sacred.

And my friend Jason, happily smelling each item on his plate, Jason has made a spice, such a small thing, sacred to me through his poetry of sound and image.

My point? Borrow freely. Ask, “Can I have that?” Yell, “I’m taking that!” Inspiration is everywhere— the little shop on the corner, your good friend, a new word, a bowl of curry. No limits. And that is what is beautiful about writing.

-Debbie Ernie, Poetry Editor at Blue Earth Review

NO. 2 With a Pencil

What do you do when your computer screen goes blue? I’m talking error-death-apocalypse blue. I imagine if you had lots of money (I like money) you’d go out and buy a new computer, probably something real nice, right? Just drop a stack on a mac or something.

Well this is my blog post, so gather round, this is what I did: I said, F that computer I’m writing on paper. I’m writing on paper and not with a pen. We’re talking cubby-hole, desks with lids, elementary school throwback. We’re talking Ticonderoga and Mirado Black Warrior No. 2’s.

And there is a reason I feel the need to share this – any fellow writers out there – it is a very therapeutic and rewarding ritual. There is something about the whole process. It slows everything down, you’re given time to think about each word, each sentence. Your brain sends the thoughts down through your arm and moves your hand one letter at a time.

With a pencil, compared to a pen, there is a texture, a sensation to the scratching of graphite against the page. And if you are somebody like me, who has been punching at keys for years, if this has always been your writing process, the switch to pencil is a change that you actually sense.

A quick internet search will reveal many great writers who throughout history have chosen to sharpen the wooden writing utensil and scrape their words onto paper. Truman Capote preferred a pencil while he lay on his tummy and wrote, Hemmingway carried a pencil to jot down his notes and ideas, it is rumored John Steinbeck went through as many as 60 cedar pencils in a day (I suspect he didn’t have a sharpener), and Henry David Thoreau was at one time touted as the nation’s best manufacturer of pencils. Now granted those mentioned never had the option or luxury of using a computer, but their accomplishments are undeniable and their works are eternally crystalized in the literary canon.

I would recommend, the next time you need to get a piece of writing started, instead of sitting down in front of that dreaded Microsoft Word white page, grab a notebook and a trusty pencil. You may be surprised by the simple switch. You may be happily surprised by how the different practice will jog your brain, uncover new ideas, and rewire your perceptions on the whole concept of the writing process.

Even if it is just the rough draft or a way to get your first thoughts down on the page, moving your writing hand around and etching each letter and every word, compiling sentences piece by piece, assembling a story, poem , or essay line by line will bring you in to a harmony with your craft. What you think and what you write will be in accord, a solid unity of thought and practice.

Try it. Best of luck. Best wishes.
-Dennis Scott Herbert, Fiction Editor Blue Earth Review