So dear blog, I am sorry that I have not been around much as of late, but life has been overwhelming. I am in the final days of my last semester at Cal State Northridge and it has been much more difficult and intense than I had expected. All of my papers and projects are turned in. I have three finals still to come this week, but by next weekend I will be done. All that will be left is the stress of waiting for my final grades to come back.
Once all that is done I will be trying to find a way to reengineer my life. I plan to write more (I hope and plan to become prolific!) So expect to see a lot more short fiction posted here. Also, I need to get back down to my fighting weight. I realized that I have put on twenty-five pounds since I went back to school three years ago. So in a few months I want to be nice and trim and maybe even possess a detectable muscle mass!
Also I will be reading more. I can not wait. I have not gotten to read for fun in three years. Three years! I have a whole stack of books I to bite into.
And since Violet and I will finally have some eveing free time, I want to begin the quest for a good coffee shop. I believe in my heart of hearts that somewhere in the greater LA area there simply must be a decent coffee shop. I resolve myself to finding it. So if you have any suggestion, PLEASE COMMENT! I am desperate and need your help.
I know that none of this means anything to you, but sometimes I just like to type. It relaxes me to sit here and type. The way that some writers used to talk about the soothing mechanical clattering of their typewriters, I feel that way about the plastic click of my keyboard keys.
Anyway, once we get through this week you should expect to see much, much more here. A blog updating onslaught that will be unheard of in its veracity and intensity.
So that will be fun. For me anyway.
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Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Y, Eye-Right?
So I have been busy busy busy lately trying to do all of this school stuff (the end is near!) but I thought that you might enjoy reading the below essay. It was part of a writing portfolio that I had to submit in my Senior Seminar class. It is one of those “Why I Write” kind of things. You end up having to write a lot of these as you pass through various writing classes, but I think that I got it about right this time.
BTW, I know that just thinking that you might find this interesting is so beyond the average sort of egomania as to be broaching on utter self-delusion, but look, let’s be honest, it is not easy to be generating content all the time for this blog so sometimes I have to double-dip. So why don’t you just not complain so much, huh? Why don’t we try that? Otherwise I’m going to have to put you in a timeout.
Okay, anyway, below is an essay explaining why I write.
Enjoy.
*************
Y, Eye-Right?
By James Bezerra
Attempting to answer the question of why I write always launches me into a kind of existential crisis. Something about my rural upbringing and my Father’s Calvinistic work ethic always makes me think that when people start to wax poetic about the internal muse that they’re really just bloviating all over the place. Attempting to set aside my own issues, I will set sail off into that existential vortex.
First – and this is the truest thing that I will end up saying in this whole paper – I write because I can’t not. My brain is so cluttered with words that they are always banging into one another, like the steel balls of a desk-top Newton’s Cradle. I love words and I love language. However that is not all that my brain is cluttered with. Certain images stick there too and I find myself always trying to describe the images stuck in there with the words stuck in there. I have been carrying little notebooks in my back pocket since I was a boy and when I go back to look through them I find that I have never really written anything in them, but rather they are just scrapbooks of words and phrases. Things that made the inside of my head glow with a weird light. These notebooks are a kind of intellectual and verbal savings account. These notebooks are also where my process really starts, but more on that later.
For now, the truth is that if I didn’t write, I wouldn’t have any outlet for the pressure of all of the language building up inside my skull. It is important to make the distinction here that I seldom dream of stories. First I dream the language. I think that this is the primary reason that I consider myself a writer rather than a novelist or a playwright or a screenwriter. The medium is not particularly important to me. In fact, once the language can be formed into a story, I often have the ability to channel it into a particular form. I have even, whilst bloviating all over someone, said that, “The story chooses its medium.” This should be explained. Briefly.
I have been writing narrative fiction since I was a boy, but as a teenager I started writing plays. After high school I worked as a journalist and I think those experiences explain why dialogue is generally very important in most of my writing. It allows the art - such as it is - to hop the borders of form and I have always taken a lot of pride in that. I like that I can mold the writing into whatever form is required. I have no interest in simply being one thing. I think that this is part of that Calvinistic work ethic. If I’m going to be self-indulgent (which part of my brain thinks all art is) at the very least I can cover as many bases as possible. So I am an award-winning playwright, a former professional journalist, a produced screenwriter and a published short story writer. And, obviously, a very fancy person all around.
There is another reason, though, why I have tried to spread myself across the spectrum; it’s simply that I was never told not to. I didn’t receive any formal creative writing instruction until the Spring of 2008. By that time I had already found myself as a writer, albeit a somewhat schizophrenic one. I think that this is apparent in my writing and it is both a blessing and a curse. I think that all that time writing out in the wild, beyond the safe confines of school, allowed me to develop my own voice in a way that workshops might have squashed. However, it also means that I am deficient in some ways that my peers are not. For instance, since I don’t dream in stories, I often feel like my plots are contrived conveyances for language. I realize that I have tried to compensate for that in school by crafting meticulous and intricate narrative structures. Sometimes I wish that I just dreamed in plot. It would make life easier.
But what does this all have to do with why I write?
It simply makes the point that words are the key. Any single piece of my writing generally begins with words scrawled quickly in one of my little notebooks. Eventually the words start to cling together like sticky electrons and then those phrases start to stick together and form misshapen atoms and eventually I realize that this is something! And then I say to myself, What the hell am I going to do with the phrase ‘Deftron Goat’?
Luckily though, my influences tend to run toward the experimental. I was sixteen when I happened across a copy of Steven Erickson’s novel “Tours of the Black Clock” and I remember reading it in the back of the family van as we drove across the desolation of the Nevada desert. That book blew my mind off its hinges. It was a kind of experiment of form and language that I had never seen before. On the back of that book there were blurbs from both Thomas Pynchon and Tom Robbins. At the time I didn’t know who they were, but I made sure to find out. It was in this way that I learned about what I consider to be my secret family tree. Eventually I found Jonathan Lethem and Aimee Bender. I read every crazy writer that I could get my hands on (there were times when I made the three hour drive to book stores in San Francisco because I didn’t exactly know what I was looking for, but I knew that I couldn’t find it at my local mall outside of Fresno) and while I didn’t try to emulate them, they gave me the support to write however I wanted. When I find myself stuck staring at a blank white page and a mockingly blinking cursor (I first-draft on a computer) I always repeat that to myself: write how you want. As a writer, I am an autodidact, though I had to come back to college to learn that word.
As a creative writing student I have been fleshed out as a professional. I have been given the tools to write effectively. My first semester I was overjoyed to learn terms like: circularity, thumbnail sketch, ergodic, discursive. I remember thinking to myself, these things have names!
Speaking of circularity: why do I write? If we have to get all existential about it, I suppose that I write because it is a kind of active exploration, for me at least. It is part a game of chess, it is part a kind of engineering, it is part a kind of grand and elaborate lie. Writing well means being an expert on everything and it just so happens that everything is exactly what I’m interested in. There is simply no aspect of existence that can’t be contemplated and maybe even understood, through the act of writing. I have discovered that it is through writing that I view the world.
All of this is all fine and good, but the reality is that I was recently rejected by the very best MFA creative writing programs in the country and so the question of why I write has come to the forefront of my actual life as a person. What I should be asking myself is why the hell do I write? Why didn’t I major in business? The answer, of course, is that I had no choice; there was nothing else that I wanted. So in a very real way I am about to set sail back out into the wild where I learned to write, once again without the protection of school and the cozy classes and mandatory assignments. The question of why I write is really a very practical question in my life right now. I know that life would probably be easier if this was not my dream, if I had some other dream. However, I write because I do. There is really no better or more honest explanation. It simply is.
.
.
.
.
BTW, I know that just thinking that you might find this interesting is so beyond the average sort of egomania as to be broaching on utter self-delusion, but look, let’s be honest, it is not easy to be generating content all the time for this blog so sometimes I have to double-dip. So why don’t you just not complain so much, huh? Why don’t we try that? Otherwise I’m going to have to put you in a timeout.
Okay, anyway, below is an essay explaining why I write.
Enjoy.
*************
Y, Eye-Right?
By James Bezerra
Attempting to answer the question of why I write always launches me into a kind of existential crisis. Something about my rural upbringing and my Father’s Calvinistic work ethic always makes me think that when people start to wax poetic about the internal muse that they’re really just bloviating all over the place. Attempting to set aside my own issues, I will set sail off into that existential vortex.
First – and this is the truest thing that I will end up saying in this whole paper – I write because I can’t not. My brain is so cluttered with words that they are always banging into one another, like the steel balls of a desk-top Newton’s Cradle. I love words and I love language. However that is not all that my brain is cluttered with. Certain images stick there too and I find myself always trying to describe the images stuck in there with the words stuck in there. I have been carrying little notebooks in my back pocket since I was a boy and when I go back to look through them I find that I have never really written anything in them, but rather they are just scrapbooks of words and phrases. Things that made the inside of my head glow with a weird light. These notebooks are a kind of intellectual and verbal savings account. These notebooks are also where my process really starts, but more on that later.
For now, the truth is that if I didn’t write, I wouldn’t have any outlet for the pressure of all of the language building up inside my skull. It is important to make the distinction here that I seldom dream of stories. First I dream the language. I think that this is the primary reason that I consider myself a writer rather than a novelist or a playwright or a screenwriter. The medium is not particularly important to me. In fact, once the language can be formed into a story, I often have the ability to channel it into a particular form. I have even, whilst bloviating all over someone, said that, “The story chooses its medium.” This should be explained. Briefly.
I have been writing narrative fiction since I was a boy, but as a teenager I started writing plays. After high school I worked as a journalist and I think those experiences explain why dialogue is generally very important in most of my writing. It allows the art - such as it is - to hop the borders of form and I have always taken a lot of pride in that. I like that I can mold the writing into whatever form is required. I have no interest in simply being one thing. I think that this is part of that Calvinistic work ethic. If I’m going to be self-indulgent (which part of my brain thinks all art is) at the very least I can cover as many bases as possible. So I am an award-winning playwright, a former professional journalist, a produced screenwriter and a published short story writer. And, obviously, a very fancy person all around.
There is another reason, though, why I have tried to spread myself across the spectrum; it’s simply that I was never told not to. I didn’t receive any formal creative writing instruction until the Spring of 2008. By that time I had already found myself as a writer, albeit a somewhat schizophrenic one. I think that this is apparent in my writing and it is both a blessing and a curse. I think that all that time writing out in the wild, beyond the safe confines of school, allowed me to develop my own voice in a way that workshops might have squashed. However, it also means that I am deficient in some ways that my peers are not. For instance, since I don’t dream in stories, I often feel like my plots are contrived conveyances for language. I realize that I have tried to compensate for that in school by crafting meticulous and intricate narrative structures. Sometimes I wish that I just dreamed in plot. It would make life easier.
But what does this all have to do with why I write?
It simply makes the point that words are the key. Any single piece of my writing generally begins with words scrawled quickly in one of my little notebooks. Eventually the words start to cling together like sticky electrons and then those phrases start to stick together and form misshapen atoms and eventually I realize that this is something! And then I say to myself, What the hell am I going to do with the phrase ‘Deftron Goat’?
Luckily though, my influences tend to run toward the experimental. I was sixteen when I happened across a copy of Steven Erickson’s novel “Tours of the Black Clock” and I remember reading it in the back of the family van as we drove across the desolation of the Nevada desert. That book blew my mind off its hinges. It was a kind of experiment of form and language that I had never seen before. On the back of that book there were blurbs from both Thomas Pynchon and Tom Robbins. At the time I didn’t know who they were, but I made sure to find out. It was in this way that I learned about what I consider to be my secret family tree. Eventually I found Jonathan Lethem and Aimee Bender. I read every crazy writer that I could get my hands on (there were times when I made the three hour drive to book stores in San Francisco because I didn’t exactly know what I was looking for, but I knew that I couldn’t find it at my local mall outside of Fresno) and while I didn’t try to emulate them, they gave me the support to write however I wanted. When I find myself stuck staring at a blank white page and a mockingly blinking cursor (I first-draft on a computer) I always repeat that to myself: write how you want. As a writer, I am an autodidact, though I had to come back to college to learn that word.
As a creative writing student I have been fleshed out as a professional. I have been given the tools to write effectively. My first semester I was overjoyed to learn terms like: circularity, thumbnail sketch, ergodic, discursive. I remember thinking to myself, these things have names!
Speaking of circularity: why do I write? If we have to get all existential about it, I suppose that I write because it is a kind of active exploration, for me at least. It is part a game of chess, it is part a kind of engineering, it is part a kind of grand and elaborate lie. Writing well means being an expert on everything and it just so happens that everything is exactly what I’m interested in. There is simply no aspect of existence that can’t be contemplated and maybe even understood, through the act of writing. I have discovered that it is through writing that I view the world.
All of this is all fine and good, but the reality is that I was recently rejected by the very best MFA creative writing programs in the country and so the question of why I write has come to the forefront of my actual life as a person. What I should be asking myself is why the hell do I write? Why didn’t I major in business? The answer, of course, is that I had no choice; there was nothing else that I wanted. So in a very real way I am about to set sail back out into the wild where I learned to write, once again without the protection of school and the cozy classes and mandatory assignments. The question of why I write is really a very practical question in my life right now. I know that life would probably be easier if this was not my dream, if I had some other dream. However, I write because I do. There is really no better or more honest explanation. It simply is.
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Monday, May 3, 2010
Blogger's Guilt.
Oh dear blog! I am so sorry. It has been so long since I have been able to see you and to touch you. I miss ou very much. I long to write and rant on your stark white pages, but life has not allowed us to be together as of late. My life has gotten in the way of our being together. Basically I am in finals crunch time right now and being that I am an English major, that means that I am writing paper after paper after paper, none of them any fun. But I will be able to return to you soon. For now, please enjoy this picture of Scarlett Johansson, who is madly in love with me and very sad that I haven’t been updating.
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Tuesday, April 20, 2010
You Are Welcome.
So if you have any interest in going back to college and majoring in Creative Writing, there are some things that you need to know. I am not going to try to tell you about it all, but what I have done for you is start to make you a crib sheet for understanding what the hell everybody is talking about. It is not as bad as law school or anything, but it is significantly more subjective.
The list below is wildly incomplete, but what I have tried to do is translate a word or phrase that you might hear in an English or Creative Writing class and give you the actual meaning.
A special thanks to Chris P. who unwittingly has helped compile this list (Chris is a man among men, a champion among winners. He created “English Department Buzz Word Bingo” which is exactly what it sounds like. We play it during class).
So onward to the translation!
What we say = What we mean
“Thumbnail sketch” = A quick physical description of a character.
“Dialogue” = When people talk.
“Conflation” = Confusion.
“Plot” = The part that was like a movie.
“Exposition” = Boring.
“Poetic” = Pretty-sounding words.
“Motif” = Something that happens a lot, as in, “I like saying ‘motif’. Motif!”
“Deconstruction” = “I have had a Critical Theories of Literature class.”
“Autobiographical” = “I am too lazy/self-absorbed to write about anything but myself.”
“Fragmented Narrative” = “I ran out of time before class to finish writing this.”
“Theme” = “What I really want you to know about what I think about stuff.”
“Diction” = The words in this story.
“… Hegelian …” = “I’m an asshole.” (Anyone who ever invokes Hegel is an asshole).
“I’m a grad student.” = “I’m probably an asshole”
“(Your story) is structurally unfit.” = “I am an asshole with both a superiority and inferiority complex.”
“I’m not making a value judgment …” = “I am totally judging you right now.”
“Nouveau riche” = “I took a class where we had to read The Great Gatsby.”
“Tertiary Removal” = “I know lots of big words about stuff.”
“Authenticity” = “Why don’t you write like Juno Diaz?”
As I said, this is an incomplete glossary. I will work on it some more for you.
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.
The list below is wildly incomplete, but what I have tried to do is translate a word or phrase that you might hear in an English or Creative Writing class and give you the actual meaning.
A special thanks to Chris P. who unwittingly has helped compile this list (Chris is a man among men, a champion among winners. He created “English Department Buzz Word Bingo” which is exactly what it sounds like. We play it during class).
So onward to the translation!
What we say = What we mean
“Thumbnail sketch” = A quick physical description of a character.
“Dialogue” = When people talk.
“Conflation” = Confusion.
“Plot” = The part that was like a movie.
“Exposition” = Boring.
“Poetic” = Pretty-sounding words.
“Motif” = Something that happens a lot, as in, “I like saying ‘motif’. Motif!”
“Deconstruction” = “I have had a Critical Theories of Literature class.”
“Autobiographical” = “I am too lazy/self-absorbed to write about anything but myself.”
“Fragmented Narrative” = “I ran out of time before class to finish writing this.”
“Theme” = “What I really want you to know about what I think about stuff.”
“Diction” = The words in this story.
“… Hegelian …” = “I’m an asshole.” (Anyone who ever invokes Hegel is an asshole).
“I’m a grad student.” = “I’m probably an asshole”
“(Your story) is structurally unfit.” = “I am an asshole with both a superiority and inferiority complex.”
“I’m not making a value judgment …” = “I am totally judging you right now.”
“Nouveau riche” = “I took a class where we had to read The Great Gatsby.”
“Tertiary Removal” = “I know lots of big words about stuff.”
“Authenticity” = “Why don’t you write like Juno Diaz?”
As I said, this is an incomplete glossary. I will work on it some more for you.
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Get Thee Short Story to a Nunnery!
So today in my Senior Seminar writing class I had a story workshopped. For the uninitiated, workshop is basically a dissection of o piece of your own work. Last week I submitted a story to the class and (presumably) they all read it and today they all talked about it in front of me. They talked about the strengths and the weaknesses and what I can change or fix. It can be an excruciating experience and often is, however I have generally been lucky enough to have good groups of people workshop me.
So my story was well-received, but that’s not really what I want to tell you about.
What I want to tell you abut is the fact that there is a nun in my class. That is not unusual in and of itself. This being the twenty-first century it isn’t really even that weird. She is a skilled writer and I think that she has a lot of potential and I actually like her quite a lot.
When I turned in the story last week I did it with a little trepidation because while the story was not dirty it had some colorful language and I was worried that she might look at me funny afterword and – you know – call the Pope or something (though he has bigger problems right now).
So I got to class today and she told me that she just loved the story and she thought that it was very funny (it was supposed to be, BTW) and that not only did she enjoy reading it, but she read some parts of it to her sister nuns
Yes. That is correct.
Nuns were reading my writing to each other, presumably in a nunnery or some such place.
I just love that. It makes me all warm and tingly inside because I think that it is the funniest thing.
I just wanted to share that with you.
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.
.
.
.
So my story was well-received, but that’s not really what I want to tell you about.
What I want to tell you abut is the fact that there is a nun in my class. That is not unusual in and of itself. This being the twenty-first century it isn’t really even that weird. She is a skilled writer and I think that she has a lot of potential and I actually like her quite a lot.
When I turned in the story last week I did it with a little trepidation because while the story was not dirty it had some colorful language and I was worried that she might look at me funny afterword and – you know – call the Pope or something (though he has bigger problems right now).
So I got to class today and she told me that she just loved the story and she thought that it was very funny (it was supposed to be, BTW) and that not only did she enjoy reading it, but she read some parts of it to her sister nuns
Yes. That is correct.
Nuns were reading my writing to each other, presumably in a nunnery or some such place.
I just love that. It makes me all warm and tingly inside because I think that it is the funniest thing.
I just wanted to share that with you.
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