Write What You Know, or Not

Donald Maas says you should write what you know. Natalie Goldberg doesn't think it's a good idea to write what you know. Donald admits that the writing what you know has a tendency to produce unexciting protagonists, settings that can put you to sleep, and plot lines nobody wants to read. Natalie suggests that we think about how little we know before concluding we should know what we write. Her point is that writing what you know severely limits the field of what you can write. Furthermore, she maintains the reason we have imaginations is in order to write what we don't know.

Donald maintains writing what you know doesn't mean you have to record everything that is plain and usual. A person should draw upon their experience in order to make the story personal, passionate, and true.

This debate of writing what you know versus not writing what you know comes up relative to me in writing about Alejandro. I really don't know about Alejandro, per se. I was never an undocumented immigrant, I don't know Spanish, I was never a thespian. On the other hand, I have an imagination, and I read of a girl going through the dust bowl during the depression in Oklahoma who I thought was in a situation that presented enough of an analog to what an undocumented immigrant boy like Alejandro might experience. Maybe that's cheating. I don't know. Anyway, that was the way I was going about it.

Donald says writing what you know means writing what you see differently, what you feel profoundly and know that it's important for the rest of us to understand. He maintains none of us need to have lived a life of merit or through a newsworthy phase, of sorts. We only need our own unique outlook and the will to write with a new purpose. Natalie says to lose control when you write. To write such things as what you're not thinking of it and what you don't remember. She contends if you get out of your box and do some exploration of a new place you will be able to find the hidden, the extravagant, and the mysterious life of a wild mind.

After Taking up the Pen and Ink

It seems a person must proceed with a degree of optimism and confidence even in the face of great, perhaps impossible, challenges. Well, if such a person doesn't so proceed, it can mean not proceeding at all, becoming so discouraged that they can't go on.

How does a sixty-two-year-old English-speaking white man (me) capture the voice, the setting, and circumstances of a fourteen-year-old Latino boy (Alejandro) in America? It takes a considerable amount of conceit to even make the attempt , although, perhaps, I wasn't smart enough to apprehend just how much moxie it would take. Yet that is precisely what I've been doing for several months now, writing a manuscript that I am around 220 pages into about Alejandro, a boy who is here in the United States with his parents, and none of them, not him or his parents, have legal documents to be here. They are illegal immigrants.

Now, it seems being in the place I'm at, as I try to tie things up into a climax and a tight conclusion for the novel, this project becomes more dicey than ever. My fellow critiquers, especially one in particular, raises new and bigger red flags of its difficulty to speak for this culture, this situation. Caution! Proceed at your own risk. Danger ahead.

This friend has been to a recent writer's convention and attended a panel that discussed this very issue, writing about Latinos. So, through him, I become more and more aware of the sensitivities in taking this on. The irony is that the very people who live in such circumstances --- undocumented immigrants --- usually don't have an opportunity to write for or speak for themselves because of their situation: trying to lie low and survive in a culture and society that views them as filthy lawbreakers, worthy of deportation and not much more. Some even characterize them as terrorists and invaders of this country. It is partly from such a perspective, recognizing these people's lack of sympathetic voices, that I decided it was important to write about Alejandro to begin with.

The challenge facing me raises various issues.

Do I want to even continue the attempt? To the degree I have a natural competitiveness, and I do although mine isn't as great as some people's I've experienced, do I want to proceed with the project and finish it in order to show everybody I can do it?

Do I want to cut my losses and turn to something else? I already worked for an entire career, enjoyed the work I pursued for well over thirty years, but retired , intending in retirement to do less. However, doing less certainly didn't mean doing nothing. I fully intended to do something in my retirement, and at the time I retired, I fully intended to continue writing and honing that particular craft.

Do I want to step up my efforts? If I want to receive recognition and some of the success others have received, like, for example, the friend I received the cautionary warning from mentioned above, I'll have to do more. That friend, who has publishing deals for three books with Scholastic, has a better background to be a writer: he has been dreaming of it, has been consistently reading and studying writign, and even began writing, it seems, at the outset of his life. Not me. Additionally, my friend seems more intelligent, better trained for writing, and more well connected in contemporary life and society than I am.

Is it fun enough?

Even as set forth these ideas, I know I want to do it. I know I want to complete it and to make it as good as I can. Nonetheless, there is some ambivalence and some wavering.

Plus, it just occurred to me that perhaps I should write this story from a first person perspective as an observer of the boy's life. Then, perhaps,  I couldn't be accused of being anything but the dumbass I am.

No, thinking about it somemore, I previously considered that possibility. While I don't rule it out --- it always hangs there in the back of my mind as  a possibility lurking in the shadows --- I'll try to finish in the way I've begun.

Ramblings on The Lonely Polygamist

So, here I am two days in a row thinking about writing something about The Lonely Polygamist. Not so much writing about it as writing a review of it, but perhaps that's a difference without substance. It would be easier just to stare out the window and watch the clouds float by in the deep blue sky. Of course, that would be easier than just about anything else anyway.

Brady Udall wrote The Lonely Polygamist. Udall is a big name in Mormon country. There are some famous names in government with that surname. It's a big name in Arizona, where I guess most of the Udalls of Mormon heritage hangout. Well, that's my generalization. None of that, however, has much to do with the novel, except to some degree relative to, perhaps, its setting in the desert somewhere not far from Las Vegas. Maybe Brady Udall had some history, some ancestry, of sorts, or perhaps even some contemporary members of the extended family who engaged in the practice of polygamy. (Why do people have to practice polygamy? We don't go around saying we practiced monogamy, do we? We just simply say we're monogamists, if the subject comes up at all. Yet, there is something mighty strange about polygamy, you have to admit it.) So, perhaps Brady had a hankering to explore the subject and flesh out a character he could imagine being a polygamist in these modern times, even though probably his ancestors gave up the practice when the main body of Mormons did back at the turn of the twentieth century.

Who knows why a person stumbles onto a topic. I stumbled onto polygamy from a totally different perspective. I'm not aware of ancestors in my lineage who ever practiced polygamy, although it's entirely possible some of my early ancestors on my mother's side did --- it appears those ancestors were immigrants from Denmark, who came here and settled in Central Utah.

If I could talk with Brady on a casual level and sense somehow that I could ask him a question without giving any offense and having some self-assurance that I might get an honest answer, I'd ask to know how he came to the subject of polygamy.

I know how I came to it. A friend told me and my wife one Christmastime his wife was leaving him for a polygamist. All of the modern polygamists I knew anything about at the time were totally weirdos, meriting only disdain and mocking. I had read about them in the newspaper, because whatever antics they had been up to had merited a story, usually one on the front page of the newspaper or as a headline in the television news for some stupidity, including murder and intrigue. This couple, had a few kids, and there was no doubt that if momma left the daddy for a polygamist, the kiddies would suffer and be exposed to such idiocy.

How could I resist writing about such blather?

Plans for Future Postings

When I get to this stage, the stage where I have time and energy to do this, usually late at night when I should be thinking about getting to bed instead, and actually sit down and write, it is always difficult to decide just what it is I want to say. Life is a demanding thing. It is no less so for me than it is for anybody else, I suppose. No less demanding, nor more demanding. There is always so much to be done that you have to be more selective in what you choose to do or you will never get to what you want to do. Or rather, you should be, perhaps, more selective than you are in what you put down. Obviously, I'm not selective enough nor consistent enough, or I wouldn't be going through this pathetic exercise of saying all of this. I would just dive into what it is I want to say.

Someday soon I want to do and post a comprehensive book review of The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. I read it some time ago now, and I have wanted to do a book review of it ever since I started reading it, maybe even before then. It, however, is a comprehensive book, a novel of great length and nuanced narrative and composition. Now, I don't want to review it frivolously or short shrift it.

I picked up The Lonely Polygamist originally for self-serving reasons --- perhaps, truthfully, a person never picks up a book otherwise. However, I wrote a novel about polygamy long before Brady Udall did. Well, at least I think I did. I don't know all the particulars of when he began writing his book or the chronology of his finishing it and getting it, with the help of his publisher and whatnot, out there. Obviously, he had the success I didn't have in getting an agent and a publisher to work with him on it. He had had previous publishing successes. But I picked the book up because I wanted to compare my writing to his. Isn't that pathetic? That I would want to compare my writing to his?

Well, from my perspective, it isn't pathetic. I figure that, since he got published by a big publishing house and received wide critical acclaim and attention, he must be a pretty darn good writer who can stand as a decent measurement for me. So sometime I intend to start writing drafts of critical reviews of his novel. Maybe just for the fun of it I will post them here. It'll give me something to do, something to work on until I get it done, something I don't have to think about every time I start thinking about making a post.

On the List

Here in Utah the news when I returned from Wyoming this week was about a list somebody or some group had compiled and spread anonymously throughout the news media and government. The list, it is said, contains the names of some 1300 people, their addresses and telephone numbers, their Social Security numbers, whether or not they were pregnant, if they were women, and the like. Apparently, the list was also sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, too. It argues that all of the named individuals should be deported from the United States because they are, the document argues, illegally here.

So "the list" has been in all the news stories broadcast on television and radio, in the newspaper, both locally and nationally. It coincides with the extremists who want to apply Arizona-like tactics to everyone they think shouldn't be here.

My observation is this. People with this type of vitriol should go after the perpetrators of the problem: the holders of office in the federal government. It is our congressmen and our president, present and past, who have caused this crisis.

And this is a crisis that affects real human beings, ones without much of a voice at all, ones living a bare existence here, always having to "lay low" and watch their backs. The extremists, it seems to me, seem to have little heart or soul in analyzing the nuances of the problem as it pertains to real individuals affected by their sad and callous tactics. Instead of raising their ire against politicians who hold offices and could have done something about the problem over the years, they want to cause heartache and catastrophe for families. I find it particularly ironic, in a state where people laud the supremacy of family, that these individuals are so allied and agitated in this ugly manner against individuals in families.

But I don't blame just the politicians. I blame the citizens, including myself, who haven't held and didn't hold the politicians accountable; I blame the citizens who didn't care enough to do anything substantive relative to the situation to hold politicians accountable for their lack of doing anything, because it didn't matter to we, the citizens, in years past, when life was good and rosy , when jobs were plentiful and paid well. Now, when because of past policies that favor big business and the rich and powerful our  economy has crashed and is still trying to recover slowly, such individuals blame the people who came here hoping for something better than their sad lives someplace else, who we, collectively, tolerated and even, to some degree, esteemed and appreciated, or, at the very least, cared nothing about. They weren't on our radar. They were seen as a threat to us. Now, these extremists seek to put a target on their chests and shoot them, in a figurative sense.

The Republican Party and the so-called Tea Party Movement, the Libertarians, and others unaffiliated but who perpetuate this vitriol are hypocrites. They have contributed to the enduring situation as much as anybody else, and now they are contributing to something even worse: the disruption of family life and security for all these people.

For believing this way, I would probably be and have been labeled by these types of individuals who spew hatred a bleeding heart liberal, a socialist, and/or a Communist.

Go ahead, label me. Say what you will about what I am. Maybe I am a bleeding heart, a liberal, inclined to socialism. At the same time, I am inclined to argue that such detritus as people who would disrupt family lives like these groups belatedly seek to do to people who have been here for years and years trying to seek a better way of life for them and their families are not unlike those who showed disdain and hatred for Jews in Hitler Germany or whowanted to perpetuate slavery in early America and segregation more recently.

An Ugly Wart

I want to write about a wart --- well, I think it's a wart, but my wife thinks it's cancer --- that I have. I also want to write about a senator of mine, Orrin Hatch. I've had them both too long. I want to get rid of each of them. They have gone about irritating me for far too long, and it's time to do something about them. I didn't do anything to deserve either one of them, not that I know of at least. I want them gone.
First, let me describe, even though you might not want to know about it, my wart. It is on my right forearm out of my sight, about to the end of the arm of a short-sleeved shirt. I can see it in the mirror or if I twist my arm with my hand. It is an unusual growth.

It is quite ugly. Other people usually can't see it because of my shirt sleeve, at least I don't think they can, and they don't mention it. It would stick straight up, probably four fifths of an inch or so, if it weren't kind of bent over. It is flesh-colored at the base, but crusty looking and pointed at the top. The tip is the part which is bent over, probably from my lying on my arm at night and, hence, it, when I'm trying to sleep. It has become very awkward and uncomfortable to cope with it. It hurts when it catches on my clothing or when I accidentally bump it.

I am not by nature, a warty person, or haven't been for most of my life, at least not in a literal sense. Those who know me may describe my thinking, personality, or humor as warty, though, I suppose. Many years ago, before this wart appeared, I had another strange wart on my left hand. It was at the base of my thumb. While it never grew as big or as ugly as the one which now resides on my arm, it was still itchy and uncomfortable. Eventually, I showed it to my physician, a family doctor, and he removed it, had it checked for cancer, and found it was benign. It has never come back, unless you think perhaps the wart on my right arm is its reincarnation. I don't think so, and I have my reasons, but they don't pertain to this particular essay.

I have an appointment with a doctor, a dermatologist, who just happens to be the son-in-law of the doctor who removed my other wart, in a few days. Hopefully, he will be able to remove the growth and restore me to normality, and at the same time, benefit his son-in-law through having referred me to him.

I am looking for a similar solution to get Orrin Hatch out of my life as a senator. To me, he is just as irritating as that wart, although I have to admit, he isn't nearly as scary looking as it. Besides that, Orrin does have other redeeming characteristics my wart doesn't seem to have. I have enjoyed that he has been willing in some very limited instances to cross party lines and join with his colleagues in the Democratic Party to get helpful legislation enacted and enforced. Nonetheless, I think I have put up with him and his deceptive antics long enough. Here though, what I want to mention is my latest aggravation with him. It involves immigration reform or, rather, his obstruction of immigration reform.
Let me tell you what I mean.

This past week eight senators sent the President of the United States a letter which demanded that he stop going around the will of Congress on immigration. There is no evidence whatsoever that the President ever did or intended to go around the will of Congress on immigration. Orrin was one of the eight who signed that letter. It alleges a secret illegal agreement exists to grant "deferred action" --- the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in refraining from removing someone from the United States --- to undocumented immigrants. It suggests that the President subscribes to the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no way the President or his administration is interested in granting more than 10 million undocumented people in the United States some kind of immunity from prosecution. What the President is and has been interested in is comprehensive immigration reform. And he is probably also interested in utilizing whatever presidential power he has to afford relief where it is warranted in the most sensitive specific cases. For example, he would use the relief where immigrant children have grown up in the United States, have done extraordinary in their studies, and want to continue their education in our colleges and universities without being deported for a lack of documentation.

The letter of the senators is an ugly wart on the public, like the ugly wart on my forearm. It --- the letter --- is intended to perpetuate ugly rumors grounded in nothing more than bigoted people's imaginations. Those people in this particular case are interested in a political agenda that opposes comprehensive immigration reform. It is quite obvious, although their specific intent is left unclear. Of course, these individuals know something about "deferred action" because the Bush administration used it during Hurricane Katrina, granting rights to individuals victimized by the storm. And that is when it is usually appropriate, when there is some serious crisis that pulls at the heartstrings, when things are fundamentally unfair and inequitable and against our basic ideals for our fellow beings.

Sen. Orrin Hatch and the other senators who wrote the President are being disingenuous. In their letter they suggest that they agree that immigration laws need to be fixed, but then they go on to gripe about the potential of the administration using "deferred action" or some type of parole for large populations of undocumented immigrants, although that is impossible. Sen. Hatch and the others seven senators have never done anything whatsoever to reform immigration laws. Hatch has served in the Senate for years and years. He defeated Frank Moss in 1976 and has been Utah's ranking senator almost ever since. Pray tell, what has he ever done to correct immigration laws? Nothing. Even during the period when his party held the presidency and controlled both houses of Congress, he did nothing. Nothing! He intends to do nothing about immigration reform. That's why he voted against the Senate bill that would have been a first step in giving us comprehensive immigration reform. That bill passed the Senate in 2007. In fact, the senators who wrote the subject letter, moved to close the debate on the bill and to prepare the bill for a vote in order to kill it.

Orrin Hatch is bound to big business, which benefits with the situation relative to immigration as it stands in this country. Senator Hatch is interested only in doing whatever furthers the funding he needs to retain his position and power.

Sen. Orrin Hatch is a useless wart on the forearm of the public, worthy of removal. Hopefully, he is not a cancerous growth, who will lead to more serious problems or our demise. One thing for sure, Senator Hatch's intent is to scare people and frighten them, rather than simply doing what is helpful and compassionate.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

When I got home from Wyoming, there was a package from Amazon on the porch. I hadn't ordered anything from Amazon that I remembered, and I didn't know that Shelley had, but that is always a possibility. The box was addressed to me, not her. I opened up the box to see what was in it and it was the complete National Geographic, I mean every National Geographic issue since 1888. I knew I didn't order it, although I would've liked to have had it, and I didn't think Shelley had, either.

Inside the box as always there was a document giving the details of the transaction. The first thing I looked for was the label they include to make returning items sent easy. That label was gone. I looked at the shipping address, and it was mine, and I looked at the billing address and it wasn't mine. I don't know how I looked at just the address without seeing the name with the address but I did. It was an address that seemed foreign, and I jumped to a conclusion that somebody had used my credit card to make the purchase and I immediately thought I'd better call Shelley to tell her I needed to cancel the credit card. Then I got to looking closer. The name with the address was the name of my son-in-law, and it immediately became clear that this was a gift, probably a Father's Day gift from my daughter and him.

Shelley called a little while after that and I told her what had happened and she laughed and said that my daughter had mentioned that there would be something in the mail for me for Father's Day --- my daughter had been ill and had been unable to visit on Father's Day.

It is such a nice gift and I'm grateful. Thank you very much. And it's nice to not have to cancel that credit card.