Manifesto

            I think that writing is just the start of something more, in the way that people relate and communicate with each other.  Do we know if writing is universal?  Can we prove that it takes place outside of this realm?  What is a realm?  Is it a wet, dark place where people sit, at barren desks; and write? 

            How many words exist in the English language, or Spanish, or French?  Will there ever be a wristband that can count the number of words you say and reach in a day? 

            How does writing compare to reading, or singing?  How many people have written the words that they sing?  Have you ever read words you have written to an audience? 

            The first time I felt like a talented writer, I was in sixth grade.  My teacher assigned us to write a Halloween story, and I wrote a good one; it was good in the eyes of my teacher, at least, because she chose me, as well as some other girls in my class, to go to a contest at a nearby girls’ high school.  I had handed in the original to her, without revising it.  There were notes scribbled in the margins in blue ink, an additional paragraph on the first page, crossed out words, etc.  The day of the contest my mom made me French toast for breakfast.  Ten other girls and I traveled there in a yellow school bus.  When we got there, we toured the school.  We saw a movie, and then we sat in a quiet room for fifteen minutes, while a teacher explained the rules of the contest to us.  The topic:  What It Takes to Be a Good Parent.

            I spent almost the full allotted sixty minutes writing.  I wrote with a number two pencil that had an eraser smudged in ink.  I sat with my classmates at a long wooden table, on seats with maroon cushions, across from some girls from other schools.  Before the winner was announced, I thought I had a good chance of winning, but I didn’t, although my classmate did.

            Ever since then, I have been writing.  I kept a diary throughout junior high.  It was the cheap, five-dollar kind from Walgreens; the kind that had a key and lock that a bobby pin could easily also open.  While this was true, the magic of keeping my words and thoughts locked up so that no one could see them amazed me.  I wrote when I was bored; I would sit on my front porch steps and scribble down the details of my day at the pool.  I would write when I was tired; in the dark, when the television was at an almost mute, yet the picture of Jay Leno and his guests blared in black and white.  I would write when I was angry; when I had gotten in a fight with my friend, or my mom.  I would write just to spite the reality that my writing was all for me; writing was the best way to maintain clarity.

            Now, I write, partially, to maintain my sanity.  The only way I can show the way I think is to type words that manifest simplicity and complexity, all at the same time.  I write complexly when I feel anxious.  I write simply when I feel alone.  I write run- on sentences when I want to break the rules.  I leave all the words underlined in red until the end, so that my train of thought doesn’t lose itself.  I write to impress people.  I write to trick people into thinking that I have a clue what I am thinking about.  I write to profess my love, I write to expedite romance of characters that I want to be like.  I write to encourage protagonists, to hate antagonists.  I write to encourage antagonists, and to hate protagonists.  I write character sketches of people I want to be like.  I make up settings of places I want to be. 

            I have written some of my best poetry in the last few years.  Poetry is easiest for me, because I don’t have to think the way that I need to to write a story, I can write down words, phrases, details, and obscure punctuation.  Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite poems, “Artificial Stars”:

I see the green that illuminates somehow from underwater

And it reminds me of the roundness in his eyes

The color gets deeper, more intimidating, more profound

Once it rises from the sand to the surface

And I gaze into the night sky above

Imagining how it used to be

Pretending that the artificial satellites that dot the obscurity

Are stars produced by the heavens that hold them

            I wrote this poem on a night I took a walk by the lake.  The idea to write a poem based on a dream was good, but I didn’t need to make it up, because the walk was dream like in itself.  The idea that stars, and lights that look like stars, can both be held by the darkness, and almost invisible blobs of clouds on a night by the lake, amazes me.  I often wonder how else I could express the beauty in that night.  Could I draw it?  No, because there couldn’t be colors.  Could I paint it?  No, because then you couldn’t see the seaweed at the bottom and the stars above at the same time, as the walking path divides both.  Could I give a speech about it?  What would I talk about- the type of seaweed, the physics of the waves crashing the cement path?  No, I would say that the only way you could get into my mind, to understand what I saw, how I saw it, was through the words I wrote.  So, I wrote the poem, to satisfy the need in me to show people the way I see things. 

            While I believe that I have some talent in writing, I have a number of flaws and idiosyncrasies that need to be mended and fixed, through practice and constructive criticism.  For one, I always have a lot of ideas that flood my brain, my train of thought, so that sometimes when I type it into my computer, phrases and sentences seem misplaced, confused, shuffled, and mixed up.  It’s kind of like how when people type really fast on the computer and don’t think about it until after the document, text, or what have you, is finished.  I remember the first time I had seen this phenomenon.  I was a freshman in high school and I was at my friend Kelly’s house.  It was an early Saturday night and we were about to settle in and watch some movies when the rest of our friends arrived.  We sat at her computer desk and we were instant messaging the others.  Kelly was crouched over the keyboard, her eyes strained to see the screen with the glare that cast off from the light from the ceiling fan.  Her fingers danced over the keyboard like rain pounding on the ground.  All the while her eyes stayed on the screen.  Every other word had a wavy red line under it, but Kelly didn’t care, she just kept on typing.  I had just been proposed to the concept of careless typing.  It amazed me how she couldn’t care less about how whoever was on the other side of this message would receive a bounty of words, some mixed up and mangled, so that only the fact that the brain could unscramble things naturally saved the purpose of the text.  This is how I feel when I am writing papers or emails.  I think to myself, no one else is ever going to read this draft, so I let the wavy red lines pile up.  Is this bad?  One may consider it lazy, but since one has the spell check tool, why not utilize it? 

            Another fault of mine is that I don’t take constructive criticism very well.  I know the whole purpose of the writing workshop is to receive criticism so that to better your craft, but I have the habit of initially thinking that my work is flawless, unnecessary of any revision from the start.  I admit this is naïve and childish, and I always feel this way, until the day of the workshop when I get bombarded with comments on how to make my work better.  That is when I crash and realize that my work is nothing, inferior to the work of my classmates.  You could call it a Literary Bipolar Disorder, an illness that inflicts the best writers, the most sensitive and at the same time critical of alphabetic artists.  One day I am the best, and then when workshop coms around, I feel unworthy.

            I wish to end with an anecdote on the first poem I wrote at DePaul.  It is a parody by a famous Hispanic poet, Martin Espada:

“The Sober Irish Girl’s Poem for Her Friend Who Isn’t Irish” By: Amy Dillon

(A Parody of “The Mexican Cabdriver’s Poem for His Wife, Who Has Left Him” By: Martin Espada)

We were playing bingo

at the Irish Heritage Center,

so, I asked the immigrants

in the back of the gymnasium

to write a poem for you.

They asked

if you were like the green hillside

crowding cottages at dusk.

I said no,

he is like a pub

that is so full of drunks

I have the whole county to myself

to find a four-leaf clover

outside.

            I don’t know how to explain how I came up with this poem.  I mimicked it line by line, but the ideas and uniqueness were all mine.  I am Irish, but I have no idea what Ireland is really like.  The closest I come to my heritage is when I go to the Irish American Heritage Center, where my mom and I play Bingo.  There is so much that could be interpreted, that could be unpacked.  After I wrote it, I felt like a real poet.  I felt like I could put a meaning behind a meaning (for example, those in the back of the center could mean the Irish in me at the back of my head; the last stanza could be interpreted as a mother having a baby with a distant father of the baby).  When the teacher asked how long it took to write it (it took fifteen minutes), I could see the wonder gleaming from his eyes, and that was the first time I felt like someone really appreciated my work.

            To conclude, I would like to encourage whoever reads this to push yourself when it comes to writing.  I have learned the craft, through late night workshop story writing sessions, through typing poems with words meandering over the screen while sitting in a crowded Starbucks.  I have mimicked other authors, I have found myself in others work.  Writing, to me, is a way to release one’s self.  It is a way to show whatever problem or concepts may be floating around in the back of your head.  You really just need to be able to let the words stream from your fingertips while you type; no matter how sloppy the results.