The Things We Need

As a sports fan, it tickles me to know about athletes' good luck charms- the items they believe will help them win games. Things like socks, a certain bat, or even a pair of lucky underwear. It's funny that these men and women, who have practiced until their bodies are beyond hurt, think a sock will make all the difference. Forget skills, precision, expertise. We've got SOCKS!

What's even funnier is realizing that I, too, have my little trinkets that help me write and perform, and without them everything feels wrong and out of place. My grandmother's ring, a novelty pencil from Jamaica that I dubbed Barrington Mon and a bullet on a chain given to me by a sweet Vietnamese suitor back in high school; these are the things I need.

If I dare read in front of a crowd and am not wearing Grandma's ring or my bullet necklace, I freak out inside. If I'm at the computer or writing in my journal and Barrington Mon is not nearby, I can't focus on the story I'm trying to write.

Of course it's silly to depend on them. After all, I have my MFA, I have all this talent, I have all these stories that want and need to be told. A pencil or a piece of jewelry should not stand in the way of that. But it does.

Maybe it's a side effect of a Catholic upbringing, with a tinge of santeria and brujeria, or maybe athletes and writers like me know something you don't: objects can hold a certain energy, and transfer that energy on to us. I need Grandma's ring with me at every reading because she's not here in body. Barrington Mon reminds me to be easy and trust the light within (advice given to me by the friend who gifted me the pencil) and that bullet gives me courage to release the secret tales on paper I dare not speak in life.

Crazy or not, these are the things I need.

xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse

Writing Myth #7,298...

...Drugs and/or alcohol help with creativity.

Sure, Hemingway has his literary groupies, and many stories abound about his unabashed alcoholism, but please believe me when I tell you: an altered state does not a great writer make.

As an undergrad, I stepped outside my comfort zone and took a poetry workshop. This was the hardest class for me because honestly? I don't get poetry. I don't know how to create it, appreciate it or even critique it. I know when one is likable, but I couldn't tell you why. I could use fancy words like "imagery" and such, but I really wouldn't know what I was talking about.

So anyway, I took this class and every week or so we had to produce a poem. Now I'm a perfectionist so I over-thought every single assignment. But one in particular was so rough that a classmate and I figured we'd just get drunk ala Hemingway and churn out some greatness (not unlike the episode of "The Facts of Life" when Sue Ann smoked weed before writing her book report).

It failed miserably.

Handing me alcohol is like saying, "Hey Raquel, go get your jammies and go to sleep until about 2pm tomorrow, when you'll wake up wondering why you're only wearing one sock." It doesn't open you up creatively and neither does weed. That stuff holds you back until it becomes this crutch: "I can't write unless I have a class of wine (or five)." Or it takes you on these random detours that rarely end up being something you'd stamp your name on.

You can write because this is the talent with which you've been blessed. Yes, the heathen Raquel used the word blessed! All you need is to find inspiration in the smallest details of everyday life- in a lone flower growing in the yard, in the green stuff growing on a dish in the sink, in the man that ran to catch a train only to bust his ass instead. Anything can spawn a story and you don't need to chemically open your mind. You just need to open your eyes.

xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse

What It's Like To Be A Writer (Like Me!) 8.25.09

Sometimes, it's a simple sentence that will resonate in my head, that will fascinate me so much that from it will arise a paragraph. And from that paragraph, a scene. And I'll sit back with that scene, playing it on a loop over & over again in my head, until somewhere along the fifth or sixth take The Voices will get it right.

Sometimes, it's a dream so vivid that I cannot deny its existence. The dream begs to be written down with its bizarre circumstances and troubling cast of characters. Whether it's the Mob chasing me or Grandma overfeeding me (right before I became pregnant with my second child, mind you) my dreams explode onto the page almost completely out of my control, hands cramping and stained with ink.

Sometimes it's a memory that won't go away. A wrong that I cannot right unless I deliver it to FictionLand. A memory that gets so twisted up in my head that I cannot recall if it's true or made up. Within the story I am relieved of my guilt, I can be the White Knight and all is right (whether or not it needed to be righted in the first place).

And sometimes A story is born from the what ifs that linger in my mind. What if I'd done that line of coke with those Klan Alpine brothers? What if I'd lost my virginity at 13? What if I'd never moved upstate and attended St. John's as an undergrad instead? Who would I be? What would I be doing? All of this serve as fodder for my creative meanderings.

That is the point when pen meets paper. And so ferociously so that I cannot ever have enough pens nor enough paper by my side.

My journey from concept to completed tale changes daily. It's like taking a different train every day to get to Times Square. Sometimes I may even use a writing prompt (because even MASTERS OF FINE ARTS could use a little push in the right direction) and sometimes I'll read and read or watch hours upon hours of movies & scripted television programming until I find my inspiration. Sometimes, being around other writers will do the trick.

But in the end, all roads lead to genius. It is why you keep coming back to see what else I could possibly have to say. It is why I didn't storm out of my meager job even though I hated it. And it is why I cannot give up this dream: you WILL see my books on the shelves and you WILL be lining up to get your copy autographed.

"So it is written, so shall it be done."

xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse

New York Readings Begin Again: A Call For Writers

Happy New Year, my dears, and welcome to another opportunity to share your stories with an appreciative audience. Yup, you guessed it, La Pluma y La Tinta will host its first New Voices Reading Series event of the new year at a new location (Space on White in Lower Manhattan) on January 29th at 6:30PM SHARP!

But of course it can't happen without a lively roster of writers ready to conquer the literary world. Or our little podium. Whatever's clever.

If you or someone you know is great with words and need a forum, contact us ASAP at info@plumaytinta.org. We're waiting to hear from you!

xoxo,
La Pluma y La Tinta

A Writer's Life 9.26.07

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it to be God. Sidney Sheldon said that. And of all the quotes about writing I've ever read nothing was ever truer. Face to face with a blank piece of paper- or a blank computer screen, blinking cursor mocking me with its "you have nothing to say" taunt, a fleeting, albeit terrifying, feeling of helplessness overcomes me.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. -Red Smith

Creating is hard. Harder than anything else in this world. Writers know it. Sculptors know it. Mothers know it. You nurture this thing that pours out of you in the hopes that the universe will embrace it and love it as you do, but that is not always the case. Sometimes the universe spits on your baby, stomps it to the ground and slashes at it with that proverbial red pen. And it can feel like your innards are being ripped out through your throat, leaving you with no other option but to cower in a corner and cry.

Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter. -Jessamyn West

But you can't cower forever. It is hard being god. Look at all the shit I give doctors for having god complexes, and they actually have the ability to bring people back from the dead (at least on ER they do...). But if the god you believe in had cowered in a corner crying because man didn't turn out the way he/she wanted him to turn out, where would we be...or maybe god is cowering in a corner and that's why we're fucked up...hmmm...food for thought.

I'm getting off topic again, dammit...

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down. -Edna St. Vincent Millay

My point is we have to push on, forward. We HAVE to. There is no choice. No turning back. "No second chance, blanc." All we can do is our best. If, at the end of the day we know we gave 110% of our very soul for our creation, our babies, our stories, our pictures, our paintings, our songs- it will be enough. Even if no one understands what you've made (Yoko...I'm looking at you, honey...). Even if Michiko Kakutani pans your novel in the New York Times, even if you don't get that grant, even if your song debuts as #300 on the Billboard charts, even if your kid ends up a heroin addict OD-ing on Avenue B, if you gave it your all and then some, it's all you can do.

What more can you possibly do?

This is what I have to tell myself to keep going. I HAVE to. This is what I want to leave to my "creator" friends who are at that impasse and question where to go from here. Push forward. You HAVE to. This life you live is the ultimate novel/painting/song you don't even know you're creating, and you won't be there to know how it turns out but TRUST that it will be spectacular!

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. -George Orwell

xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse