Blog 4: Meditations on Writing: A Novena
A note to the reader: I wrote this presentation at a writing conference twenty-one years ago in Corpus Christi, Texas. It was the first time that I gave a presentation to a room that held more than two-hundred people. I don’t remember being particularly intimidated—or even nervous. I rarely get nervous when I speak in front of an audience, no matter the size of the audience. I don’t know where I got the gift of public speaking, but I have it. I think part of that gift comes from the fact that I genuinely like people. I work at connecting with an audience and I like to be prepared. I don’t always write out my presentations, but I always have notes and I always put a lot of thought into my presentations. And I enjoy myself while I’m in front of a microphone. I am sometimes an introvert and sometimes an extrovert. But I’m not a shy person. And I don’t mind placing myself in a vulnerable position. You have to show people who you are and what you believe in. You can’t fake this. You have to be real.
Though I wrote this twenty-one years ago, and much has changed. But I think this fairly represents what I felt at the time—and much of what I felt then, remains true for me today. In any case, I’m happy to discover that I never cringed once as went through these few pages. I did make some minor revisions but the piece mor or less stands as I wrote it.
Meditations on Writing: A Novena
The First Meditation: The Facts of the Matter
Fact number one: I have been writing for most of my life. Fact number two: Though I have a great desire to get what I write into print, much of what I write and have written has little to do with getting published. Some of what I write will find its way into a book and much of what I write will never be published. Writing has to do with discovering what I think, what I feel about the world I live in and the people in it and my relationship to that world and to those people. Writing is the way that I have learned to discover what I know and what I don’t know, and it has everything to do with discovering who I am. Fact number three: I am forty-six years old.
Facts number four, five, six, seven and eight (and some editorial remarks): I was thirty-one when I published my first poem, thirty-two when I published my first story, thirty-seven when I published my first book of poems. Since then, my career has had its ups downs. I’ve had my share of successes and my share of disappointments. I’ve had my share of rejections and had my share of vacuous reviews (I don’t say bad reviews, I say vacuous reviews—even a good review can be vacuous). In the end, some of what I have published didn’t mean very much to me. Some of my publications meant a great deal—at least to me. I have been fortunate enough to have published a book of short stories, four books of poems (another on the way), six novels, and three bi-lingual children's books. My writing has gained some attention and garnered some national awards. I’m proud of that. Those awards certainly haven’t hurt my career. But I have to say that I am both grateful and suspicious of awards (and hope to remain so). Awards aren’t everything. The moment comes and the moment goes. Applause gives way to the silence of my office where I write. The writing is the thing. But the work matters too. Some of the work I’m proudest of hasn’t received much recognition. This is the thing: I am not in charge of how my books are received—I am only in charge of writing them.
Now that I’m comfortable in claiming that I am a writer, I sometimes wonder what that arrival means. It’s like finally entering a city that you’ve always wanted to visit and and when you get off at the train station, no one is there to greet you.
And anyway, I don’t really think being a writer has anything to do with arriving at a destination. There is always somewhere else to go, always something new to discover. I wonder when my identity as a writer came into my consciousness? I have only been a published writer for a little over fifteen years. But I have been a writer for a much longer time than that. I mean, you have to have been writing for a while before you got published. You have to learn how to write. You have to learn to master the language you are working in.
What does a writer make of all the writing he did before he was published? How do I go about paying homage to the first thirty years of my life that was spent in learning? I don’t mean just learning to write, but learning about all sorts of things. The subjects I learned something about were more important than I thought they were at the time. Knowing something about math and science and history and politics broadened my mind. Thinking back, there was always that impulse to write. Maybe I’d always been a writer without knowing it. None of this had to do with becoming a writer. Or maybe all of it had to do with becoming a writer. This was certain: none of this learning had anything directly to wo with publishing a book which was not even a dream.
What do I make of all the experiences and education and working at my craft? All those years I was writing something. Maybe those pieces of writing weren’t any good, but I could not have become a writer without early manuscripts and fragments and thoughts I wrote before there was ever a book. When did I begin to see myself as a writer? When did I become what I wanted to become?
*
No one really considers you a writer until you’ve written something substantial. But even if you’ve managed to receive a few awards and gained some critical notoriety, all this is an insider’s game. It’s as if only writers and librarians and English professors read novels and poetry. If you’re familiar with contemporary literature and the people who write it, well, that makes you an intellectual and a lot of people don’t to go near that word. We don’t like intellectuals is country and very few people set out to be serious thinkers. Maybe that’s why such a small percentage of people in this country read books. Making a living by using your mind is frowned upon. You’re a writer? What have you written? It sounds more like a challenge than a question. You’re a wannabe, a fraud—not that the person who asked the question would know. Even after you’ve written several books, you’ll always get the question, “How come I’ve never heard of you?” Well, maybe because you don’t read? Or maybe because being a well-known writer in America is an oxymoron. Actors and sports figures and politicians and models and clothes designers are celebrities. Writers are only celebrities among their readers and among other writers. But if one of your books becomes a movie, then that’s another matter. Then you are a real writer and something of a celebrity. Even so, most people will say something like, “I didn’t get a chance to read the book. I hear it’s really great. But, I did go and see the movie.”
This is the thing—the thing is being a writer is not what you do—it’s who you are. Writer is what exists in your body, your heart, your bones. And nobody knows that but you. A writer doesn’t need anybody to tell him who he is.
The Second Meditation: On Painting
I once wanted to be a painter. I still paint--and have become a better painter than I thought I’d ever be (which may be no great claim). I do consider myself an artist. I get a great deal of pleasure from stretching a canvas, curing it, then painting on the surface. Painting, like writing, is an act of creating a fiction. It is also a discipline. It is also an act of mental seduction. You seduce people into entering a world you have created out of your imagination. But painting, for me, is more for pleasure than for anything else (as if pleasure wasn’t the best of reasons). Once, when I was in need of money (I have had many such moments in my life), I sold a painting. The person who bought it, asked me how long it had taken me to finish that particular piece. I'd spent a weekend immersed in my labor. “Two and half days," I said. "Two and a half days?" he repeated. I suppose I looked at him and nodded in that self-satisfied arrogance that only artists (and writers) are capable of. He seemed to be utterly impressed by the fact that I'd painted it so quickly—as if it were a testament to talent. I was only too happy to play along with the whole charade. The truth of the matter was that it took a much longer time to finish the work I’d just sold him. I'd had countless failed attempts. I'd spent thousands of dollars on art supplies, tubes of acrylics, pastels, brushes, paper, pencils, charcoal, canvases. I’d spent hours upon hours over the years trying to make my hands obey the orders my stubborn eyes were giving them, hundreds of hours trying to make my craft catch up to my imagination. Perhaps, a more accurate answer to the question how long did it take you to finish that painting? would have been: "Several years." In fact, it did take me several years—several years to teach myself something about this thing called “art.” Several years of studying, watching, looking at other people's work, carefully studying the works I’d seen in the art books I’d collected. Several years of studying color and forms and techniques, several years of reading essays on art by artists and critics and looking at statues and watching the light hit the wall and staring at paintings in museums and studying trees and stones and faces I loved. I’d spent years trying to make myself into an artist. Years and years. And countless hours. Who knows how many hours?
I should've charged more for that painting.
The Third Meditation: Evolution
We like to measure. If we measure the size of the box, we think we have an insight into boxes. We like simple answers. As if the simple answers give us insights into the cruel and complex and utterly baffling world we live in. We like to think that everything can be quantified (perhaps our way of taming what cannot be tamed). Measuring has become our obsession. We teach students to pass standardized tests—and when they pass those tests, we call them educated (regardless of what they have or have not accomplished, regardless of what they have or have not earned or learned or understood). We measure a movie by how many people have paid to see it—and when millions of people have seen it, we elevate the movie to a special status. We measure art by how much it costs and by what gallery displays it on its walls.
We measure poets by the awards they've won, by the number of books they've published, by the presses who've published them, by the critics who’ve championed their work, by the agents who’ve sought them out. We measure the success of a novel by how many copies it has sold or by the reviews it has received (and what magazines deemed it worthy of notice). We have come to value the tools of measurement more than what is being measured. The tail is more important than the dog.
This is evolution.
The Fourth Meditation: Therapy
I think, now, that I gave up the thought of painting as a career not because I thought I’d never be good enough. No, that’s not true. I thought that getting to the place of being good enough would take too long and I was tired of being poor. The term starving artist is often romanticized but when running out of money becomes a chronic condition in the way you live your life, then you know it’s time for a change. I did want to be an artist. And I thought I had it in me to become a fine painter. But I’d become acutely aware of that desire that lived in mem that desire to become a writer. That had become my dream—and like everyone who has a dream, I was determined to make it a reality. I knew it wasn’t a very sensible decision. But I’m not known for being sensible. Perhaps the odds weren’t on my side—but they never were. I can do this. That’s what I told myself. That’s what I had to tell myself. I can do this.
I worked. And I wrote. I wrote and I wrote. I had discipline and desire. And I was, in addition, very stubborn. I believed in my talent even when nobody else did. You have to have that—a belief in your own talent. And you have to dedicate yourself to your writing. You have to do it day after day after day.
When I started, all I had was instinct. I had to rely on something other than a "publication record" since I had none. I had no résumé. But I had written many things. And I had been successful at it. In grade school, in junior high, in high school, in college, in graduate school, I had been able to express myself in writing accurately and successfully (but never, I think, succinctly). I was often praised for my hard work. But writing was never hard—not for me. Not hard like other people found it hard. I was the most unusual of birds—the kind of bird that liked to stay home and write. It was my version of flying. I enjoyed it so much that I eventually turned to writing poems. I will confess that the poems were awful. They were beyond awful. Awful as they were, I spent hours working on them, completely lost in the process. That fact that they were awful didn't matter a damn. I wasn’t measuring a final product. I was learning a new language. I was an awkward speaker. But God, the words! They were so new. I was a boy again. I was charmed, delighted, seduced—and I was learning the first rule: discipline. There I was, writing bad poems for the sheer pleasure of it. Imagine! Imagine writing a poem for the pleasure of it. Imagine me a lawyer. Imagine a friend of mine calling me up on a weekend and asking me what I was doing. Imagine me answering, "I'm writing a poem." Imagine his response. “What for?” Imagine me scrambling for an acceptable answer: “Therapy.”
The Fifth Meditation: Labor at the Beginning of the Century
I knew that the idea of being a writer not only meant I had to become a good writer, but I had to entertain the idea that I might one day turn to writing as a career. Making money—there was a thought. Well, it didn’t have to be a lot of money. But really, it was only about money insofar as it was something you need to survive. But money wasn’t much of a motivator---not for me. Iwas about what the Catholic tradition I was raised in would call a vocation. (I’d lost one vocation already—I’d been a Catholic Priest. I was looking for another—one that would last a lifetime). Vocation. From the Latin, vocare, to call. I really believe that I was calling to be a writer. But even if I had a calling, I still needed a career. Vocations soothe the heart, careers pay the rent.
By the time I started to write “seriously” I had abandoned two novels, written countless poems and had written a few short stories. It was, as I have already mentioned, awful stuff. “Bloody awful” as the English would have it. “Un desmadre” as some Chicanos would editorialize over a beer. But, as I said, I loved that labor. It was the labor that mattered, the hours spent creating something. So few things can make time seem so insignificant. A loved labor renders time virtually meaningless—if only for that moment. Such a priceless thing, to lose track of the passing hours.
After much reflection, I’ve reached the conclusion that my early work remains as important as any work I have ever published. I do not believe I should cheapen the work that remained unpublished and anonymous and even in the trashcan beside me desk. I have come to realize the crucial role those writing years played in the evolution of my writing. It was the foundation my house was built on. (It may not be a big house, but it is a house). I have come to honor those years, those "beyond awful" poems, those feeble attempts at stories, those awkward conversations between those thin and stiff fictional characters, those mixed and strained metaphors, those plots that lacked drama or resembled the overwritten purple prose of romance novels.
My published work is not more real nor is it worth more than my unpublished work. That seems so simple and so obvious to me now. It’s taken me years to arrive at this small insight. I’ve had to unlearn many bad habits along the way (I even quit smoking. Then started again. Then quit again. Then . . .) Writer, in our day and age, has come to mean "published writer." The more publications we have, the more "real" we are. If we do not publish, we perish. But such an attitude diminishes what we actually do (and discourages people from engaging in a craft that can keep a sharp mind in good working order. Shouldn’t we be concerned with the life of the mind?) What about the material fact of a writer’s labor? Does the labor matter less because it is invisible to most people? Most of what I write is never seen. Even when I go public with a poem or a story or a novel, much of the writing that lies behind the work remains invisible. How many drafts? How many walks thinking and thinking, re-writing in my head? How many sleepless nights? How many failures? How many wrong turns just to find your way to where you wanted to go? I, like most people, have been taught to value the final product. The final version. The point of arrival. We give lip service to the process, to the journey, to the "necessary" rough drafts. In fact, we devalue that work. We do not honor it. Unfortunately, we have come to value products and careers over craft, over insight, over depth. But in so doing, we contribute to the shallow discourses of the world. In so doing, we also abandon what we are called to do. We choose products over labor. We choose the glossy phrase over the hard-earned insight—the insight that only comes with time and struggle and self-doubt. In the end, we choose careers over vocations. We pay the rent. And well we should. But what about the muscle of the mind that wants to go beyond the borders we have set for it? A human being should be more than a copy machine. Never mind, just pay the rent.
Ah, but all of this obsession with success and careers is perhaps inevitable in the early part of the twenty-first century where receiving notoriety, making money, and chasing critical acclaim matter more than the struggles of the human heart—the human heart that makes the world we live in hurt and beat and hum. The human heart that makes the cruelties of the world bearable. It is the laboring heart and the laboring body that it resides in that really matters. But the politics of consumption has cheapened labor and debased the laborer. How can we possibly look at writing as labor? Oh, God, bringing class warfare into writing.
The Sixth Meditation: Cocktail Talk
Even now, when I meet people, and they ask me what I do, more often than not, I tell them I am a professor. This happens to be true. I am a professor. (But teaching and writing are two different arts and they are not at all necessarily related. Spending time in front of a computer pounding out a novel requires an entirely different set of skills than standing up in front of twenty-five aspiring writers.)
On those rare occasions that I'm feeling brave (or very cocky) I venture to out myself as a writer. The first question to pop out of my new acquaintance's mouth is: "What have you published?" There it again, the challenge, the accusation how come I’ve never heard of you? —as if most people in our culture recognized writers in the same way they recognized Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan. I answer the question, sometimes graciously, sometimes not. But I resent having to list my work as a kind of oral resume as if to prove that I am a real writer simply because "literary editors" have given me their imprimatur. In the words of my first agent, “publishing is like spinning the dradle.” In our day and age, publishing is about making money, not about publishing good books (though miraculously good books are still being published). If we are, at times, members of “the elect,” we ought to at least distance ourselves from the gods of an industry that reduces a writer’s words into a speculative investment.
Who’s your publisher? Who’s your agent? Life, unfortunately, can be as shallow as a cocktail party. Nobody asks what you’re writing about (unless of course, you can give a two minute synopsis over a glass of cheap chardonnay—in which case people consider you brilliant). I have to keep telling myself that cocktail parties aren’t intended to gift the participants with intellectual stimulation.
The Seventh Meditation: Notoriety
It's much too easy (and disingenuous) for published writers to claim that publications don't matter. Of course, the books we have published matter. To the writer. I don't know of one self-respecting writer who doesn't work toward being published. We all have dreams.That is the goal. But I can’t believe it is the only goal. Writing has to have another center. Writing has to have a heart. Writing has to be about something that matters to the writer. Writing has to hurt. Writing has to be related to the struggles of the people who reside on this earth alongside us.
I have had too many students who are ambitious for fame or fortune. Preferably both. I once had a student hold up my first novel, overly impressed with the blurbs on the jacket. “I want to be where you are,” he said. “I want to break into print.” And then he added, “within the next two years.” (Ahh, timelines). It took me seven years to finish my first novel. Almost eight. Eight years. In the interim, I shelved books in libraries, wrote, worked on a Ph.D. (which I never quite managed to complete, waited tables, wrote, delivered baked goods at five in the morning, wrote, chain smoked an endless amount of cigarettes (think of all that money), abandoned the novel, worried, finished a previously abandoned collection of short stories that got published in a small press that immediately went broke, walked, worried, returned to the novel, wrote, abandoned the novel yet again and cursed it and cursed myself while I was at it, wrote another book of poems that would not be published for several years, went back to the novel and asked it for forgiveness, got a job as a professor (a job!) and finally, finished the novel. Ahh, whatever happened to straight and narrow roads. I wanted to ask my student what he was willing to go through just for a shot at being published. No guarantees. Just a shot.
It’s easy to romanticize about the glamorous life of a writer. Fame is something we are taught to desire. Normalcy, or something approaching it, is something unworthy of the gifted individual. Gifted individuals are above living normal lives. In fact, they disdain the pedestrian existence of the masses. (Here, I will confess to having an affair with pedestrian tasks. I love to walk the dog, enjoy washing the dishes and making the bed and working out in the yard. I think of growing a good tomato as a worthwhile endeavor, and I have always reveled in walking the aisles of the local grocery store. Especially, I love to wander through the tool section of Home Depot. God help me, I desire miter saws and drills).
Students think and want the writer’s life to be something special, something extraordinary. Students want to believe that the writer’s life is blessed—free of the mundane and pedestrian realities normal people are forced to suffer and endure. They imagine a writer’s life resembles (or ought to resemble) the lives of the celebrities they are addicted to reading about in those beautiful (if shallow) magazines that cost almost as much as a book of poems. I don’t find this attitude the least bit surprising when I consider the cultural milieu in which we live. We are residents of a world that measures everything by standards of power and celebrity and wealth. This makes me sad. I was once at a reading when two writers shared the stage. One of the writers had won a Pulitzer prize, and his reading was atrocious (disorganized and disrespectful, I thought). The other author, the poet June Jordan, gave a magnificent reading. She had us mesmerized by her presence, by the articulation of her vision, by her poise, by her command of language. She received a standing ovation. After the reading, the two authors signed books. Everyone stood in line behind the disrespectful and disorganized author who’d won the Pulitzer Prize. No one was standing in line for June Jordan's to sign their books. Ah, notoriety.
The Eighth Meditation: "Value What You Do"
Often, students' work moves me. I am in awe of the articulation of something that matters. I have great respect for anyone who cracks the surface and dives towards the depths. I have great respect for anyone who stretches himself, struggles with stories or poems where there is something at stake. When I find a student who has gone beyond the easy way out, who has tried to do something difficult, who is ambitious to express the chaotic stirrings of the chaotic and hurting human heart, when I see this happening in the work of one my students, I state my respect. Doesn't my awe in the face of their work matter more than the grade I assign them?
I once gave a student a B on an essay he had written. The grade was based mostly on the fact his essay was two weeks late. By the agreed upon rules, he should've been given a "C"—a letter grade off for every week it was late (a rule that could hardly be considered punitive). I took great pains to explain this to the student in my comments. The student complained about his grade. He said it wasn't fair, that he deserved an "A." But I refused to change it. He left my office angry with me. This is what bothered me most about that encounter: in my comments I had told him how moving I had found his piece. I told him he had grace, facility with language and heart. This was no small compliment. And I meant every word. But my remarks did not matter. Only the fact of the "B" mattered.
I always tell my students that I can measure their performance in class according to the criteria I have set out. I can assign them a grade. But I am quick to inform them emphatically that I cannot measure what they've learned anymore than I can measure the value of their stories, of their poems, of their work. "Value what you do," I tell them.
My struggles with language and writing have taught me that I must, I must value what I do. At this point in my life, writing may not be particularly difficult for me, but it is always a great weight. It always extracts a price—and I am left in something of an exhausted state. And even now, there are moments when writing is difficult. That said, writing is a great love, a great passion, a great addiction. If writing costs me serious emotional work, it also pays me with the joy of private victories. The struggles involved in the act of writing belong to no one but the writer. But the business of publishing and the politics of the writing world is another matter altogether. I once had a young woman (she was no more than twenty) tell me to go back to Mexico after one of my readings. A fellow writer once whispered to another fellow writer that I was an “affirmative action poet.” Once, at a reading, another fellow writer wrote a note during one of my readings that I was “too politically correct.” One of my colleagues once asked me what I was going to do once the border was out of fashion (as if my writing was exclusively about the border or as if I wrote about the border because it was “the fad” or as if my writing was parochial and insular and insignificant to a broader discussion of American letters or American culture or American identity). More than once, I have been told that I had to choose between “being a good writer” and “being political.” But I never felt I had to choose between all the loves in my life. My biggest sin has always been greed.
Throughout my career, editors have characterized my work as being too Hisapnic or not Hispanic enough or too political or (strangely) not political enough or too Catholic (this was particularly offensive—if I were Jewish or Protestant would he have said I was too Jewish? Too Protestant? Hey, and what about my writing?) My work has been accused of being too far off of the margins of American society or too mainstream or too lyrical for the subject matter or too raw and unpolished or not experimental enough or too traditional or too intellectual or too emotional or too literary (Imagine! An editor remarking that your work is too literary). I have been told that my writing was to harsh, too male, too violent. I have also been told my writing was too sentimental, too operatic or that my work was overly planned or that it was too spontaneous. Too angry. Not angry enough. Too male. Too much of a woman’s writer. I have learned to hate the word, “too.”
I have always had to value my own work.
The Ninth Meditation: A Prayer
I was born to a poor family. My parents were seasonal farm workers. When they started having children, they moved on to less nomadic endeavors. I did not grow up in a middle-class household. I did not grow up surrounded by books. I did not grow up with a sense of entitlement. I never saw the world as my playground. I never assumed I would become anything. Having a steady girl and a steady job was considered a great success.
I don’t know why—but I wanted more. I didn’t expect. But I wanted.
I did not grow up speaking English—though English has become my dominant language. I have struggled with words and language all of my life. I have learned that language is used to dominate people. I have learned that every language is a way of translating the world and that no language translates the world without a particular bias. It is difficult for me not to dismiss writers who do not understand the political nature of language. Like everything else, language is a weapon that can be used for ill or for good.
I have also learned that language is used by all people—and that no one needs anyone else’s permission to use it. I have learned that language—like a communion wafer at Mass—is most alive when it is on the tongue of a believer. I have learned that the wrong word in a fragile moment can break a human heart. I have also learned that the right word at the right time can usher in an irrepeatable moment of joy. I don't believe in romanticizing the role of language in my life or in the world I live in. Nor do I believe in reducing language to a means of making a living. I continue my struggle with words and with language and sometimes I arrive at something that's at least worth the paper its written on. To say that I love what I do is no small thing. Every time I sit down to write, I say a prayer of gratitude.
The village—that large and complex and cruel and difficult place—the village has given me words. I return them to the village. This is what I do.
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz
