Category Archives: Blog

There are several things that frustrate writers. Bad mojo. Lose of important writing hat. Themselves.

But one of my BIGGEST frustrations is reading books that have been published by major houses that are bad. Not just bad, HORRENDOUS! Some of these books have writing SO BAD I threw the book across the across the room and yelled at it like it would solve plot problems, lack of meaningful character development or just extremely unlively writing.

I started reading a book from an author who’s represented by an agent who turned down my first book. I was excited to read this book because I wanted to see what this agent thought was sellable. I got to page 14 and flung it across my living room. It now sits on the floor and will not be picked up for days. I have more pressing issues than picking up that trash, like cleaning the bath tub, paying bills, picking the sesame seeds off of hamburger buns.

Besides having a GLARING grammatical mistake on page 12, sentences with awkward construction, and an annoying lead character that’s as flat as the two day old bottle of Coke on my kitchen counter, it’s just not fun to read.

After all, writers are storytellers. We are entertainers, sometimes teachers, sometimes preachers, but ALWAYS storytellers.

I should give everyone the title of the book, author, agent, publisher, hell the ISDN number but I won’t. Mostly because I learned not to burn bridges a long time ago. But what I will say is that I’m glad that agent turned me down. If that book is what he can sell, what would that say about me? Granted I’m no Maya Angelou or Alice Walker. Heck, I’m barley an Icess Fernandez. But if books like this exist, it’s more difficult for people with real writing ability to get published.

I’m just sayin‘.

It’s about that time of year again when the store shelves look like they’ve been hose down in red crayon and the things like stuffed puppies are acceptable gifts for adults.

Yes, Valentines Day is coming like a fierce wind from the West and there is nothing any of us can do about it except…

Write a story and publish it on our blogs.

Yup. I’m writing a Valentine’s themed story and you’re invited to read it.
But not today. In two weeks.

More details to come.

By Icess Fernandez Rojas

A woman sings through the walls and my ear picks up the melody.

Notes, long, stout, whole and half, dance in front of my eyes

Ascend and descend, rolling through rhythms

Like seductive snakes.

Pitch is perfect and black.

Dark like the part of my brain that stopped working.

Or the part that’s caged by change

On the breeze through the walls the melody hits.

Repetition against the drums in waves

From an ocean with no coast

And a beach with no sand.

A paradise found among sound

And an old flame at the base of forest fire

Hidden among quarter notes.

Disguised as movements.

Pianissimo.

Staccato.

Short. Shorter. Shortest.

Rest.

Cresendo to forte until the notes stand still.

And they will

When the Siren stops.

Paul Muldoon has a mess of hair that moves even when he’s standing still. That’s probably because what’s under it causes the follicles to vibrate. He’s intense to say the least but engaging.

By looking at him he would be what a person like me would imagine an Ivy League English professor with a boat loads of awards under his belt to look like — blazer, tie, comfortable shoes.

But like life’s wonderful surprises, what you see ain’t what you get.

Paul

Muldoon is a word lover-whether it’s poems or songs- and I’m jealous that Princeton University gets to have him full time.

I got to interview this writer for an article I wrote for The (Shreveport) Times. Admittedly, the 12-inch story didn’t do him justice. There was so much more of my 15 minute interview with him that I wanted to write about but the only people who would care about that would be other writers. So this is my compromise, writing about the 2003 Pulitzer winner on my humble blog.

I’ll do my best.

Muldoon started writing during his mid-teens. His teacher would assign the class an essay to write every weekend. One weekend he just got tired of it.

“One weekend I wrote a poem. I was asked to read it out loud to the class,” he said.

And thus a career was born.

I think one of the overwhelming things that impressed me was that he was a wordsmith. Granted that every writer is, but Muldoon does not move from a line until it’s perfect. He’s not a draft person, he said. He finds no use in them and going sans draft is “labor-saving”

“Poetry is adventures in language,” he said. “It’s fun exposing one’s self to language.”

He admits he doesn’t spend a lot of time writing; he spends it working, spending time with family. But poems for him are spontaneous thoughts or lines or images. When one hits, he goes to work. Or rather, it works him. Writers, regardless of discipline, know this feeling well.

“A poem may come from an unlikely spot,” he said. “It has no interest in what I want to do but what it wants to do.”

Muldoon talked about that feeling while he’s creating–a high that’s more addictive than drugs.

“It’s a kinda a bug, an addiction, a disease. One gets, in a way, engaged in the world of words.”

The feeling is the same he felt as a student in his mid-teens mainly because he was encouraged to continue writing.

“That was one of those things that got me to write–the encouragement,” he said. “That is so important for writers when appropriate.”

And when is it appropriate?

“It’s appropriate most of the time. On the other hand one should not encourage people that are wasting time and money.”

My final question was about the old thought and almost stereotype of artists and the origin of their art. Is art pain? This is what he had to say:

“Sometimes, it is. Certainly pain is more intense than pleasure. The fact of the matter is we tend to be interested in sorrow rather than joy. In a strange way sorrow needs more attention. Joy is more fleeting than sorrow.”

By Icess Fernandez Rojas

There is a quiet to our stillness that wasn’t there before.

It gives me comfort like coco on a snowy day. And I feel closer to you; beyond the guarded picket fence you call your true self.

In the space between stanzas, the gap between neurons, I don’t miss our squeaky wheel, our zenith, our apex, and our concentric.

…it’s just noise.

But it’s there like a script to a hundred past conversations and the hundred we have yet to speak.

We’re dancing with a white elephant to a song that doesn’t exist. Feeding pleasantries to the monkeys on our backs. Walking through life attached to smoke and mirrors.

And yet that comforts me too.

Content with a wall of silence. In a plain. In a dimension. In a soundless universe. I hunger for your stillness. A whisper. A murmur. A sigh.

Anything to never hear you say what I know you must…quiet fragments of nothing.

I’m exhausted. All. The. Time.

It maybe that I’m recovering from the holidays or the inauguration of our first bi-racial president (homeboy’s mom is white from Kansas, he’s hardly the first BLACK president, I’m just sayin‘). Regardless, a sistah tired.

And as much as I catch some Zs, I’m still tired. And with the tired, so is the writing. Tired, tired, tired.

What to do? Not sure yet, I’ve got to think of something.

Maybe it’s because my Christmas tree is still up?

Note to self: pay a college student to come take down the tree.

• 11:45 at 161
• Latina
• Quite Fragments of Nothing
• Space