Adrian S. Potter, Revisited

A baccalaureate in engineering and graduate schooling in business keep me grounded in what can be documented, studied, and compared - above all, dissatisfied with superficial explanations.  I believe this motivates much of my writing. 

This past spring I spent more time reading and critiquing poetry instead of writing. Why? Because I had the honor of judging a contest for the first time, the 2009 Shine Journal Poetry Contest.  The entries were impressive and choosing a winner was challenging work. I learned so much serving as a judge and getting a chance to be on the "other side" of the whole literary contest rigmarole. I enjoyed the experience and believe it's helped my development as a poet.

I'm incessantly messing with my style, and "If Love is a Big City, Lately I've Considered Relocating" is a derivative of this tinkering.  Lately I've meandered from the conventional narrative of my previous work, drifting toward something less linear, more disjointed.  I take some from the imagists, a bit from the confessionalists, stir in personal angst and allow the words to rub together until they produce friction, or maybe fire.  Add liquor, music, and squeeze in a hint of cynicism.  Voila.

My short fiction chapbook, Survival Notes, is available through Červená Barva Press.  I will have poems appearing in upcoming issues of Front Range, 95Notes, and Exact Change Only.  Additional propaganda about my writing can be found at http://adrianspotter.squarespace.com/, along with other random posts that chronicle my lame existence.

I decided I wanted to be a writer the summer I was seven.  The nine year old daughter of one of my grandfather's friends had come to visit my grandparents with her family.  During our blissful sojourn in my grandparents' beach house with its wrap around porches and thousands of hiding places, Patricia told me all about her novel she was writing, illustrating the characters and episodes with colored chalk on the blackboard in the children's dining room.  I coveted her manuscript tied with a ribbon and longed to produce my own creative opus.

But my parents were concerned about practical things, like whether or not I could make a living.  My father was a lawyer who liked to tell me I had a good legal mind.  My mother had given up an acting career when she married and thought the artistic professions demanded too much sacrifice.  

Recently, I ran into one of my father's  former law partners who shared with me that when he met  me for the first time in the law office  at age eleven,  he'd asked what I  wanted to be when I grew up, and I'd said, "A poet."  My father apparently quipped in response, "She can be a lawyer and a poet." 

Throughout college I labored over my writing and managed to have two poems accepted by literary journals, one of which won a prize and was later republished in an anthology.  However, I became discouraged by the vast quantity of rejections slips I received and began to question whether I had any real skill.  I ended up going to law school and abandoning my dream.

A  little more than ten years out of law school, I was working as a legal writing  instructor when I realized that a favorite aspect of my job involved creating  the imaginative "fact patterns" for my students to write memos about. Even more interesting to me, many of my students thought these fact patterns were real cases and would explain my characters to me, sometimes seeing qualities I'd never put there.  The culmination occurred when a student came to my office hours, asking to know what happened at the end of the latest fact pattern.  I flippantly told him to make up whatever ending he wanted, and he became angry, insisting the fact pattern was a real case and I was just withholding an ending I must know.  I felt this was a sign: God or Fate or Life was telling me I did have the skill to weave a story.  That talent I'd fallen in love with long ago when I knew Patricia.  (By the way, when she grew up, she published a novel: Breathing Room by Patricia Elam.) 

After this, I started a writing group and began to write again. Two years ago I had a bout with breast cancer.  Once I completed radiation, I signed up for a writing class in addition to my writers' group.  Having cancer made me feel I should do something extra to bolster my writing before life passed me by.  I now do both the class and the group.  My goal is to write two hours every day, but for all the times I fall short, the writing group and class provide me with forced deadlines (my greatest blessing).

My current philosophy is that I must work to improve my writing, which may involve much criticism and many drafts, and that I must continue to be brave about submitting my pieces.  Sometimes I repeat it to myself like a mantra, "Be brave; be brave."

The writers I've fallen in love with this summer are Elizabeth Strout and Wells Tower.  At the moment, I'm reading Nola by Robin Hemley which is a memoir, but it deals with the issue of fiction and truth in a most interesting way, using journals, legal papers and novels as questionably reliable evidence from the past to uncover the story of Hemley's older sister Nola.

Perhaps Hemley's book touches at the heart of what I love so about writing: what's fiction, what's fact (reliable or not) and can you tell the difference?

Meet Kausam R. Salam 

Coming Together with Poetry

I often think back to when I was five or six and wrote down my earliest nightmare about a black wire on an open field. I don't know if that wire was a barbed wire or a simple black thread upon the horizon. In my mind, I was alone and had to climb over it or climb under it, but I knew I had to do something. When my eyes opened, I wrote and wrote in my child's handwriting; words scrawled all over the page, tall letters and fat dots--this energy let me know everything, even nightmares have a solution. Poetry was a solution, sometimes a resolution about unexplained phenomena; it was the first cause of my communication with those around me. Fragmented words and hushed syllables came out of a little voice that was expected to answer the adults around me.

As I grew older, I heard so much music--poetry was sung to me at breakfast, old lyrical songs in Persian, English, Urdu, and even German--the human voice had the power to move me to tears and joy at the same time. Grandfather's poems my father sang aloud, explaining their translation in English. Irish songs and Afghani songs had nothing to do with me superficially; yet their melodies enchanted me. Then I read A Child's Garden of Verses, a colorful first book of children's poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. This was my first conscious birthday gift from my parents.

There were more chances to listen to poets of various languages recite their poems on the weekends. Akka (my father) would take me on the subway to Manhattan's Metropolitan Insurance Company where the only "insurance" talk was a group of poets who were given a life-guarantee that their voices would be heard--the Bengali poet sang his lines, he who lost both home and family to a dictator enemy who destroyed humanity to shreds. Another poet sang in Urdu about her identity and her personal value in a humorous, satirical way. Then, some poets recited their ideas in English; others nodded and achieved "hal qal"--a kind of heightened sense of...well highness...over nothing but mere words, for alcohol was never served here. Thus, poetry came to mean a universal language, like music, that no one could divide or separate from despite those who lived for cultural divisions. Poetry and unity came together for me.

In college, poetry became my reclusive nature, and I celebrated the Ozarks with childish romantic lines. I listened to Derek Walcott and Lahna Diskin and Miller Williams give their recitations and felt a strange kinship that drove me away from traditional book learning and into the heart of people's hearts. A certain comparative literature professor named John Locke, yes that was his real name, let me write notes in poetic form and offered bonus points for poems related to each class. Then, he'd invite the fragile, overly sensitive students in his office for a chat where he kept clean white towels folded up as in drawers of hotels, in case someone couldn't take his criticism anymore and had to have a good cry. Sadly, I cried and kept taking his criticism. One time he called me an "airy fairy" who kept her face in the air instead of "over here."

As a teacher, many years later, I discovered John Locke was killed by a favorite graduate student, shot right in the heart, and died instantly. Poetry and violence came together for me on that day. I met a descendant of the American poet, Holmes, who proudly taught a creative writing course. He allowed experimentation and celebrated a blend of styles. Then, a severe director-poet told me not to apply for an MFA, that an easterner couldn't possibly write for a western and southern audience--"stay with the education major, honey...you'll be safe that way." Then poetry and criticism came together for me.

Later when I read more of Billy Collins, I remembered Miller Williams' criticism of this dynamite poet. And poetry and praise came together for me.

As I taught at a rural school in Cisne, Illinois, the Spanish poets Neruda and Machado came into my poetic consciousness. Dreams and reality came together for me.

In the inner city, Galena Park, my Flushing-Queens-jump-roping childhood came back to me. I read Tupac Shakur--whose poems influenced my student, Gerald, "Big G." Poetry and perception came together for me.

I couldn't stop thinking through every new idea without the lens of poetry. Every important conversation became a poetic entry in my journal, and poems became my personal oral tradition as I communicated with my students and my own children.

Today I can't imagine a life without poetry in the same way I can't imagine a life without the contemplation of God.

I love writing, and I look forward to the daily two-hour block I've decreed as my ‘I'm writing; don't bother me' time.  Still, sometimes it's really hard and all I want to do is quit. 

I've worked full time for thirty-plus years and only began to write when my younger son went off to college.  That's when I decided it was time I fulfilled one of my lifelong dreams.  I signed up for a creative writing course at the local university and by the end of the semester, I was hooked.  I registered for a second class, joined a writing group, and began attending writing workshops. 

Finishing my first novel took a very long time, even though the entire story had been in my head for months.  Fast forward six years:  My novel, my beautiful baby, was finished.  I edited, rewrote, re-edited, shoved it in a drawer for six months, pulled it out, re-edited, rewrote.  I did my homework, crafted a compelling query letter, and sent it off to my carefully-researched list of agents.  After forty-three rejections, I tossed both the novel and its half-finished sequel into a hat box, sulked for a few weeks, and turned my focus to short stories.

Thankfully, success there has been a bit more forthcoming.  I've had seven short stories and one piece of flash fiction accepted for publication; three short stories were included in anthologies. 

Submitting my writing to competitions and literary journals is a large part of what keeps me writing.  Some days, what I write isn't all that good, but sometimes it is.  And when I've edited, studiously ignored it for several weeks, then pulled it out, polished, and edited to the best of my ability, I send it off and cross my fingers.  It may not win, but I know I've submitted my best work.  Besides, hope springs eternal.  You can't win if you don't enter!

Family and friends from time to time say, "You know, you really ought to write about . . . . [fill in blank here].  And I try to become excited about their suggestions.  But inevitably, I fail.  Their passion isn't my passion.  I can only write about what captures my imagination.  Sometimes it's the odd comment in an obituary; perhaps an offhand statement overheard in a restaurant or grocery store.  Now and then, it's a news article, usually on an obscure topic, that catches my eye.  Then the ‘what if' thoughts flood my brain, and the fun begins.  I wander off to that place where I create the reality and let the characters point the way. 

I read voraciously, always on the lookout for that novel that pulls me in so completely that I'm disappointed when it ends and I'm tossed back into real life.  If my writing can make that magic happen for a reader, I'll consider myself a successful author.  That's the carrot that keeps me writing. 

My husband and I are hard at work on Life-Phase II.  We spend our weekends, holidays and vacation time clearing long-neglected pastures and fields on property we bought in rural North Carolina.  Our dream is to build a small house, retire from our day jobs and become gentleman / gentlewoman farmers. 

I can't wait to sashay out of the fast lane and into a life where, first and foremost, I write.  Any spare time I might have, I'll devote to tending a large orchard and vegetable garden.  We're toying with the idea of raising a few cattle, meat goats, guinea hens, rabbits, and possibly a horse or two for the grandchildren to ride. 

Andrew Blackman

As a child, I wrote stories to express the things I could never seem to say out loud. In the quiet of my room, alone with a blunt, heavily chewed pencil and a scrap of paper, I felt free. If I made a mistake, I could rub it out and get it right the second time, or the third. I shaped the words with my small, chocolate-stained fingers, and the results pleased me. So different from spoken words, which seemed to come out of their own accord, often jumbled or inaccurate, and could never be rubbed out.

These days I have a laptop, and my fingers are stained with coffee rather than chocolate, but otherwise my writing process remains remarkably similar. 

The results, of course, are different. My ideas have changed radically since I was eight. Rather than being obsessed with the unfairness of teachers or parents, I am now obsessed with societal injustice. Instead of grumbling about having to clean my room, I grumble about who will clean the planet. I have been influenced by literature from around the world: Jorge Luis Borges, André Brink, Kazuo Ishiguro and others. I have had formal training, too: a history degree from Oxford University, a master’s in journalism from Columbia, three years as a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York. I have learned much from all of these sources and have watched myself improving as a writer.

But now, as I enter my thirties, I have decided to return to my childhood instinct that the truth is best told through fiction. I have moved back to London, taken a break from journalism, and written a couple of novels and a drawer full of short stories, one of which was recently published by Leaf Books. In the novel excerpted on this site, I try to express the sense of smallness, both geographic and psychological, that I felt on returning from America to Britain. I imagine a couple of Londoners, inspired by Jack Kerouac’s Beat classic “On the Road,” setting off on a road trip, only to discover that the horizon of Britain in 2008 is not so broad as that of fifties America. I also explore the two countries’ fascination with each other’s mythology, a subject that has informed much of my work recently.

No matter what I write about, though, my main aim right now is to recapture the freedom I felt as a tongue-tied eight year old letting rip against the world with his grubby little HB pencil.

Jerry Ryan

I started writing seriously in the early 90s. I enjoyed an unplanned sabbatical from my job and went back to school. I took a writing course, “Writing the Natural Way” using the book by Gabriele Rico. It was like someone let the genie out of the bottle. I haven’t stopped writing since. The clustering technique unleashes the hidden treasures locked in the right side of the brain and gets them onto paper. It’s a technique I use in writing fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, poetry, and business letters.

I found that writing was the cheapest form of therapy I could find. Fiction writing allows me to test characters with ethical flaws in situations that test those ethics. Sometimes I know what the characters will do. Often, they surprise me and insist on doing something I hadn’t planned for them to do. That’s when writing is really a kick.

As you can see from my submission, I love cycling. With over 30 years and 35,000 miles in the saddle, I've had my fair share of cycling experiences. The idea for writing about cycling came from friends constantly calling with questions about buying a bicycle, what accessories to have, where to ride, how to fix.... you get the idea. The result was a series of articles written for novice to intermediate cyclists and enjoyed by all those who bicycle and love to read about cycling. They say “Write what you know.” It’s true.

I wrote constantly and submitted work for about three years before I hooked up with Windy City Sports. That seemed to be the key to becoming more successful. When someone pays you regularly for what you write, you’re a writer, not just a dilettante. I still enter competitions and still meet with more rejections than acceptance, but I keep plugging away.

I write poetry to work through life issues, to stay in emotional touch with feelings often repressed in daily life. My day job isn’t that satisfying on a gut level. Poetry fills a need that other forms of writing don’t.  I’ve been fortunate to win a few poetry competitions along the way.

Poetry became a tool to prime the pump for ideas for my other writings. I found I enjoyed the denseness of language and economy of words inherent in a poem. Poetry is a discipline that I now enjoy for its own pleasure.

I started entering writing competitions as a way to test the waters for my writing.   As an unagented author, I found it was difficult to get short stories and poems published. Competitions are a great place for your work to be judged by people who will give your work a good, critical read. When you win a few, it helps your bio when you submit elsewhere.

Competitions usually have judges who are sincerely interested in finding work that they would love to publish. Many contests are run by university fine arts programs that are looking for good new work, as opposed to the literary and commercial markets where your story or poem is one more manuscript plucked out of the slush pile and read by an overworked and underpaid editorial assistant or intern.

I entered a competition from Next Stop Hollywood that called for short stories that might lend themselves to film or TV projects. From over 600 submissions, 15 were selected for inclusion, one of mine among them.  "A.K.A." is a love story and a crime story involving two ex-DEA agents and an exotic dancer, a drug deal gone wrong, and mistaken identity. The prize included publication in the St. Martin’s Press anthology (http://nextstophollywood.org), a small cash advance, a split of royalties with the other authors and the publisher, and best of all, some nice participation if the stories are optioned and/or produced.

I try to write every day.  With a full time job, that’s not always easy.  Anne Lamott, in her book Bird by Bird wrote about not waiting for the Muse to move you before sitting down to write. If you sit down to write every day, the Muse will know where to find you.  I’m trying, Anne, I’m trying.

I would recommend joining a good writers' group that offers support along with a high level of critique, a group that allows you to read your work aloud. It’s amazing how your best work stands out, and how your less than stellar effort show up when you hear it out loud. It’s easy to spot the bumps in your work.

Adrian S. Potter

I begin most creative sessions without a notion of what I’m crafting.  Since I write both verse and prose, the line separating them often becomes obscure.  “Meditation on Meditation” started as a flash fiction piece.  Since there was no true plot, I gradually converted it into a prose poem, and then a free verse poem.  This process wasn’t derived from any textbook guidance, but it’s a tactic that has served me well.  Decent poems can grow from a descriptive paragraph that’s trapped inside a failed short story; similarly strong fiction can sometimes be birthed by a vivid line in a scrapped sonnet.

I am a believer of writing as a vehicle for catharsis, confession, and change.  In other words, you won’t find any odes to butterflies or cheesy fairytales authored by me.  My inspirations are varied; I can’t pinpoint what defines my manically changing style.  I’m definitely stirred by classic African-American writers such as Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, and Zora Neale Hurston.  I’ve also been influenced by emerging small press poets and short fiction authors.  I have much to learn about writing, so I read all I can in order to notice what works (and what doesn’t). 

I’m also highly impacted by music, whether it’s hip hop, jazz, R & B, blues, or occasionally even rock.  I often listen to music while brainstorming and editing, which is in conflict with the traditional approach of working in silence.  Usually I can read one of my poems or stories and recall that its “rhythm” was fostered by the furious refrain of a Tupac song, a melancholy Miles Davis solo, or a bland guitar riff from the latest overplayed band on the radio. 

Oh yeah, I almost forgot my shameless plugs.  My first fiction chapbook, Survival Notes, is forthcoming through Červená Barva Press.  I will have poetry in future editions of The Arabesques Review, Cherry Bleeds, the I-70 Review, and Prairie Poetry.

Additional propaganda can be found at http://adrianspotter.squarespace.com/.