Days of Iowa

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Days have been nothing but inconsistent blocks of time. Some long, some short. Some so vague they hardly existed. And now the clock ticks and all that remains are a few weeks, which can either last as long as a one night’s dream, or a song, or as long as they hours permit.

Iowa City is a town of beautiful demons. You see them scattered, darting, imposing, at times fleeting. They look at us with awe and disgust, us writers from another planet, us writers from across the borders.

Here, there are no borders. Here, there are no limitations. Here, there are pools and each pool is of a different color. But still, they are all pools.

In Iowa City you drink and you dance and you love. Pretty much like anywhere else, right? Wrong. Here you do the living with a bunch of writers and poets, most confused, some amused.

It’s a funny thing, being part of a community of writers and poets. As one myself, I’ve never felt this odd sense of foreign belonging.

There’s constant chatter of literature, which I often find rather pertinacious. But every once in a while, you engage in a revelatory conversation that brings your own writing into prospective. And often, these happen when we are NOT discussing the “impact of the global novel” and the like.

I’ve asked myself many questions that I thought I will have the answers to here. All I ended up having is more questions. We are in this bubble and life is happening out there in the world.

And we convince ourselves that what we write will somehow save the world, one day, one word at a time. But that’s an overly romantic view.

A crazy person in a town full of crazy people will seem like a normal person.

This is what Iowa City is like for writers.

The clock ticks.

Why I Hate Writing

"I HATE writing."

That's not the kind of start you want to go with when you're speaking to a bunch of undergrad writers. But I didn't stop there.

"I hate writing as much as I hate reading!" I told them.

After the hesitant giggles subsided, I went on to explain to them what I meant.

I was giving a short talk to the students of the International Literature Class at the University of Iowa as part of my participation in the International Writing Program.

If a writer tells you that writing is a joy, know that they are lying. Writing is associated with misery and here's why:

When you're not writing, you are miserable.
When you are writing, you are not happy with what you're writing.
When you finish a piece, you find it horrible it is.
When you publish your work, you think of how you could've made it sound better.

Get the picture?

When it comes to reading, well. We were brought up associating reading with school textbooks and homework. Anyone who's gone through government schooling must've grown up hating books. We never explored the idea that reading can be for pleasure, and not just punishment.

At home, my parents had a big wall library full of all sorts of books on religions, politics, history and philosophy. My father kept insisting that I should read. The idea never appealed to me.  Later on in life, I discovered that I can read what I want, when I want, for nothing more than passing time.

Following the talk, a bunch of the students asked me about the short story 'The Red Hand' which they had read as part of their class. I was both honored and flattered by their comments, questions and responses.

Here are some of them:

"From the cryptic description of the Red Hand in the beginning, I was on the edge of my seat" - Matthew McLaughlin

"Your story intrigued me from the beginning. I thought that this story was a metaphor about our society and the way we look at inspiration," - Aubrey Davidson

"First of all, I must say I really enjoyed your short story, 'The Red Hand', as it was very good at hiding it was going to be a short horror story, instead opting for a more traditional mystery novella kind of feel," - Akira Mizobuchi

"Your story was so descriptive and realistic," - Erica Jennings

"Your story left me fixating on this idea of whether it's worse to know or not know," - Kelsey Chingren 

It was a real pleasure to speak to these bright young things and I was pleasure with the way they responded to my story and my talk.

I ended my speech by saying that the less we know, the more we discover. And it's that notion that kept me going as writer. I wanted to discover things for my self. My life was defined by NOT doing what I have been told to do.

Photos by Asma Nadia 

Upcoming Readings & Talks in Iowa City

The IWP folks will keep us quite busy over the coming weeks. I will be taking part in several talks and readings in various institutions and events, including the University of Iowa and the Iowa City Book Festival, all of which sound exciting and I’m thrilled to be asked to appear in them. 

Here is a list of upcoming events so far: 

Talk and Reading 
Cornell College, Iowa City 
September 12^th 

Talk with ILT Class
University of Iowa, Iowa City 
September 16^th – 3.30pm 

Freedom Limits Panel  
Iowa City Book Festival, Iowa City 
October 10-13 

Reading 
Prairie Lights Bookstore, Iowa City 
October 27^th – 7pm

A Novel Approach

The question of what differentiates a novel from a short story might at first seem obvious. Many immediately refer to the ‘length’ and word count of each form

But the reality, as I am discovering more and more from my chats with numerous fiction writers scattered in every corner of Iowa City, is that length is the last difference to consider.

Van, a first year fiction writer at the Iowa Writers Workshop, whom I met following a rather entertaining, albeit odd, poetry recital at The Mill, jokingly said that he doesn’t even know what a novel is anymore.

He told me how short fiction is a much more fluid form that he enjoys exploring. I agreed with him. There is something far more refreshing and rewarding about writing a short story. I pointed out that novels spend the first couple of hundred of pages building up to this ultimate climax that the reader is meant to care for, this of course doesn’t apply to every novel. But it often is the case.

Where as with short stories, you don’t have to have such a climax. It’s an exploration of the human condition rather than a telling of a series of events. The night before, I was dragged by the ever wise and wonderful Canadian/Egyptian writer Karim Alrawi to the Foxhead, the famed bar that many great writers spent their time deliberating literature, and writing, and naturally, enjoying the odd drink or two. 

I had expressed my anxiety to Karim about starting a new novel. I had two unfinished manuscripts that I no longer felt attached to and felt the need to use my time during the IWP to begin a new project.

And what he said sounded so simple, yet something I’ve never considered before. He said. “Start with your ending. Figure it out and build your story from there.” Your final act, your ending, is the reward that the readers looks for after investing time in reading your novel. So it is crucial.

Short stories, sometimes, don’t even have to have plot. But approaching a novel from the end would allow it to grow organically and gradually, branching into the events and characters that leads it to it.

That and choice.

Present a moral choice that your protagonist has to make in order to resolve the conflict. A choice that builds suspense by the time the reader has developed an emotional connection with the character.

With that in mind, let’s get to writing.

One Week in Iowa

It’s been a week in which I partied like I was 22 all over again, kayaked on a beautiful day in Lake MacBride and was told off by the ‘lake’ police for swimming off the ‘grid’, randomly met a well-known political cartoonist in a bar full of writers and poets late one night, ate more burgers than a healthy person ought to eat in one week, picked fresh apples from the orchard, wrote some, sat through a bunch of mind-numbingly boring ‘orientation’ sessions and two entertaining readings at the warm and cozy Prairie Lights Bookstore, was mistaken for some poet from Chile named Steve, got an Iowa City Hawkeyes t-shirt for five bucks which upon wearing people would randomly yell ‘GO HAWKS!’ at me, had the misfortune of spending my first night with my window almost shattering from the noise coming from the annual freshman party in the park literally meters away from me, wrote some more, and drank, probably, an entire barrel of coffee.

So that’s one week down.

Nine to go.

I think I love this place.

 

The Curious Case of the Overzelous Luggage

I arrived in Iowa City yesterday afternoon to start my 10-week writing residency at the University of Iowa.

Russell met me at Cedar Rapids airport with a tiny bit of paper with the International Writing Program logo on it.

Then I lost my suitcase.

I had a feeling that that might happen when I had dropped it off at the weird check-in system in LaGuardia. So I was partially not surprised when it didn’t show up on the conveyor belt, but still slightly annoyed.

Russel and I went up to the counter as I anxiously waited my turn.

As it were, and oddly enough, I was told by the lady at the counter that – get this – my suitcase had arrived on an EARLIER flight! I realized then where it all went wrong.

See, my flight from New York to Chicago, where I caught my connection flight, was HALF AN HOUR early. It arrived at O’Hare around 30 minutes before scheduled time, so my luggage just kept on going as I wanted for my flight at O’Hare.

This was probably the only time in the history of my flying that A) a flight was half an hour EARLY, B) my luggage arrived at my destination BEFORE me.

American are good like that. The get shit done before they even happen.