Valley Writers Day
The alarm went off at 4am Saturday morning. The second alarm went off at 4:10am as I sleepily reached to shut off the screeching monster on my bedside table. It was an ungodly hour to start the day especially when I don’t sleep all that much anyway.

“Are you up?” NL asked as I answered the phone around 4:20am.

“I’m in the shower.” I sleepily answered.

We were off to the 2006 Great Valley Writer’s Conference at the Merced Multicultural Arts Center to represent Noveltown and Bakersfield writers. We had to leave town no later than 5:30am in order to make the 8am check in at the Conference. I packed up my laptop and makeup and headed to NL’s house a few minutes after 5am. He wasn’t quite ready yet and his kids weren’t up yet.

“I’ll be right back.” I said going back out to my car.

“Where are you going?” He asked.

“To get my makeup.” I replied.

I had planned to put my makeup on in the car on the ride up to Merced, but since they weren’t ready to go I sat on NL’s couch and put my makeup on while he ran around gathering up his podcast equipment, camera and other items. Finally we were on the road to Merced. I crawled into the passenger seat with a travel size squishy pillow and quickly went to sleep while NL drove and surfed through talk radio stations.

Never having been to a writer’s conference before I didn’t really know what to expect. I never expected to learn so much about the world of writers and publishers in California. I never expected to learn so much about writing itself. I never expected to meet so many writers from the Central Valley. I never expected to be around so many published authors and writing teachers. I never expected to be sooo inspired to write. I never expected to hear an impromptu poem about milky breasts from a woman. I never expected to make new friends. I never expected an Indiana Jones hat or a long nappy beard to be a literary look. I never expected to get so much out of the experience. I never expected to want to write even more…

What I did expect was: to learn, to absorb as much information for Noveltown and for my own writing dreams as possible. It was an incredibly inspiring day full of information, networking, and creative energy.

The day began with an inspiring speech from an acclaimed Central Valley artist. He was a painter, a free spirit, instead of a stuffy literary lecturing intellectual, who would have thought it?

Paul Buxman, 'a farmer and artist from the San Joaquin Valley who teaches simplicity and honesty is the key to great art' expressed his great respect for writers and the stories they tell. “You are the Mona Lisa” He exclaimed encouraging us to “Be who you are, write what you know.” Explaining that “Writing is skill and humility… cultivate humility.” He continued on, comparing the art of painting and writing giving more weight of importance to writers, “Style being our inability to capture reality” that was our special gift, he revealed. “Your story is mine” he insisted. “The world is dying to hear from you,” he commanded with such force. I was inspired. It was a great beginning to a day of unknown expectations. And then he said: “I’ve never seen the Internet!” What? Did I hear him right? How can you be an artist in this day and age and have never even seen the Internet?! How does he communicate? Network? Hasn’t he heard of email? I wondered.

There were poetry, fiction and non-fiction workshops after the opening speech; NL and I decided to sit in on the poetry workshop conducted by Tim Z. Hernandez. Hernandez was 'a provocative writer and performance artist who, through his creative work Skin Tax, rejects the culture of machismo in which he was reared, especially that culture’s notions of men as tough and unfeeling'. I was especially interested in his take on the culture of machismo in his writing since I had married into that culture and experienced its affect on women first hand.

Hernandez, more in tune with performance art, was unlike any poetry teacher I had ever had. He began by instructing the poetry group through breathing and stretching exercises from the art of meditation. Wanting us to become one with our bodies and our poetic breath. “We come with the tools we need for poetry” He said willing us to experience a release of poetic freedom.

Oh No! Not meditation! I screamed in my head feeling uncomfortable as I participated in the meditation exercises. I have a problem with meditation. It’s just not my thing. And I especially don’t like when people try to force meditation methods upon me. I guess you could say I have meditation issues. I’m sure if I ever have the pleasure of having a baby, I will have trouble with Lamaze breathing techniques too. Forcing me to breath in and out and feel the breath in my body does not bring me any closer to my poetic breath, I just don’t work that way.

Hernandez then had us warm up our hands by rubbing them together and place them over our closed eyes. He called this “Cultivating the poetry eye.” We were then instructed to write what we saw through our ‘poetic eye’. I don’t see anything. I thought with my hands over my eyes. I’m still trying to figure out the breathing. I rationalized. I don’t write poetry this way! I screamed in my head as others busily wrote their poems while I stared at a blank piece of paper. A couple of acoustic musicians softly played sweet melodies a few feet behind me as I forced myself to get lost in the music. Music always helps me find my poetic voice. I forced myself to write a few words down on the page about what I was feeling so that I’d have something to share with the group when the time came. I wrote:

Breathing is the focus,
instead of breath
coming on its own…
You tell me:
“Breathe!”
“Feel the breath!”
I wait for feeling,
for something
but I’m just breathing…

Next Hernandez instructed the group through exercises involving space and awareness of our surroundings and a claustrophobic circle of intimacy. We went outside to observe the space around us with our poetic eyes. We were instructed to write what we saw. I wrote:

A faded Mana Bible Book Store sign
A colorful mosaic mural
Cigarette butt on ground
Crumbled brown paper bag
Woman in car writing
Green scarf hanging down a woman’s back
A discarded green straw
People laughing animated at coffee shop
Gallery sign waiting for notice
POW sticker on light pole
Absence of graffiti and filth
Grass poking through the sidewalk
Old brick buildings
Art deco marquee

NL artfully captured Hernandez observing the space around him in this captivating photo. I felt there was so much more I could have learned from Hernandez if only time had permitted. I bought his book Skin Tax to experience his poetry and voice on a more personal level.

Next, NL and I sat in on the fiction workshop being taught by Gerald Haslam and Lucy Corin. Haslam was 'a celebrated California writer who paid particular attention to rural and small town areas, its poor and working class people of all colors, to explore the human condition' in his writing. And Corin was 'a professor of English at UC Davis and a fiction writer with a particular interest in innovative narrative'. I knew of a possible controversy between NL and Haslam but this was my first time to meet him.

The fiction group was much more subdued than the poetry group we had just left. When we joined them they were involved in a writing assignment to write a narrative story exactly as it had been told. Each person at our table told a story of a scar. When it was my turn, I told a very abbreviated version of my scarred knee. Leaving out the dramatic tale of drug addiction, Trainspotting, dark Hollywood streets, and a flamboyant gay artist and his possible involvement with my ex husband that all culminated in the moment I injured my knee. I bet you all would like to hear that story wouldn’t you!

NL was unhappy with my abbreviated version of such a great tale that he wrote about in his novel Thick White Crust and I wrote about in a narrative poem called Trainspotting. He prompted me to give more details, but I didn’t feel that for the purpose of the workshop exercise, the three elder ladies and one college student at our table needed all those details about a story that seems more like a movie than part of my life; but I gave them a bit more to appease NL. He was disappointed to say the least, he loves the story of my scarred knee. Someday I will have to share that story or the poem Trainspotting with all of you readers. My favorite line from the other scar stories at our table was: “My husband broke my arm.”

Haslam and Corin imparted some great truths about writing including: “Be generous with acceptance of your ideas early on in your drafts” and “Weed out what’s not necessary to let what’s necessary show through.” Haslam went on to say: “Writing is an act of discovery” explaining that: “Writing a novel is a painful experience.” Having yet to finish my novel, I can relate to agonizing over the project.

After lunch, where I scraped mayonnaise and lettuce off a sandwich provided by the conference to make it eatable; we heard extraordinary poetry from the Merced Union High School’s Valley Voices poetry group.

The afternoon consisted of two panel sessions on: ‘Writing from the valley: Experiences by Valley Journalists’ and ‘Do Books Matter? Building a Literary Community’. In the first panel: Dr. Andy Jones of Dr. Andy’s Poetry Hour radio show on KDVS 90.3 FM quoted Walt Whitman saying: “Great poets need great audiences” adding that it was the same for authors. He also said: “Once upon a time only poets bought books by other poets, now it’s a marketing scheme.” I wish his radio program reached Bakersfield, I would definitely tune in and listen. In the second panel: Cindy Wathen of the Yosemite Writers Conference said: “All of us should feel a responsibility to other authors” as she spoke of how to build literary communities. Bakersfield is on the cusp of a literary community explosion and I want to be part of it and so should you.

I was surprised to find that more writers were not using the Internet and blogging as a way to reach out to an audience with their own voice. How is it that the biggest networking tool for building a literary community was being ignored by so many Valley writers?

The Valley Writer’s Conference ended with an interactive chanting poem from 'celebrated poet, performance artist and professor of creative writing at UC Riverside', Juan Felipe Herrera.

We ate dinner with our new Valley literary friends before heading south towards Bakersfield. For a while I drove reliving great literary moments from the day before changing places with NL and falling asleep in the darkness of a poetic night.  posted by Matildakay at 11:12 PM