Thirty-five Years Later

Three more days, it'll mark the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Thirty-five years ago, I tried to escape with the frantically departing Americans but failed. Thirty-five years later, I'm striving to make a name for myself as a well-established writer in America.

Looking back, my ten-year living under Communist rule has left a painful mark on me that still gives me flashbacks but at the same time has enriched my life because now I know first-hand what it was like living in a dictatorship, a dictatorship in general, a Communist dictatorship in particular. A political system that had affected people in half of the globe. And Vietnam shut its door for ten years. During those ten years, the government oppressed and persecuted us--people of the South. When most of us--the unwanted--left the country, it opened its door. Now the Communists welcome us back. I do want to return to see how much remnants of their former brutality could still be traced. Probably none. Shrewd and sophisticated, they know how to whitewash every bloodstain.

I do want to go back for another reason: to touch my mother's urn that my sister has put in a temple. My mother, the most important person in my life, died the second year I resettled in America. Without her, my life would have been a totally different story.

Twenty-fifth Anniversary

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of rebuilding my life in America. It's been one quarter of a century since I lived in the U.S. coming as a refugee. Looking back, I was amazed at what I had done. Thanks to my mother who sent me to an English language school in Vietnam during the 60s, though I didn't graduate, I had a foundation to build on in order to pursue my writer's dream in my adopted country whereas such dream of mine would never be fulfilled in my homeland. Coming alone as an older adult in my thirties and without a high school diploma and having lived in a cultural desert--Communist Vietnam before opening its door in the late 80s--for ten years, I was enrolled in Kishwaukee Junior College three months after my arrival in DeKalb, IL, and at the same time working on my GED. In seven years, I earned my MFA in English and playwriting.

So far I'm most proud of myself for having transformed myself from a high-school dropout to an MFA holder. And I did it in my third language.

Fresh Eyes

I like to talk about eyes a lot, don't I? In my previous entries, I wrote about a writer's eyes, objective eyes, and so on. Now I'm writing about fresh eyes. For a writer, she can get fresh eyes from two sources: 1) a writer friend, a free-lance editor included, 2) herself. I'd like to talk about my own fresh eyes. How can I look at my work with fresh eyes? This is what I'd do--putting the "finished" writing away for a while and then revise it. For my novel, I didn't work on it for six month. Yes, six months. From July 2009 to Dec. Last January, I took it out and looked at it and saw problems I hadn't seen before. That's what I mean: my own fresh eyes. Quite reliable. For some writers, six months would be too long. For me, it's worth the "delay" because I want my first novel to be the best I can write. Also, my past writing experience has taught me a good lesson--I was too eager to get my work out into the world and only to receive rejection after rejection. It turned out to be a waste of my time, my money, and my energy.

After revising my novel for three months, once again I let it cool down, for a month only. I believe when I rework on it in May, I'll see it with fresh eyes.

A Track Record

A track record is important to both free-lance editors and writers, playwrights included. A track record helps editors get editing jobs and writers get grants and publication. As a writer, with a couple of publication credits online and in print, my track record is insignificant; however, as a playwright, with a long list of recognition, grants and awards, my track record is quite impressive. My first short play that I wrote while attending graduate school was awarded a finalist along with my professor's. My first full-length play, thanks to the help of Dr. Williams and Dr. Gianakaris, it was also a finalist of a prestigious national playwriting competition. Ever since, I've received recognition, staged readings, and productions of my plays and won grants.

With a knee injury and the loss of income, I searched for emergency funds for writers only to find I wasn't qualified for being a writer. However, as a playwright, my artist's resume showed almost every other year I accomplished something, such as being a finalist; I was awarded a grant from the Dramatists Guild. If I hadn't built my credits, I wouldn't have been qualified.

Now I'm working hard to build my track record as a writer. Brick by brick, shovel by shovel, I'm building.

Objective Eyes

We writers all know we need someone to read our work to give us some feedback. Even Steven King would let his wife read his ms and give him constructive criticism. How many writers are that lucky to get their spouses' help? I don't know how many and I'm not one of them. Most of the time, I'll show Wes my writing after I finish it. He is a superb reader, no doubt about that; however, he doesn't know how to give useful feedback. Every time after he reads my writing, he'll say, "It's very good." That doesn't help, does it?

It's hard to see what's there and what's not there but should be there in our own writings because everything is in our heads and we automatically think everything is there. It happens because we can't it objectively. Finally, I developed my own pair of objective eyes, not 100% objective, though. It takes lots of writing, rewriting, and reading, and of course time to get myself that pair of eyes. Nothing comes easy. It takes practice. And, with the objective eyes, I'll be benefited for the rest of my writer's life. Try it. You'll enjoy the extra pair of eyes you've acquired.

A Writer's Eyes

In a non-writer's eyes, what comes to mind when she sees an egg? Scrambled. Poached. Or sunny-side-up. In a writer's eyes, however, an egg can become a symbol, a metaphor, a simile, or a motif in a play, a short story, a novel, or a poem. That's what I mean "a writer's eyes."

From my own experience, a writer's eyes differ from what she writes. For years, I've had a playwright's eyes because I worked on nothing else but plays. Since I explored literary writing, I've had a poet's eyes, a fiction writer's eyes, a creative nonfiction writer's eyes. And I've found that although the kinds of writing mentioned above belong to literary writing, a poet's eyes differ from a fiction writer's, and so on. And writing haiku gives me another pair of writer's eyes. You have to write different genres to see what I mean.

In summary, I think the more eyes a writer has the better.

Figure Skating & Writing

Figure skaters have to pack all the required elements into their two-and-half-minute short programs and their five-minute long programs. A fiction writer has to include all the required elements in her short story and novel. When I first watched figure skating in the 1990s, I simply enjoyed a sport. A sport that has beauty, artistry, and elegance. Years later, sinceI explored literary writing, I've watched the sport with a pair of writer's eyes, paying attention to how the skaters put their programs together.

Interestingly, judges, who reward a skater with high score, look for many qualities. Among them are detail and transition. Aren't detail and transition also what we writers have to heed? In truth, there're other aspects, from which I can draw parallels between the sport and writing. I pick these two because I've found that they're the areas I need to work on.

With the winter Olympics going on in Vancouver B.C., I can feast my eyes with all the graceful movements and at the same time enjoy being reminded of what it takes to be a good writer.