New Found Pride (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Lions)

Everyone—teams, coaches, fans, and every bartender from New Orleans to Anchorage—is gearing up for the season. I can feel it, that same electricity that permeates the waking hours of Christmas day before your parents get out of bed. A new year, another chance. And another few weeks of people looking at my funny when I tell them I’m a Lions fan.

Growing up, I didn’t play sports. There may have been a kickball game or some pick-up touch football I was picked last for, and sometime during middle school, I begged my folks to get me a basketball hoop for the front yard, but really, I just wanted to neighborhood kids to be my friend, even if they were only pretending. And I was happy to bribe them with a shiny new Plexiglas backboard, and unlimited cans of Surge from inside the house. 

As a family, we didn’t watch sports either. My mother and father didn’t grow up with any allegiances in their own families, and with my father’s military career taking us to various points around the country, I never had enough time to form one of my own. I remember watching Super Bowls—the earliest being Bills-Cowboys in the mid nineties—but instead of actually watching, I was busy sneaking sips of beer from uncles and making my G. I. Joes tackle each other, and kick field goals with tiny plastic footballs through cardboard uprights. The World Series played in the background sometimes, and I even cheered at the bar during NBA playoffs. Once I met Gordie Howe and got him to sign a poster, but let’s be real, I only liked hockey for the possibility of thrown gloves. 

So, how the hell did I become a diehard Lions fan?

I’ve never set foot within the Detroit city limits, not even with a layover at the airport. I’ve only driven through the Southwestern corner of Michigan on a road trip. None of my family, or friends really, are from that far north. The closest I’ve lived to Ford Field was a little town outside of Akron, Ohio. And living there, it would stand to reason I might form an affinity for the Bengals, the Steelers, or, the closest, the Browns. But, as a kid, I had no idea what any of those team names meant. The following may have resembled my feelings on those closest teams: why is Steelers spelled wrong? There should be an A in there, or, a Brown? I get called worse in the locker room, but not by much. I know the references now, but they were lost on me then. And in hindsight, if I knew what a Bengal tiger was, I may have been swayed to Cincinnati. No, I looked to our neighbors across the lake. Lions? They’re the king of the damn jungle. Now there was a name I could get behind. Still, thoughts of football on any legitimate level took up very little space in my head. 

Fast forward to my time in Oregon, a state in desperate need of a professional football team. A number of years ago, I took a bartending gig in the Northwest neighborhood of Portland. The bar itself was on the second floor of a converted Craftsman, and was wallpapered with a dozen TVs. Signs were posted behind the bar, in the men’s room, and a flag hung outside telling the anyone who was walking by that they could watch every game, every Sunday. The owners wanted me to tend a few nights a week, and all day Sunday. I thought the tips would be good. I thought I’d pour a bunch of beers, some shots, and take out a few sloppy burgers and orders of chicken strips. What I didn’t plan on, was having to “talk football,” with the clientele. 

From the first kickoff, I was bombarded with terms I’d never heard, like Pick Six or Intentional Grounding or Bubble Screen. I’d be covered in sweat and ketchup, carrying out four full pitchers of Pabst and think, what the hell is encroachment? (If I’m being totally honest now, I still don’t have a proper working definition.) But I did my best, smiling and nodding at the varying levels of anger or excitement from these droves of football fans, and on occasion, I’d even try to engage when they asked their barkeep what I thought of the last play, using terminology I’d heard along the way. Yeah, that was a total chop block throw, was one. Another, he should totally have just kept throwing to the pocket. I was hopeless, and my customers smelled blood in the water. I needed to do some homework, some serious study on this foreign language. But where does a twenty-six year old start? There were too many teams, too many rules. And far too many names to keep straight. I half considered giving my shift to someone who could keep up. 

Then, a few weeks into the season, there was a flood of blue and silver on the bar stools. All walks came into my bar. Bears fans. Ravens fans. Even a Bucs fan. The majority were Seahawks of Niners fans, but we had them all. And suddenly, I was inundated with Lions fans. The core group numbered eight—a couple, a pair of friends from the midwest, and four other random folks who made my bar their spot to watch Detroit on Sunday. Thing was, none of them knew one another, but by the end of that game, you could have swore they’d been friends since diapers. They shared something, an unspoken bond. 

Every fan, of every team, had their passion, their sudden outbursts and near breakdown inducing depression as they left the bar after a loss, but I was drawn to these Lions fans. By this point, I’d heard about Bobby’s curse. I’d always known to think of the Lions in a certain tier, to consider them of a certain caliber. This was, after all, very soon after going 0-16. On paper, they weren’t exactly the team with the right bandwagon to hitch onto, but the more I was drawn to the Lions fans, the more I found myself drawn to the team itself. 

One Sunday, maybe six or seven weeks in, I slid a pair of beers in front of the couple sitting at the far left of my bar. They both had vintage logos on jackets, and hats, and T-Shirts. The outfits were stained and frayed, and seemed to cling desperately to their bodies. I said, “I think I want to be a Lions fan.”

The bar was quiet, most of the games having reached halftime. The couple, in unison, said, “how are you with humility?”

The rest of the Lions fans nodded and watched for my answer. I told the couple that, yeah, I could handle it. 

“Then get ready,” they said. But they weren’t snobby about it. They weren’t trying to sway me either way. In truth, they were preparing me for the peaks and valleys of one of the oldest teams in the league. And for heartbreak.

As that season progressed, I looked forward to the their arrival, eager to here more about the Den, about the best stadium in the NFL, and about Detroit itself. In listening, taking mental and sometimes physical notes, I found myself picking up the lingo, and eventually utilizing the terminology (properly) in conversation.

By the end, the Lions finishing with a decent record, I’d developed a new passion, and a somewhat healthy obsession with a sports team. I began doing my own research, checking stats and even watching the moves made in the offseason. I was a officially a Lions fan, and I had a whole new group of friends to watch the games with when the next season started. And I’m not just talking about those whom I’d met at my bar. Everyone wearing that bright Honolulu blue, in every bar and restaurant from Oregon to my new home here in Louisiana, each and everyone one of them is my friend. We’re all in the same pride. 

I’m in. I’m hooked on the Lions, their history and their future, but I also love their fans. There’s a familial vibe with those in the pride, and even though I didn’t grow up with them, I feel honored, now, to count myself among their numbers. And what’s more, that camaraderie, that inclusive spirit, gave me more than a love for a team, but for the whole sport of football.

Now, all I have to figure out, is how to continue dating a Packers fan.

Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them?

We left Portland three weeks ago today. Our friends, Miles and Amy, had been gracious enough to open their home, hearts, and liquor cabinet to Paige and I, and we spent the last week engaging in as many “Oregon” activities as we could. Restaurants we hadn’t tried, trails we’d put off hiking. We finally got around to trying craft cocktails at new (and old) hipster bars we’d never set foot it in. We made the rounds with our border collie, Jackson, letting him say his goodbyes to his furry friends and the street lights and sign posts he’d left his mark on. Paige put her toes in the foam of the Pacific while I took her picture and she took mine while we filled inner tubes on the banks of the Clackamas river. There were going away parties and BBQs, concerts on the sprawling lawn of Portland’s backyard, and goodbyes. 

Too many goodbyes. 

And then it was time to go. What we couldn't fit in the moving truck, or deemed too vital to our lives (everything from birth certificates to signed books), we shoved into the back of our car, coaxed Jackson in with a month's worth of MilkBones and started out, careful not to spend too much time looking in the rearview. The first day we listened to a good chunk of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, barely looked out the window at the state of Idaho, and ended up at a Best Western on the Utah/Wyoming border. Behind the hotel was a manicured park where Jackson saw his first school of Koi fish swimming in a clear pond and promptly looked at me as if I'd been depriving him his whole life. The first (and probably the greatest) surprise of this stop was that the town had an In-N-Out Burger. Oh, how that neon sign gleamed like the waters of an oasis. It took some effort to stop eating when shredded wrapping paper was all that remained.

Day two brought the expansive beauty of Wyoming, the "Wild West" I'd always pictured in my mind, followed by the mind-eroding traffic of the greater Denver metropolitan area. In a flash of stupidity, I decided I could keep driving, put another hundred miles in our rearview, and we ended up in a small Eastern Coloradan town where the locals stop their conversations when you enter the room, like a priest pushing through swinging saloon doors, where hastily typed "Boil Water Due to Contamination" notices are posted on the windows of the only businesses within fifty miles, and where insects—fellow travelers themselves I assumed by the town's minuscule population—crawl through the massive crack in the door frame, seeking shelter and sustenance in the same lodgings you and your family have. 

Flynn's novel came to an end just as we rolled into Tulsa on the third day. We'd burned though most of Kansas and Oklahoma, on a few hours a fitful sleep from the night before, and pulled into another hotel parking lot. To make up for the previous evening, I secured a room with air conditioning, a jacuzzi tub, and a reliable pizza delivery service. We gorged ourselves, had a drink or two, then crashed hard while a marathon of home remodeling reality shows flickered on the TV. In the morning, we left the city along with the ice cream we’d been pining for, forgotten in the hotel room’s tiny refrigerator. 

Texas was exactly as I’d hoped, small towns with burger joints, populations hovering in triple digits, and tremendous amounts of love for their high school football teams. Even as we blew through each burg, the highway doubling as Main Street in most, we saw the blue and red and green banners hanging in store windows and down from old-fashioned lampposts. License plates and rear windows smeared with shoe polish, showcasing jersey numbers and crudely drawn renderings of mascots. Life appeared to be simpler, more focused, and just as I began to think that might the sort of lifestyle I’d been looking for all along, we crossed a line—from one state to another, from a county to a parish. We found ourselves in the dense green of Northern Louisiana. 

Jackson, relatively comatose in the backseat for most of the trip, began to perk up, pacing back and forth between the windows sniffing at the thick, humid air. It was as if he knew the journey was almost over, that we’d soon be in the next place he would call home. Little did he know: the three of us still had a few nights of hotel life ahead of us. Without a book for us to listen to, we flipped on the radio, trying, as we closed the gap between us and Lafayette, to program in new stations into the preset keys. We found a multitude of great rap and jazz stations, with decent classic rock sounds sandwiched somewhere in there, and the DJs spoke of cities we’ve never heard of and festivals we’d never been to. They talked football and shrimp. These were the voices, the instructions, of our new home.

The sun was reduced to a sliver when we pulled off the highway. The haze burned on the horizon, deep reds and oranges like the high octane swirl of color in frozen daiquiri machines. We booked a room, decompressed for a few minutes, then took a tour of our new city. Lafayette. Colorful beads hung in the trees around campus. Billboards and banners advertised upcoming music and food festivals. The fleur-de-lis was everywhere, etched into the skin of the city. Nearing nine, ten in the evening, the temperature was still in the B+ range. We’d entered a whole new world. And I felt, above the anxiety of change, simply electric with possibility. This was a place of culture, of heart. And I now called it home.

The first few days were a blur of carpet replacement, parking permits, get-togethers with other new students, school orientation, grocery shopping with Mom and Dad (without whom none of this would have been possible), getting lost in the car and on foot, more school orientation, sweating while standing still, unpacking and the discovery of what had been broken in the move, dinner with old friends and new, office and classroom assignments (after still more orientation), and the thrill of a real thunderstorm. Then suddenly, there I was, babbling in front of twenty-five freshman students, telling them I would be teaching them how to write college-level essays. It felt as though I’d just been on the Clackamas river, somewhere between Barton and Carver parks, ropes tied between my tube and Paige’s, between mine and the floating cooler, between us and the world we knew. Then, I blinked. Just a fraction of a second and I was here, telling a room full of strangers to call me Mr. Attana. Or Mr. Drew. 

Just Drew, if they liked.

I really have no idea what to expect. There is no way to tell what I’ve gotten myself into—on a teacher, student, and social level—, but I feel so blessed to be a part of this program, and a part of this thriving culture. Leaving behind our lives in Portland, the wealth of friendship and memories, has been more difficult than we could have imagined. Much harder than we pictured when I received word that I was accepted, back when a new life was only a theory. When we were doing Google searches about alligators and Cajun county. When we were deciding what we should take with us, and what we should leave. Back when we were making our friends promise they’d come to visit, and assuring them, in turn, that we wouldn’t be gone forever. It felt like a dream, something intangible, always on the horizon. In the future.

Now that it’s here and our little family unit has boots (or paws) on the ground, the ethereal, pixelated images of the fourth largest city in the State of Louisiana, have begun to sharpen. This is all real now. There are alligators here, though they aren’t waiting on the new carpet in our apartment when we get home. The humidity is rough, unlike anything we’d ever experienced on the West Coast, but the air conditioning works just fine most places. And hey, a second shower never hurt anyone. Standing in front of a classroom of freshman really is just as terrifying as I pictured it would be, but what I hadn’t factored into those fever dreams, was the support of my new classmates and colleagues. We truly are in this together.

And what has lessened the severity of this entire transition, the reality of what our family has undertaken, is the warmth of not only the friends we’ve made—folks from here, and from across the farther reaches of the country—but of the city of Lafayette. Everyone here is smiling. They’re sweating, but smiling. New friends and strangers alike seem like they want us to be here, to find the beauty that they have. They’ve made us feel welcome, a part of. 

At home.

Sweets to the Sweet.

I know, I know. I keep saying that I'll come back more often, I'll post more, I'll keep whoever is happening upon my website or blog abreast on the current state of my life. Of my career. But I haven't. My most recent post was the last day of February. I aim to rectify that. Let's check the pedals and get up to speed. Today, let's talk school.

To my credit, I have been busy. For a good chunk of the last few months, I have been engaged in the application process for the Creative Writing PhD program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. This was a battlefield of deadlines, essays, and lost transcripts, but with the help of those on staff in LA, and the support of my friends and family at home, I got the letter. Well, I received a phone call first, telling me I'd been accepted, but I don't think I fully let myself celebrate until the letter came in the mail. Official Letterhead and all. And riding shotgun with the letter was the terrifying notion of leaving this city behind. Portland, the place I call home. 

I came to this city almost a decade ago, with little more than a backpack full of cigarettes and paint pens. And the youthful lust that urges a twenty-year-old boy to leave everything in Southern California behind after a chance encounter. That tryst lasted, as you can assume, the appropriate three week period and I was left, by myself, in the City of Roses. I've lived in every neighborhood, drank in every bar. I've lost almost as many friends as I've made. This city helped me find the love of my life. Paige, my partner, a woman without whom I would never be the man I am today. And here I discovered who I want to be. Not the guy I pretended to be, not the badass I thought I was, but who I am. I'm a writer. 

We've got two months. Eight weeks to figure out the move, to pack our books and spatulas. To fill out change of address cards and say our goodbyes. But I'm not ready. Not yet. We've got the summer to hash out the details. And to spend as much time as we can on the river, around the bbq, at the old haunts. And I plan to savor every last second.

So, where does that leave me right now? Well, the clock is creeping up on 10am and my dog is stretched out on the hardwood like a rug, panting. Candyman, the criminally underrated horror masterpiece, is chugging and burning on the TV just beyond the glow of my laptop. Paige is plugging away at her work in the other room, finishing her last week of undergrad. And I couldn't be more proud. In a little more than a week, I'll lose myself in the clapping, the cheering, the shimmer and sway of her gown and she walks across the stage and receives her degree. 

And then we are off, off to the land of crawfish and glittery beads. To Southern hospitality and thunderstorms. To make new friends, and to encourage the old ones to visit. I cannot wait to see what life will bring next.

The Road Ahead.

This whole "readjusting to normal life following a ten day residency which represented the culmination of a two year MFA program" thing is tougher than I thought. More than simply drying out from the copious celebratory drinks, it's all on me now. I'm without a faculty member approved reading list, free from weekly reading commentaries and annotations. I've got zero deadlines. I have no one to answer to except myself.

I am an eternal student who has suddenly found himself without mandatory homework. Bitchin', right? No way.

This writing thing is all me now. Getting pages written and revised, books read and studied, and meeting deadlines is solely my responsibility. That whole structured support system (sans those wonderful friends and colleagues I have been blessed with--they're coming with me) is in my rear view. And of course: I'm terrified.

But I'm willing to do the work. I'm in this for the long haul.

More Than Zero: MFA Critical Introduction

This week I finished up the last few days of my Low Res. MFA program at Pacific University. One of the requirements for graduating was to read from my thesis, "Written on the Walls," as well as deliver a critical introduction to a large group of my friends, peers and faculty. It was wonderful, humbling conclusion to a long, beneficial road. Below you will find the transcript of that introduction. Thank you for reading! And thank you everyone in my life who have supported me through this journey. I couldn't have done it without you.

More Than Zero

When he was eighteen, my father was in the skies above Vietnam, a door gunner on a Bell 205 Huey. Before his nineteenth birthday he’d been shot down three times, and twice had been the only survivor. Beyond these few facts, I know little about his time in the war.  It’s not a story he has shared with me. Though I do know that no matter what he saw there, what horror he’s carried with him, he never  turned from the military, his chosen pursuit. After his tour, he left the Army and joined the Air Force. For the next twenty-five years, he logged over ten thousand hours in the cockpit of various aircraft and embarked on missions so far removed from the world than I—that most of us—can imagine. He spent Christmases in the theater of Desert Storm and Thanksgivings in Panama. After he retired, he worked with Boeing as a flight instructor contracted by the Air Force. My father, like his before him, his grandfather and great-grandfather, is a military man. The same goes for the men on my mother’s side. They’ve all served.  These men knew, really knew, what they wanted to do with their lives. Today, as I near the completion of earning my MFA in writing—my own sort of mission—I am struck not only by those who have the nerve to answer the call to action, but by the very act of hearing it in the first place. 

The only times I’ve fired a weapon the target was a soda can in the deep woods of Oregon or the flat plains of the California desert. But when my first semester at community college wasn’t working out as I’d hoped, I met with a military recruiter. We talked enough that the details were hammered out. I knew where I’d be going to basic and when the plane was leaving. All I had to do was sign on the dotted line. I never showed up. If I had, I wouldn’t have been doing it for myself. I would have because I thought that’s what my father wanted: A son who followed his path, who put down the pot, the video game controllers, and served his country.

The thing was, I had no idea what to do with myself. I was eighteen, stocking appliances at Lowe’s during the week and getting arrested in Tijuana on the weekends. In the eleven years since, I still haven’t finished much. I’ve worked upwards of twenty jobs. From sitting in a cubicle designing multi-million dollars homes for aging rock stars to selling tacky polo shirts at a golf store in a strip mall. For a time I even assembled the timing boxes for sprinkler systems. I’ve started classes at community colleges all up and down the West Coast. In Sacramento, I fancied myself an aspiring Philosophy major until I discovered how much Philosophy I’d have to actually read. In San Diego, I spent two weeks in classes to get my “GPS Technology” certificate. I still don’t know what that is. Nothing stuck.  Restlessness kept me always on the move.

The only thing I’ve ever felt real passion for, the one title I wanted to follow my name in newspapers, was Writer. But two obstacles have stood in the way of that dream. The first was that, without fail, I’ve been told it’s not a real job, seeing as there is no money, and therefore no future in writing. Pursue this life, and I was bound to end up being a bartender or worse. The other issue was that I was approaching the writing life from the wrong direction. I wanted to be a writer, just be one. I never considered that I actually needed to learn how to write.

During the days of smoking pot out of aluminum cans and trying unsuccessfully to learn the guitar, I came across a paperback in a thrift store. The cover was polychromatic, a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses lay in the center with the grainy patterns of MTV logos on the lens and beneath was the title: Less Than Zero. I didn't know the author at the time, Bret Easton Ellis, but I sure as shit knew who Elvis Costello was and anyone who would name their novel after one of his songs was fucking right on in my book. It was the first thing I read cover to cover without stopping. I was enveloped in the world he created, as well as the life he was leading. I wanted to be a writer like him. I wanted the sequel to Less than Zero to have my name on the cover and to live his Hollywood life style. Releasing titillating best sellers, snorting drugs. Sleeping around simply because my words made knees weak. 

My head was in the wrong place. But the basic tenet was there, so during my first stint at community college I signed up for a Intro to Writing course. There was nothing glamorous about Creative Writing 101. There were "prompts" and "dangling participles" and that little concept my high school teachers had kept droning on about when I had bothered to show up to class: grammar. I didn't even make it through my first semester. Instead, I went in search of the life in Ellis's book.

I found the bad crowd. The drugs, the streets. I found the death in his version of Los Angeles. And to spare you, I’ll say that I found more than Ellis let on and it came very close to destroying me. Something had to change. Restless still and this time more than a little scared, I took flight. Eight years after that first attempt, I took another Intro to Writing class, this time in Portland, Oregon. And all those pesky writing concepts, the grammar, the punctuation, the dialogue tags, they had followed me a thousand miles north.  Flash forward again to my semester with Mike Magnuson and will have I discovered the I still hadn't learned shit about them. But more on my time with Mag later.

The syllabus in this course hadn't changed, free writing on Mondays and workshop on Wednesdays. And the prompts, the "write about your earliest memory" and the obligatory “craft a two page story with the following ten words placed in the prose," were the same. The difference was in my instructor, Susan Reese, a graduate of this very MFA program. She saw, and helped me to see, that maybe, just maybe, I wanted more than the image of being a writer. Maybe I wanted to write. 

Susan became my mentor even when I wasn’t in her classes. I changed my major from botany or pottery or whatever the fuck I was fooling myself into thinking I'd be happy doing with my life to English, with a minor in creative writing. I became passionate about creating worlds, fabricating characters, recording my imagination. And a funny thing happened. I actually started showing up to class. I joined clubs and writing groups. I became the president of the English honors society. I’ve never been president of anything, nor had I wanted to before that point. My GPA inched its way up from negligible, from being less than zero. Like my father, I had discovered what I wanted to be.

So, this time two years ago I hopped on a bus with a suitcase, a few short stories that had garnered some recognition and an inflated ego that was just begging to be stomped into dust. I figured, I did so well in my undergrad, this program would just confirm that I was the shit and send me out into the glittering world of upscale literary hit-makers with a meal ticket made out to cash. 

Holy fuck was I deluded. 

My first semester with Claire Davis I refer to as my semester of missed opportunities. This isn’t to say the semester was a wash. No. Quite the opposite. I couldn’t now imagine having  started  this program with anyone else. During our first meeting, I ran the idea for a novel I had by Claire and she encouraged me to go with it. I didn’t waste any time. By the the first packet I had fifty pages written, and by the second I was pushing close to one hundred fifty. And that, I soon learned was not a superpower, but a big problem. I was going too damn fast. I wasn’t taking the time to explore the worlds I was creating. Everything was stock, cardboard set pieces. My characters would walk down a “dark alley.” That’s it: an alley, and it was dark. With her urging, I began to see these superficial descriptions as missed opportunities. I missed the slickness of the rainwater on the bricks, the pungent scent of mildew, the audible squish of vomit beneath the narrator’s sneaker. 

I was missing the ability to explore the world of the my story on a basic level, which in turn would have made the place a character in and of itself. This isn’t anywhere, U.S.A. This is Portland, Oregon. This is Los Angeles. And this is the filthy underbelly you never get to see, but your characters do and become, to the reader, so much more rounded as a result. But this only comes from revision, from reworking and pulling out the innards of a specific passage seven, eight, twenty times and there in that pile of worked over intestines lies the beauty. Claire said it better than I can: “That’s the best part of this whole business.  Not the publishing (though, yeah that’s pretty cool as well) but the discovery of how much you are capable of discovery. And each work pushes you to be smarter, to be more observant, to think more deeply on what it means to be human, and forces you to face how complicated that task is—being human.” What Claire gave me and will be forever in the back on my mind was the drive to explore, to dig in and engage my reader, by engaging myself.

I spent my second semester with Mike Magnuson. A name we are all familiar with. You’ve heard the stories about Mag. And if you’re new and haven’t, just wait, you will. And if you’re crazy, nay, brave enough to work with him: You’ll find out first hand. I’m here telling you today that every single thing you have or ever will hear about Mike Magnuson is absolutely true. He’s harsh, he doesn’t pull punches. He loathes the abuse of language. He’ll bring you to the verge of tears again and again. He will, I say without a doubt, make you dread opening emails from him after the second packet. Mike Magnuson will make your wife seriously consider booking a flight to Wisconsin just so she can fight him.

But why? Why is he so harsh? It isn’t because he is a mean person. He’s a saint, really. It isn’t because he wants to force aspiring writers to tears. He doesn’t have a thing for getting into fisticuffs with 110 pound significant others. No, it’s because every damn word he writes is dead on. During our time together, I had to face numerous problems with my work on a nuts and bolts level, with my grammar in every single packet. I saw the words “clunky” and “comma” in my sleep. He wrote once that the particular words I had chosen were, “Good enough, but perhaps not the most original use of English in the history of English.” He hammered me so hard about these issues that even today when I put down a sentence, I think “What would Mag do?. But really what Mag taught me was the importance of life in my writing. About caring for, and loving my characters.

This is what he wrote after I decided it was a swell idea to submit to him a brand new story about vampires, and keep in mind, I’ve paraphrased: “I think this story is bullshit vampire garbage devoid of human emotion and humanity. The problem you have with your writing is difficulty with characterization, with creating round characters with complex backgrounds and complex emotional contours - In other words, you are in general having trouble writing human beings. So the WORST thing you can do is write stuff like this - where human life means nothing and where the only intellectual foundation for it is some crap you've read in comic books or seen on TV.  Next time: real world, real people, and by God be an artist who values human life.”

Remember, my template for what good writing was when I came into this program was Less Than Zero, a book where true compassion for human life is equivalent to the novel’s title. If it wasn’t for the full on assault of Mag’s approach, the constant wax-on, wax-off of who I have dubbed, Mr. Mag-ogi, I might still be crafting throw-away characters. I might still be embracing death, rather than life. 

Over the last two terms, I had the pleasure of working with John McNally. After a few short stories, John encouraged me to get back to the novel. Our exchanges became primarily about the scope, direction and thrust of my novel. Most of the ideas, the concepts of that original draft I worked on with Claire and Mag found their way into the trash, but the bones remained. John helped me to discover where the prose was falling short, where my voice lacked strength and believability, where the plot and characters came apart. Even through the novel isn’t fully finished, the first ten chapters are, without a doubt, eighty plus pages of material I could not have more pride in. John encouraged me to keep digging until the pages were the absolute best they could be. And deeper than the page level, John insisted on another type of believability, the sort where I believe in myself. Not the ego I came into this program with, but with the same humble and passionate conviction that everyone in this room has. We are writers, and will continue to hone and practice our craft not for the fame or the money but because it, like my mother has always said, makes our hearts sing.

And here is my shout out to the entire faculty, those I’ve workshopped with or those with whom I’ve shared a meal. They could be spending the time, the effort and care they do on our shitty first drafts on a revision of their own work. They care. They want you to succeed, to find your voice, as they continue to shape theirs. That's the beauty of this program: nothing that is shared, exchanged or recommended has, at least in my experience, been said in a fashion that is intended to make you feel inferior. Everything is said to push you harder and further than you'd thought possible. To make you believe in yourself, in your work. We are all in the same boat. And the reason Pacific is such a beautiful beast, is that everyone, the students and faculty have all grabbed an oar and are sweating against the current of an unforgiving industry. And one more special thank you to the angels—Tenley, Colleen and Shelly—without whom none of this would be possible.

With that, here are ten of the quotes that have stuck with me and will stick with me for some time:

10. “We say first lines all the time.” Bonnie Jo Campbell, on beginnings.

9. “The first three pages to cut were easy. The next three pages were like pulling teeth. The last page to be cut seemed impossible, but I'd finally whittle it down...And here's the kicker: those are the tightest chapters in the book, the best written.” - John McNally, on revision.

8. “Ask more of yourself than this.” - Mike Magnuson, on vampires.

7. “And of course you know I’m not really yelling. But I am deadly serious, pal.” John McNally, on having to tell me more than once about dialogue tag errors.

6. “Because it’s written, doesn’t mean it will stay written.” - Claire Davis, on revision.

5. “Grr.” - Mike Magnuson, in response to me spelling “creepy” as “creppy.”

4. “I used to have an apple orchard, and I liken [writing] to pruning.  Take off the crap limbs, open its crown to the light, and the tree bears three-fold. Same with prose.” - Claire Davis, on revision.

3. “I don’t think, based on these first two packets, that you have sufficient skill with narrative to embark on a novel.” - Mike Magnuson, on the disastrous opening chapters of my novel. 

2. “Put ‘em in a bad place.” - Pete Fromm, on the Swirling Vortex and the concept of making your characters believable. 

1. “Touch it everyday.” - Frank Gaspar, on what it means to be a writer (though this can be good advice in other ways as well).

*

When he was twenty-nine, my father flew with three other C-141s to assist the evacuation of the 918 bodies from the Jonestown settlement. He had advanced far enough in his career, in his passion to be trusted with a mission so sensitive, and I am proud to know that about him.

 
I turned twenty-nine this year and turns out, I did become a bartender. But when I’m not working on new cocktails, I’m working on new stories, on new chapters for my novel. I’m writing not for the money, but because I want to write. I recently was wed to a beautiful woman who supports me, who rests easy at night knowing I’m both a writer and a bartender. She supports my passion. And I’m going to finish something, finally. I might not have the designation of Writer following my name in the papers, but I will have the MFA tag from one of the best programs in the country and to me, that means so much more. It shows that I’ve begun the work. It means that I have the true desire to continue learning about this craft.

I've finished Less Than Zero a dozen or more times since that first read. It's hasn't changed. What's changed is me. I don't want to be Ellis or Richard Yates or Flannery O'Connor. I don't want their lifestyle or to write exactly like them. I want to be Drew. I want to write like Drew, and most of all I want more for my characters than that book taught me. I want to celebrate them, their lives. However vile they might be.

I still have guilt or maybe just the capacity to imagine what could have been. Some days I do regret missing that appointment with a recruiter where I would’ve signed my life off to the Air Force. How different would I be today? Would I still be writing? Would it have been fiction? Or Journaling my own experiences? Or, would I have buried my passion? 

It isn't that I don’t have the upmost respect for these men. For my father, my grandfathers. I did. I still do. I thank whatever might be up above me in the cosmos everyday for theirs and for the countless others who have served. Who have lost limbs or their lives for my freedom. I just couldn’t imagine myself picking up a gun. But what I can do is pick up a pen. Or open my laptop. And write down his story, if he ever decided he wanted to share it with me.

Countdown.

One week from today I will be leaving for my last residency at Pacific University. Barring any unforeseen meltdowns, I will have my thesis review, deliver my critical introduction and graduate with my Masters in Fine Arts. I can't believe two years have already come and gone. But in that time I've learned more than I thought possible and made some of the best friends, colleagues, and connections I could have hoped for. The first ten chapters of my novel are truly something for me to be proud of. I worked my ass off to get them into shape.

It's been an absolute blessing to be a part if this program and to feel a part of this community. And honestly, I don't think I'm ready for it to be over.