DCA/MFA

Daisy Christina Abreu, MFA

On January 4, 2013, I graduated from Fairfield University's MFA in creative writing program and was honored to be chosen by my fellow graduates to deliver the student address. The  text from my speech is below. 

Dr. White, Dr. Crabtree, fellow students, faculty, family, friends, and my beloved Cohort 5.  It is an honor to be here speaking on behalf of my fellow graduates as we celebrate this huge accomplishment.

December 2010. It was a dark and snowy night. We arrived on Enders island, OUR island, not knowing what to expect of the program or of each other. The only thing we knew was that we wanted to be writers. Better writers.

Every six months we gather in this sacred place to commune with words and with each other. Summer and winter, we come together to check in, to encourage, to workshop, to be around other writers. We ask the hard questions:

“What the hell is a craft essay?” “Do I have time for a nap before the next seminar?”
“Has anyone seen Chuck Johnson?” 

Enders Island in Winter

We commiserate over a lack of sleep and an abundance of salad. Most importantly we talk
about writing. Not just in workshops and in seminars, but in this chapel and in the gazebo, and over those ever-present salads and over more than one glass of Crane Lake.

Fiction…nonfiction…poetry…screenplays. Fitzgerald…Hemingway…Didion…Baldwin…Neruda… Whitman.

We cannot get enough.

Second semester reading

We learn the craft from the best professors we could ever hope for; teachers who give us pages of notes, direct us to readings that inform our own work, and reassure us when we think we are the WORST writers in the world. They urge us onward, reminding us that the only way to get better is to keep reading. And keep writing.

There were times when we thought: I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to do the work, to be better than I was last semester…last residency…last year. There were times when we thought: What am I doing here? This is crazy. I don’t think I can do this.

I admit that there was a night or two…or ten…that first residency when I sat in my room and wept. I was nervous and I was scared, but I was also excited. I knew I was where I belonged. Nothing scarier than the first few days of a new life, acknowledging that it is all I ever wanted, and realizing that this is only the beginning. 


The fear passed, then returned and stayed for a while…looking at you, third semester projects…but we knew it was all going to be fine. Tough, but fine. Whether sitting under a tent talking about literary heartthrobs, or standing up in a chapel in front of what is probably the most receptive audience any of us may ever have, we realized: We are here to make friends.

Friends and writers forever

This is not a competition. While we are competing with ourselves to be better, we are not necessarily competing with each other. That is evident on our Facebook page, where every new student is welcomed “to the family,” every success is cheered, and every setback is received with support and words of encouragement. And that support is not limited to Enders Island or the Internet. And it does not end when we graduate. We will continue to show up for each other at readings whether at the Fairfield University bookstore, the public library, or some random coffee shop. We will return to Enders for alumni day and support the new cohorts of students. And we will break sales records on amazon.com whenever one of us publishes a book.

 
Ten years ago, my dear friend and mentor, Clayton Hudnall, gave me this advice when I asked what I should do with my life: “Know what you want. Do not go anywhere for creative writing, unless you are obsessed by it.”
   
It wasn’t until recently that I understood what he meant. Everyone in this chapel knows how obsessed my fellow classmates and I are with this program and with writing. On behalf of my fellow graduates, I want to thank all of you for supporting and allowing us to indulge in our obsession for two solid years. The good news is, we did it. The bad news is, we’re still obsessed. That’s not going to change. Ever.
  
We are writers. Writers who teach, who parent, who care for ailing parents, who work for nonprofits, who freelance, who search for Bigfoot. We were writers when we arrived on that snowy night and we are better writers as we prepare to leave this place.

No matter what we do, we write. We can’t help it. In the shower, in the car, at our desks, as we drift off to sleep. Writing…always writing. We. Can’t. Help it. It makes our loved ones crazy. It distracts us during the day. It keeps us up at night. We are constantly searching for the right word, the right line, the best way to express ourselves. 

Poems…novels…essays…messays. We make lists and outlines, on notecards and on napkins. They are in our pockets and in our pocketbooks.

This is a messy business. But we won’t stop. We can’t stop. This isn’t the end of our work; it is the beginning, the next chapter. We are prepared, even when we feel unprepared. Don’t misunderstand me. We are scared to death, but we are at our most fearless when we are writing.  Don’t try and stop us. We’re writers.

Maybe I’m sentimental, basking in the glow of graduation, enjoying a last wistful lap around the Island.  December does bring much reflection; there is a lot of flipping through the old notebooks and reviewing first, second and third drafts.  But January. January is a clean sheet of paper, a new page. White as the snow that fell on this island the night we arrived.

My friends, this—tonight—this is our new year.  Let us go forth and write up a storm.  

Blizzard Cohort for life.  
 

Blizzard Cohort for life

Feeling Bookish

I should be sleeping, especially since I am fighting some sort of chest cold thing, but I can't. I feel like writing...and it's a good feeling. I could also be excited that Poodle is coming tomorrow to spend the weekend. It will be fun to hang out and chat and shop and be around someone who gets me the way Cat gets me. Oh my God, Poodle and Cat...my closest friends sound like some sort of menagerie! Apologies to both.

I have a huge stack of books on my nightstand. Twenty-seven books to be exact. I'm trying to read three at once (see the What I'm Reading sidebar) and it's not as hard as I thought it would be, although it's early in the process so we'll see how I'm fairing in another week. Of the three, I'd say my fave is Fifteen Candles. The stories really take me back to that time in my life and I am enjoying remembering things about being a teen that I hadn't thought about in years. The Tender Bar is pretty good so far, I'm curious to find out what happens to the author as he gets older. Women's Letters is a wee bit daunting because it starts during the Revolutionary War and I'm struggling to wrap my head around some of what I'm reading. I might wait until I finish one of the other two in order to really get into Women's Letters. Any minute now I expect to get three or four magazines in the mail, so that, along with all my lovely new books, should get me through those cold winter nights. Bring on the snow, I've got enough reading material to get me through til spring!

I realize that the three books I am reading are all non-fiction and/or biographical in some way. I've been doing more of that since I started the blog, leaning toward memoirs and the like. Maybe I'm looking for inspiration in these true stories in order to write my own. Or maybe I'm not feeling the chick-lit vibe. I'm sort of living one of those single-gal-trying-to-sort-her-life-out books right now, only without the madcap adventures, sexy rendezvous and closet full of fabulous shoes ( I do, however, have the hilarious and endlessly lovable friends part down pat), so why read about it too?

The Wests sent me a funny little book called the Writer's Block (ha ha). It's chock full of writing prompts. I moved it from the desk to my nightstand for the sake of not being able to say "oh I should do a writing exercise before bed, but the book with the prompts is in the other room..." It's next to my notebook, so I have the tools at hand. Now do I have the nerve?

Read Any Good Books Lately?

As you can see, reading is fundamental. I'm not absolutely sure, but I'm guessing from my bookbag and braids, this was snapped at some point during second grade. And yes, I'm reading a textbook. Why? Because I'd probably read everything else I could get my hands on at the time. At least it's a reading textbook (something with a brilliant title, like Adventures in Reading). I'm not reading about fractions there.

I've always been a reader. It runs in the family. I remember my parents reading in bed all the time (unless there was a game on, of course). My mother used to have me read to her before bed. She taught me to read basic Spanish by reading the comics in the back of Replica, the big magazine of the time. My father read the Spanish newspaper and studied the New York Daily News very closely. I have a theory that both of my parents developed quite a command of the English language years ago, but have refused to let their children in on their secret.

To say that my reading was encouraged, well, no one discouraged me, to be sure. My father would buy the Sunday paper for me to read in the station wagon on those long rides to Nyack or the Jersey Shore (there is only so much staring out a window one can do). My sister would let me read her copies of Glamour, Cosmo and Bride (that should explain the stack of fashion magazines next to the bed). I still love magazines and I still get excited when there is one jammed into the mailbox. I tear through the weeklies (New York, Time) within a day or so, but I save the fashion magazines for when I can really devote a couple of hours to flipping through them, reading every article and losing myself in the clothes, shoes and bags (oh! The bags). I'm not about to reveal how many magazines I get in a month, not because I'm ashamed, but because I've lost track. Yeah, things may be out of control on the magazine front.

The magazines sit in a basket next to the bed and are purged regularly. I used to drop them off at my local Laundromat, but since I moved across town, I've found that there is a woman at my favorite coffee shop who is always happy to see me walk in with an armload of Vogue and JANE (who wouldn't be?). I will admit, not every issue of every magazine leaves the house. I buy the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue every year, study every photo, then placeit with the other "collectors' issues". Don't ask me why.

I was a very faithful library user throughout my childhood. We had library class once a week and got to pick out a book to take home. (Do they still have that? A class on how to use the library? Do they even have school libraries anymore?). I remember coming back to the school library the day after class to return a book. The librarian asked me if I was returning it because I didn't like it. "No," I said. "I finished it." I was in the fourth grade and the book (Primrose Day by Carolyn Haywood, still a great book) was over 200 pages. She looked at me in that, "Either this kid is lying or she's some kind of freak" way, but she stamped the book returned and let me choose another. (For the record, I have never lied to a librarian, and if reading a 200 page book in one day makes me a freak, so be it.) I spent my high school summers working at Town Hall during the day and reading 1950s romance novels all night to cope with insomnia. These were Harlequin-type books, but there was not a lot of bodice ripping. I remember reading a whole series about nurses in extenuating romantic circumstances. And yes, they all ended up married to a doctor or a handsome patient who had been saved from the brink of death by the care of the right woman in white tights and orthopedic oxfords.

I don't visit the library anymore. If there is something I really want to read, I'll buy it. I had to start keeping a list of books in my wallet, because if I am left to browse a bookstore without any idea of what I am looking for, well, a search party might be required. I'm also happy to share the wealth. If I finish a book I think a friend will like, I pass it on, no strings attached. I regularly meet two of my girlfriends for dinner and a movie and we always bring books to swap. The books I love best, the ones that mean the most, (To Kill a Mockingbird, Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Letters of the Century, Anne of Green Gables) I keep and read over and over. I received a bunch of books (hardcovers!) for my birthday and they are all stacked on the nightstand, so I'm good for a little while. But, as it says on my favorite bookmark (I have a lot of those too), "When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes."