Journalism is very much public writing, writing with an audience in mind, writing for publication, and frequently writing quickly. And I know that when I worked daily journalism it really affected my patience with literature, which I think requires reflection, and a different kind of engagement.

Achy Obejas

Categorized in : Thinking Writing Reflection

Offspring were a joy or a shame, but still the crown of their elders, nature's unpredictable creatures.

crowns pride joy

Each genre has its own process. I'm very intuitive about poetry. I usually write first and second drafts out by hand. The other end of the spectrum is journalism, which is much more cerebral, more thought-out and planned. Fiction lies somewhere in between. I usually start intuitively but eventually I need to stop and consider structure, or research, or both.

journalism writing lying

I'm never afraid of research. I relish it! by Achy Obejas

I'm never afraid of research. I relish it!

Both childbirth and abortion are medical procedures but neither is an illness, and sometimes they're both treated as such.

medical abortion sometimes

Interestingly, in Cuba abortion is treated as lightly as getting... by Achy Obejas

Interestingly, in Cuba abortion is treated as lightly as getting a mole removed.

abortion

So much depends on our health, and we tend to take it so for gran... by Achy Obejas

So much depends on our health, and we tend to take it so for granted.

granted

Our real world has evolved. It's become something much different, and inadvertently about healthcare, and about what it means to have good health, and to be able to have good health.

different real mean

This is going to sound nuts but it took me forever to figure out why I'd stopped writing poetry - I mean, I went about a decade where I wrote very little poetry and I thought it was because I was doing a weekly blog. And then when we moved, I reconfigured my writing desk. The previous one had had very little space to write by hand. And suddenly, the poetry was gushing!

forever writing mean

In journalism, if there's a hole in your story you figure out a way around it because you've got a 4 p.m. deadline. It's a neat skill to have but it's deadly for literature. In literature, you need to stare at that hole, not ignore it. You need to figure it out.

journalism deadline literature

We're a long way from the embargo ending. Look at what just happened with the rollback of Obama's Cuba policies. Two idiot congressmen convinced our idiot president to make it harder on Cubans on the island.

idiot president long

The legacy of the embargo will be Cuba's poverty and desperation. When the island comes out of it, they'll be even more desperate than they are now about the things they think they've missed. I think one of the unintended results of the embargo is that Cuba is quite consumerist - and I'm talking about the people, not the government or the official propaganda.

legacy people thinking

I've gotten to try on voices very different than my own, and I've become much more aware of structure than ever before. Also, you really weigh every word. There's no closer reading then when you read to translate.

different reading trying

I feel possessive about stories I write in Spanish and so I usually end up translating those into English myself.

possessive translate writing

I tell people to have a relationship with their work every day, even if it means you just move a comma.

mean people moving