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 OBEJASAnd 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 OBEJASInterestingly, in Cuba abortion is treated as lightly as getting a mole removed.
ACHY OBEJASFiction lies somewhere in between. I usually start intuitively but eventually I need to stop and consider structure, or research, or both.
ACHY OBEJASI’m never afraid of research. I relish it!
ACHY OBEJASEach 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.
ACHY OBEJASAnd 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!
ACHY OBEJASThis 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.
ACHY OBEJASWe’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.
ACHY OBEJASI 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.
ACHY OBEJASThe 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.
ACHY OBEJASI’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.
ACHY OBEJASOur 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.
ACHY OBEJASBoth childbirth and abortion are medical procedures but neither is an illness, and sometimes they’re both treated as such.
ACHY OBEJASIn 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.
ACHY OBEJASI tell people to have a relationship with their work every day, even if it means you just move a comma.
ACHY OBEJASIt’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.
ACHY OBEJAS