Eric Paul Shaffer is author of five books of poetry, including Lahaina Noon; Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen; Portable Planet; RattleSnake Rider; and Kindling. His poetry appears in more than two hundred local, national, and international reviews and in the anthology 100 Poets Against the War. Shaffer received the 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature and a 2006 Ka Palapala Po'okela Book Award for Lahaina Noon. He won a 2006 Fellowship to the Summer Fishtrap Writers Workshop in Oregon. Burn & Learn, his first novel, was published in Fall 2009. He teaches at Honolulu Community College and was recently awarded the 2009 James M. Vaughan Award for poetry (Hawaii Pacific University's yearly poem contest). Dr. Eric Paul Shaffer, a former instructor at MLI, just published his first novel. He recently read from his latest work to a highly receptive audience at a book launching event in Wailuku. Not only is Eric a gifted writer, but he is an astute storyteller and had the audience in stitches during his presentation in which he took on the roles of many of his colorful characters. One of Eric's main attributes is his ability to find humor in himself and in life's ordinary circumstances. MLI caught up with Eric in the following interview.
How long did you work at the MLI? Do you have a favorite memory from your time at the MLI that you would like to share?
My favorites memories of MLI are the people. I worked with Alice, Derek, Jackie, Nicole, and Amy, and they were all the kindest, most generous, funniest, smartest, and most hard-working people I know. My students were also a delight. So many were dedicated to becoming fluent in English by spending all of the time they needed to spend to make their dreams come true, and that kind of dedication is always inspiring. In my Vocabulary class, we used to play a game that included all of the students. We were yelling and laughing and scoring vocabulary points, and those games were a lot of fun. That is what I remember most often.
When did you become interested in writing/poetry and how did you get started?
Reading motivated me to start writing. I became a writer because I am a reader. There are many ways to come to writing, but in my view, the best way is to be encouraged to write by another writer. At the age of four or so, I became enthralled by reading when my grandmother taught me to read. My Nana, my mother's mother, Marion Gates Finlay, was the one who taught me to read. I loved to be read to, and she taught me to read by reading me the same story over and over, and as she did, she pointed at each word as she spoke. Eventually, I memorized the story, and I could read as she pointed at the words, and on the day that I read the story, I felt the excitement that eventually motivated me to write and still does. I write poetry because I love to read poetry. I think poetry is the most difficult kind of writing because the successful writer needs to be aware of so many parts of his or her culture. I love a challenge that requires creativity, knowledge, all five senses, a sense of humor, and a sense of wonder, and writing poems provides that.
Is there a process you follow when you are writing one of your pieces?
I keep my eyes, ears, mouth, and mind open. Each of these organs contributes greatly to a good poem. Eyes provide images. Ears follow and listen and direct attention. Mouth provides conversation and information and stories. And a mind provides a good way to combine all that the other in the best possible way. Once that is in place, a writer needs a schedule, and he or she needs to stick to that schedule and write every day. No one who doesn't write every day is really a writer.
Do you have any books or movies that inspired you as a writer?
I've only been inspired to write by books. When I was young, I was inspired by A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle and A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin. They taught me that any one of us can make up stories, good stories. As I got older, I read everything: Melville, Marvell, Vonnegut, Trollope, Shakespeare, King, Koontz, Collins. From them I learned some of what was possible to write about.
The moment of inspiration that I remember most clearly was the moment I finished reading The Tokyo-Montana Express by Richard Brautigan. I was very impressed with his writing and the shape of the novel. I looked up and thought to myself, "I want to write my own novel." That day I wrote five short pieces that became chapters in my novel, Burn & Learn.
Could you tell me about your new book?
Burn & Learn is a wild tale of five friends attending college, drinking coffee at the Frontier Restaurant, and learning the wisdom of the ages, the era, and the street in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This episodic novel begins where Laurence Sterne and Richard Brautigan left off, introducing a truly amusing and alluring wilderness of words through which readers can blaze their own glorious trials.
The novel reveals all in thirteen modes ranging from mythology, science-fiction fables, American koans, Coyote tales, coyote chapters, BookMovie chapters, Missing Lists (and other relevant context), realistic narrative, encyclopedic entries enumerating the details the Century of Technological Disaster, commentary on the Ideal Edition of the novel, a love story, a lost-love story, and parables of four monkish brothers residing in a cabin on the Continental Divide.
Reckless, K.C., K.C., King Charles the RagMan, and Rufus (and others) are the central figures in a novel that encompasses all time from the beginning to the end of the universe and examines everything through the brief, flickering frames of 167 short chapters projecting the brief, brilliant moments that sparkle through the lives and glimmer in the darkness above the heads of this handful of friends and a host of mythological, fabulous, cinematic, historic, and literary characters.
Readers can hop, skip, and jump through the book to their heart's, hand's, mind's, and eyes' content. Nothing is missing, even if readers overlook something accidentally, purposely, temporarily, or permanently, and the chapters are best read as constellations in the night sky are read: by making connections between the twinkling lights that fill the darkness that surrounds us.
Most important, Burn & Learn is the most complete sequel currently available to The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, and one character may even look familiar in color and in black and white. The initials are K.C.
Do you think that it is necessary for a writer to incorporate their personal experiences and feelings into their works?
"Necessary" implies that writers can choose. We don't get to choose; no one does. Writers will incorporate their personal experiences and feelings because fundamentally we are our personal experiences and feelings. The real question is how we will incorporate our experiences and feelings.
Some of us write barely-fictionalized autobiography; others create entire past and future universes of aliens, demons, gods, and ghosts. Still, writers are all, in some fundamental way, writing about their personal experiences and feelings because they have no choice. Everything writers write about comes from and is shaped by them.
That is the long way around to say yes.
Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who would like to be published one day?
I always give the same advice: read, read, read, write, read, read, read, write, revise, read, read, write, write, publish, and repeat.
