Fresno's the center of his cosmos

By Travis Ball
The Collegian

Wherever Daniel Chacón walks he is followed.

With the same persistence as a tabloid photographer in Hollywood, Chacón’s thoughts wait for the right opportunity.

“I don’t need to come up with ideas,” said Chacón, Fresno State’s Distinguished Visiting Fiction Writer in the Master of Fine Arts Program.

Chacón, who is only at the university until the end of fall semester, said story ideas seem to cling to him. “They follow me. They won’t leave me alone. They slap me in the back of the head and say, ‘Look! Look at that!’”

Being in Fresno is like coming back home for Chacón.

Although he normally teaches creative writing in the MFA program at the University of Texas at El Paso, Chacón was born and raised here.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Fresno State, but more importantly it was as a Bulldog that he found his passion for writing.

In his last undergraduate semester at Fresno State Chacón took a beginning fiction-writing course, and halfway through the semester decided not to send out law school applications like he had planned.

After getting his master’s in English at Fresno State he went on to the University of Oregon to get his master’s in fiction writing.

The passion he has for writing is something Chacón says he can’t separate from his teaching.

“I don’t think that I will ever in my life not teach. I think if I were to do that it would be an act of selfishness so great that I would probably shrivel up like the Wicked Witch of the East.”

Chacón said there are so many story ideas out there that it can bug a writer, but some can be powerful. “So, it’s not a question of how do I get my ideas, it’s a question of how do I eliminate the ideas to choose the ones worthy of being written,” he said.

It is those ideas that don’t leave you alone that Chacón believes are the important ones.

At Fresno State Chacón is teaching students how to answer this question in an unfamiliar way.

In a class he calls “Physics, Mysticism and the Fiction Writer,” Chacón is teaching students the basic metaphorical structures of physics and mysticism and helping them apply the same methods when creating fictional landscapes as writers.

“I don’t think this has ever been done before, although inevitably I think it will be done in the future,” Chacón said.

According to Chacón we give shape to the things around us — our will and desires are reflected onto the landscape.

This thought process allows students to key in on important themes in their writing, and turns the task of rewriting into a strengthening builder for the work.

“It allows them to go into their own fiction,” Chacón said. “We’re taking this idea of emanation of energy and we’re going into our own fictional landscapes and we’re looking at points within the

spatial fabric of our stories where there are particular emanations of energy stronger than others.”

That emanation of energy can be an image or some idea that is repeated and is actually a powerful image.

“It is accessing those points of energy in our own work that allows us to more effectively shape the story the way the story wants to be shaped.”

Tuesday, Oct. 24 from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Alice Peters Auditorium, Chacón will be giving a lecture titled, “Fresno: The Center of the Cosmos.” In this lecture he will be discussing some of the fundamental ideas that he is teaching his creative writing students.

“Essentially I’m going to be talking about how we can access these wormholes, these points in space that take us to different times and different metaphysical and memory landscapes,” Chacón said.

There are certain images that carry a particular power because of how those images relate to other experiences, works of art, memories or other places, he said.

According to Chacón, no matter where you are at you are at the center of the cosmos, because they are infinite. Whether you’re in Fresno or halfway across the world you are at the center of the cosmos.

“The whole idea behind that is no matter where you are in time and space you are in the most powerful, wonderful, terrible place that life has to offer you,” Chacón said.

“The idea is that we should really respect the moment, absorb the moment and be in the moment because it gives us access to pretty much everything else.”

Jose Diaz, the associate dean for the college of arts and humanities at Fresno State, said Chacón is a dynamic individual and the approach he is taking towards fiction writing is fascinating.

Diaz, who coordinates the lecture series that Chacón will take part in Tuesday said, “By having guest artists it brings an element of experience, depth and expertise that you get for that one semester right on your own campus.”

Along with the experience and expertise that Chacón brings to Fresno State, it is his depth that is taking notice. Chacón said it is not so much that he gets satisfaction in writing, but that he wouldn’t get any satisfaction if he were not writing at all.

“If I don’t write I’m wasting my life. Everybody has something in life that they do well, and they should be developing it,” he said. “They should be using it as a means to contribute to something beyond themselves. For whatever reason that’s what I do, I’m a writer.”

Comment on this story in the Features forum >>