THE ROLE OF THE WRITER

....from Chinua Achebe


Achebe has often spoken about his ideas on the role of a writer. Each writer has their own philosophy on what it means to be a writer, and their place in society. The following are quotes and ideas from Achebe on his views on writing, and the motivations and responsibilities involved.

* "It's not really for the novelist to say, "This is what you must to be saved."" (Jussawalla, 67)

* "Why, why, why are people so frightened of letting things that happen in real life happen in literature?" (Jussawalla, 73)

* "It is important that the storyteller tells the story the way he sees it, not the way the emperor wants it to be told." (Jussawalla, 81)

* "For me there are three reasons for becoming a writer. The first is that you have an overpowering urge to tell a story. The second, that you have the intimations of a unique story waiting to come out. And the third, which you learn in the process of becoming, is that you consider the whole project worth the trouble-I have sometimes called in terms of imprisonment-you will have to endure to bring it to fruition." (Achebe, Home and Exile 39)

* "But overwhelmed or merely undermined, literature is always badly served when an author's artistic insight yields place to stereotype and malice." (Achebe, Home and Exile 41)

*one of the tools of colonization is storytelling: make a more palatable story, justify their actions (Achebe, Home and Exile 60)

*On Elspeth Huxley: 'She was engaged in spinning stories to validate the transfer of African lands to white settlers. To put it rather brutally, she was engaged in forging fake title deeds." (Achebe, Home and Exile 68)

Peace Always,
ANGEL

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

"Simone Weil says, 'Absolute attention is prayer.' And the more I have thought about this over the years, the truer it is for me. I have used the sentence often in talking about poetry to students, to suggest that if one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place. Something is "given," and perhaps that something is always a reality outside the self. We are aware of God only when we cease to be aware of ourselves, not in the negative sense of denying the self, but in the sense of losing self in admiration and joy.".....May Sarton, Journal of A Solitude.

JUST ANOTHER THING WE NEED IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

from Naomi Drew, Author and Founder of Learning Peace
Learning Peace.Com

Peace Shield Ritual.

This following excerpt from my latest book, Hope and Healing: Peaceful Parenting in an Uncertain World will give your child a tool for life. Many thanks to my dear friend and colleague Virginia Abu Bakr for this wonderful idea:

Clinical social worker Virginia Abu Bakr uses a variety of rituals with the children she counsels. She says that rituals have been instrumental in
helping her children cope with difficult situations and heal from hurts. When she works with kids who are feeling fearful, angry, or threatened, she
helps them create an invisible peace shield around them. Virginia recommends having the children close their eyes and think of
something that makes them happy. Then they imagine locking in the good feeling. Have them envision the energy of peace gathering around them and
actually forming an invisible shield. As they are picturing this, spray a mist of soothing lavender around them to permanently lock in the power of
their peace shield. By the time the children open their eyes, they feel calmer and less affected by the incident that triggered their anger. Virginia encourages children to
take their peace shields with them whenever they go. When they feel the need for protection, calmness, or detachment from anger, they focus on the image
of their peace shield. Having this technique gives kids a feeling of control. They might not be able to change the circumstances in their lives, but they can do something about the way they react to them.

Try doing the peace shield ritual with your children. In fact, try it yourself.

Sounds good to me.

Peace Always,
ANGEL

JOY, JOY, JOY

Before I die, I need to meet Alice Walker. I need to lay my hand in hers. I need to feel her embrace. I need to talk to her about Life. I am so profoundly affected and feel incredibly connected to this woman. She is truly living her life ... soaking up all there is in this life to experience. I love me some Alice Walker.
Anyhow, if you're a lover of poetry that is non-university, non-MFA brick and mortar style....poetry that is fluid in its own right, without all the meter bullcrap then you need to pick up my girl's latest: Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth.

Prologue:

"Let's admit it. We women are building a motherland; each with her own plot of soil eked from a night of dreams, a day of work. We are spreading this soil in larger and larger circles, slowly, slowly. One day it will be a continuous land, a resurrected land come back from the dead. Mundo de la madre, psychic motherworld, coexisting and coequal with all other worlds. This world is being made from our lives, our cries, our laughter, our bones. It is a world worth making, a world worth living in, a world in which there is a prevailing and decent wild sanity." ---Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

Peace always,
ANGEL

INVISIBLE PROGRESS


"I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes to not expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. I am still pursued by a neurosis about work inherited from my father. A day where one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatsoever."
------May Sarton, Journal of A Solitude

Not much work done on the novel this week. Kid #1 is on spring recess, so of course that means many, many distractions. But all is well because I've been catching up on some delicious reading and organizing/re-working some old poems and spinning a few new ones. Decision made to publish a chapbook. I've grown weary of looking for a home for my short fiction that I've been told by professional writer friends is good. Verygood. Problem is, most of the literary journals continue to only publish (or desire to publish) the OWGs (Old White Guys). Month after month the same names appear and it's tiring. Same is true of the OWW's (Old White Women). Pick up any prominent journal or a recent copy of the this, this or thisand you'll surely find an OWG or OWW. These journals are sorely lacking in diversity and that's being PC. Not just in the sense of the writer's ethnicity but in the theme of the stories. It's just the same old, same old. So in talking to my friend K, who balances life as a mother, writer, painter and traveler, I've decided that it's time to practice some serious Kujichagulia. Self-Determination. Spike Lee did it. Julie Dash did it. I am no different. The artist has to make their art. And the art has to be released into the Universe. It is both painful and humiliating to find one's nose up against a closed door month after month after month. So in the spirit of Kujichagulia, I am pulling together a manuscript which will be a mixture of poems, poetry and short prose which I hope to have to a printer by the end of the year.

On another note, Kid 1 and I planted a tree in the backyard today. She and her classmates planted acorns some time ago and now, the most adorable little oak "tree" sits in her styrofoam cup. She is amazed and the thought comes to me how spectacular it is to be a child. To greet everyday with excitement, wonder. To be amazed at nature. To be curious. To touch things with delicate, tender hands. To be unafraid of what troubles accompany the new day. To have the absolute blind faith that today I will be fed, clothed, hugged, loved, played with, etc. To have absolute blind faith.. And so I am reminded that this is what Jesus means when he talks about becoming as the little children. It's hard. Hard, hard, hard in the world we live in. Watching the shifting politics moment by moment that are so blatant and in-your-face; so anti-woman, anti-child, anti-old person, anti-poor. It's hard.

Anyhow, L'il Mama's tree is in the ground and a purple sign sits beside it, informing all that this is Her tree. I need to get over here sometime this week and pick up some more soil. Perhaps tomorrow Kid#1 and I will go. I have lavendar and tomato seeds that need planting and since we are in the spirit of planting and beginning life, there's no time like the present. Will get back to work on the novel next week. For now, I will let my eyes delight in the tasty treat of Spring: daffodils, tulips, 7:30 sunsets, green grass (finally! the piss-yellow is gone), the woods out back where there are trees, trees and more trees, slowly filling in.

Peace Always,
ANGEL

PORTRAIT OF A LIFE

No post yesterday because I was really busy trying to get as many chapters typed in as possible. There's nothing like the feeling of being organized. I managed to get about five chapters typed in, renamed some others that had been typed out of order, printed out other chapters that had yet to be printed, slipped them through the three whole punch and then loaded everything into the second of two four inch binders. As I sat there on the floor, organizing, collating, loading ... I looked back over this mass of writing, this project I've been working on feverishly for the past three years and I thought, Gee, my life is right here on these pages...chapter for chapter.

My novel is a novel. It is only autobiographical to the degree that all fiction is created from some person, place or thing experienced by the writer. We writers create based upon what we've seen, read, heard at some point in our lives. To say that anything is pure fiction, is, well, fictitious. We describe the color of a woman's hair based upon some color we've seen at some point. And if truth be told, charachters are not necessarily created, rather, they are snippets of people we've seen or had some contact with at some point. Hair the color of a woman's at the grocery store, a bellowing voice like the father across the street, a pot belly like the man at the filling station. You get my point. Good writers always pull from reality. Myself, I do not travel without my pocket index cards. Good material seems to find me and I've learned from experience not to ever be caught without pen and paper. A hunched back old man with fat earlobes and hairy, caterpillar eyebrows wearing white shoes and plaid pants makes a splendid, crotchety old man stuck in a time warp. Two young women flying down the highway, doing ninety, hair flapping in the wind brings to mind a story about youth. Anyway, I digress. I just want to clarify that it is not my life (in the autobiographical sense) on those pages .... but I see my life when I read those chapters.

My opening chapter --- I remember the small two bedroom apartment Spouse and I had when I first started the novel. Young(er), ambitious, naiive. I told everyone I was writing a novel. I thought for sure I was going to write a novel. I had no idea that I was going to spend the next three years of my life waiting for this story to be revealed to me rather than me creating it. There was only Kid 1 at the time. I remember the struggle -- she never slept, she hated eating from a spoon, she was the hardest child in the world to potty train. I remember feeling like such a failure. I remember all the days we spent taking short walks, the days at the park, just she and I. I remember her size 2 shoes. She was an artist from the very beginning. She loved to paint at her easel, loved to draw. She seems to have been born with a writing device in her hand.

Somewhere around Chapter Twenty -- Spouse and I deliberating about when to start trying for Kid #2. We'll wait until after we buy our house.

Chapter Thirty Something --- We buy the house. Who would have thought there'd be so much to do? Closing costs are a beast in this state ... good thing we had money for all the unexpected incidentals that most new homeowners never factor in. Spouse spent a grand on a riding lawnmower. I wanted to paint every room.

Mid-way --- We try for Kid #2 and are successful. In ten months (40 weeks) we will be a family of four. Four months into the pregnancy I discover --- the greatest joy imaginable --- that I am having a boy! I have always, always, always wanted a son. He lives with me right up until his due date and when he is born I am caught, for the very first time in my life, speechless. Ten months of bursting creativity. Prose that is rich, vivid, alive. Charachters that are full and round, well developed in my opinion.

Three Quarters of the Way --- No sleep. Tired always. Preschool for Kid 1 and lots of field trips, activities, etc. Work. Marriage. The Novel. When will I ever be done? Why am I doing this to myself? My novel is crap. No one will ever want this. I save every article I read about other writers who've "made it." No matter what genre they write in, I know there's nothing like hearing someone say, "Yea it's some hard sh**, writing a novel." I keep a file marked Inspiration and tuck these articles in there. It's about two inches thick today and in it is some of the best writing advice anyone could ever have. There are essays/interviews in there of Alice Walker, Joanna Trollope, Walter Mosley and so many others. There are the New York Times pieces from the Writers on Writing column.

Near the End --- My first trip to the Iowa Summer Writer's Festival. Every writer, no matter what stage, needs to go to Iowa. I took a class on Show, Don't Tell with the incomparable Sands Hall. This workshop literally changed my writing life. Things I saw in day to day existence took on a whole new light. I learned how to definitively charachterize. I learned !! Kid 1 and Kid 2 are getting older. Spouse feels much more comfortable being alone with them for a long stretch of time.


The End --- First Grade for Kid 1. Nursery school for Kid 2. Freedom again. Three half days of having the house all to myself. The bold step on my part to write full time and change my job hours to part time. A leap of faith.

I began to think, at the end of the day after all of my collating and stapling and Getting Organized-dom, that perhaps it's true that woman is immortal in the creation of art. I understand what poet Alphonse d'Lamartine meant when he wrote: "Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore, it rushes on and carries us with it."
Time rushes on. Time has indeed rushed on, but in these pages, I see a very vivid portrait of my life.

Peace Always,
ANGEL

MONDAY BLUES

I've always had a severe case of Monday-phobia. I dread Mondays. I abhor Mondays. I detest Mondays. I suspect I am severely allergic to Mondays. On Sunday evening I can feel myself turning into a totally different person. The care free, bohemian, live-and-let-live ME becomes an absolute road hogging, rushing to get the kid out of the house, Get-Me-Some-Coffee-Now 'fore I Diiiiiieeee !!! Tyrant. Did I say, I can't stand Mondays? I have a sneaking suspicion that God, as a last and final joke, will take me out of this Earth on a Monday. Today is the kind of Monday that I'm talking about. I wake up to sleet and rain (didn't someone say it was April??), Spouse calls me just as I prepare to get Kid 1 out the door to school and tells me he forgot a very important set of keys.
"Can you please bring them to me?"
I'd have no problem bringing Spouse his keys if:
a) it wasn't Monday
b) his location wasn't 15 exits away and at least 45 minutes in the opposite direction
c) it wasn't Monday
d) I didn't have a 9:30 appointment
e) it wasn't Monday
f) I didn't have 15 chapters to try to get typed in
g) if it wasn't go**amn Monday

So of course, I wrap up Kid 1 and Kid 2, drop Kid 1 off at school and I travel 45 minutes in the opposite direction, 15 exits, on a rainy, sleet soaked go**amn Monday to give Spouse his keys. Of course he smiles and says, "I'm so sorry. I know I owe you big time." Oh you owe me all right, is what I want to say. And I'm about to cash in in another few months, just as soon as I can get myself over to Expedia. I've decided that I am in dire, dire need of vacation and I'm thinking of a 3 day solo cruise. But that's another story. Back to my Monday. So I get back here (by the grace of God) after falling asleep twice at the wheel. Not in the house fifteen minutes before the school secretary is calling me to tell me that Kid 1 is sitting in her office with 100.8 degree temperature.

"Can you please come and pick her up?"

AAAAARGH !!

Kid 2 hasn't even been fed yet and here we go again, back down the highway, fifteen mintes, 5 exits.

When I arrive, Kid 1's got her leg crossed and reading a book. Doesn't look sick to me. After driving fifteen minutes, five exits in the sleet and pouring rain with a hungry Kid 2 on a go**amn Monday, I want you to look sick. I want you to be sick. I don't want to hear you tell me, My head hurts just a little bit (two small fingers spread about a half inch apart). Rather than make a scene, I become the doting, caring, mother that I am and say "Okay, sweet pea, let's go." My friend R calls it "Real Life."
So today, I am experiencing Real Life. I am glad to see that my upgrade to Blogger Plus is up and running. I may even buy a domain. But what I'm going to do today is work on getting those fifteen chapters (or parts thereof) typed in so I can get going on these rewrites. Somehow I can't see myself moving forward on the story board until I've got every single chapter typed and in front of me.

Here we go. On a Monday. 10 and a half hours left.

Peace always,
ANGEL

I've been offline so long it's almost hard to know where to start. Life is rough these days.
First things first. I finally, finally finished my novel draft. I really shouldn't call it a first draft since I made the horrific mistake of writing a chapter, editing it to death, then writing another, editing and so forth. I'd always start the day by re-reading what I'd written the day before. Chopping here, snipping there. It took me about a year and a half to realize that that method simply does not work. Now, I know there are those that believe it does. And because I believe that the creative process is so different for everyone, I should retract the former statement and simply say ... it doesn't work for me. There are those people who can't dream of going on to the next chapter without solidly polishing the former and these are the people who will probably end up with a first draft that needs significantly less revision than those who allow themselves to do exactly as Anne Lamott suggests "write a shitty first draft." But the one thing I have come to discover is that you can revise until you're blue in the face. Even when the book goes to print, a good writer will always look back and say, "Gee, I really don't like that sentence," or "Man, I should have made Charachter B come in on chapter four instead of six." I mean, there's always, always something to edit. And my thing is, if you have limited time, as is the case for me (read: you have to work for a living), then you really do have to make every moment count. If you have three hours with which to delve into your writing but you spend an hour and a half editing what you've done yesterday ... well, you do the math. How much time is left to propel the story forward?
I think Melanie Bishop sums it up well in an old issue of Glimmer Train's Writer's Ask. She said something I think is very useful advice, particularly for first time authors:
"Just get the story out there, A to Z. You can always go back later and make it beautiful." A friend had given her this advice when she was working on her first novel. She says, "What a relief. By not even reading the beginning I could just start right out where I'd left off and save a lot of time. Sometimes I needed to read a paragraph or a page, just to remind myself where I was, what the tone of the section was, or whatever. But I forbade myself from reading the thing over from page one. While this approach may leave you with an enormous amount of revision after your frist draft is done, it allows you to proceed each day without falling into a crippling critique of what you've already writen.... Psychologically it is so crucial to feel that sense of forward movement, of momentum....So much work left to do but so much already accomplished--the weight of it there in your hand."
And this is the bottom line. There's nothing like having a finished product in your hand. No matter how lumpy, awkward, disjointed, ragged, you know that at the end of the day you've got it all down on paper. If I had a dime for every person I've met over the past 5 years who was writing a novel, I'd be a millionaire. But if I had a dime for everyone whose finished I'd be dead ass broke. So, all of that to say that after a year and a half of self-editing, of giving my work to others to be read and critiqued (you know, the writer's group thing) ... I finally realized that I needed to hammer this thing out and I get it done. I gave myself permission to write a shitty first draft. Now it's done.
So right now I've got several things going on. Number One, I created a story board. Just a simple piece of oaktag with sixteen slots (made from index cards taped to the oaktag). I plan to write the goal of each chapter on an index card and insert it into it's corresponding slot. Since I'm highly visual, this works well for me as I can really see, OK -- is the story moving forward? Does this scene make any sense to the story as a whole? Number Two, I'm delving deeper into my charachters. My protagonist's wife is a real snob and since I'm not a snob I had an awful hard time getting my arms around who this woman is and what her motivation(s) is/are. I also didn't understand her charachter arc -- how she changes in the story. So rather than spend a whole lot of time struggling to know her in the beginning, I just did a charachter profile and put in as much as I knew and figured I'd trust Wisdom to give me the rest down the line. Well, I've learned so much about this woman, it's just amusing. So, I'm spending time with her right now. Third, I've ordered a few texts: Self Editing for Fiction Writers and also a few books on writing a synopsis. Though I have an outline, I do need to get this synopsis down too.

Another significant thing that happened over this past very miserable, cold, wet, dreary winter is that I just couldn't get myself going on my computer. Every time I tried to sit and write, I'd wind up falling asleep and awakening to a blank white screen. I've heard J California Cooper say that she wouldn't dream of trying to write on a computer. The technology alone interferes with her creative process. I wasn't quite sure what was going on. I was still working full time at that point and the idea of going back to my computer after 7 hours spent at a computer was just daunting. Somewhere around December I decided to finish up the novel long hand. That's right. Paper and pen. Now the task at hand is to type in, oh about fifteen chapters or so but can I tell you how liberating that was? It felt like I was just writing letters or jotting notes in my journal. And if I wrote something I didn't like but kind of wanted to keep for later consideration, I'd just draw a line through it -- as opposed to hitting the back space button which eliminates it all together and that's not good for the creative process because you never know if you might want to use that thought/idea/sentence somewhere else. I do believe that when we are writing with our full hearts, each thought comes for a reason. At this early stage it is not for us to judge (read: edit), but to let the words be and find out where they belong later.

So that's what I've got my hands deep in right now. And since I'm a goal setter I'll have to say that I'm striving for a solid rewrite, in which at least the first four chapters are ready to be shown to my agent, by December 2003.

peace always,
angel