At the beginning of this year, I was waking up at 4 am every night. Because I value my sleep, I would lay there and stubbornly will myself back to slumber. I was determined that this weird insomnia would not leave me tired for the coming day. I had things to do. People routinely asked me “How do you do it all?” Well, one way is that I get my proper rest.
But this early wake up call just would not stop.
So I gave in to it and decided I would get some writing done. I finished a children’s story, edited some poems. I also had a novel that was more than 50% finished for a decade. I would see the title sometimes in my google docs and turn away from it ashamed. It was like a failed relationship. I had ghosted the three sweet protagonists. I was the writer equivalent of a “fuck boy.” Then, I found an old list of writer’s retreats and put them in order by due date and applied. “If I get into a retreat this summer I will definitely use the time to finish the book.” I thought.
A bit of back story about the book:
Back before I even started writing it, I was matriculating through an MFA in creative writing (where my focus was poetry) at the University of Memphis. It was the year 2000 which unbelievably was more than two decades ago now, and the U. S. was at a different level of cultural awareness, even amongst The Academy. I mention this because I was taking a class called “Literature of the Commonwealth,” and a course would never be named that nowadays. This was literature from all of the countries that England had colonized. To make a long explanation short, the wealth wasn’t common.
This was the class where I wrote a really good short story as my final project, and received the paper back with a big “C” written at the top. Later, in the professor’s office, where I had scheduled a meeting to understand the mark I was assigned, The professor grilled me on basic vocabulary. His assignment had asked that whatever we wrote “have something to do with the Commonwealth,” so I set my story in Brixton which is a neighborhood of Jamaican immigrants outside of London. My knowledge of British slang was limited to my Gen X exposure to Disney movies like “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” and “Mary Poppins.” But because the story focused on family dynamics it didn’t require much in order to make the setting believable. I thought the professor was asking me how I knew the British slang for policeman was “Bobby” because he was being chatty about my writing process. After several similar types of questions, which I answered, he asked “Are we going to continue to play this game or are you going to tell me who wrote the story?”
The floor fell from beneath my feet.
This man was accusing me of plagiarizing the story. He assigned it a “C” because he didn’t believe I wrote it.
And what was abundantly clear was that he didn’t believe I wrote the story because I was Black.
It was only after I was relating this incident while at the Yaddo artist retreat, that I realized my failing confidence regarding writing fiction had found its origin in that racist professor’s office.
Sometime after finished my MFA, I began a novel about three African American adolescents becoming men set in my hometown of Meridian, Mississippi. All of the action takes place in one summer; the summer of 1989.
And then it lanquished.
In the meantime, I leaned into my first love (poetry), and I wrote the book, chop: a collection of kwansabas for fannie lou hamer. I also wrote lots of other poems, at least one other short story, and a bunch of non fiction as well.
Then, last year I entered the first page of the abandoned novel into a “First Page” contest.
It won!
That acknowledgement was a vote of confidence in the strength of the story. I really wanted to finish it.
When I received the email from Yaddo that I had been selected to attend for the month of July, I was ecstatic. And when I arrived in Saratoga Springs, New York and saw the private cottage, I said to myself “Treasure, if you can’t finish this novel here, don’t bring it back up to anyone.”
Well, I left Yaddo on Sunday, July 23rd and I wrote “The End” on the next day.
I finished the book!
Now, I am taking some time away from the draft so that I can revise with fresh eyes. I am also in the market for a literary agent. I am learning how to write query letters as we speak.
This process has taught me two important lessons:
- One of the main functions of white supremacy is to make Black folks doubt themselves
- People can only hold you to their low standard as long as you let them
Do you have a book you’d like to write? Comment and tell me about it!