this gift

notes from callaloo

sometimes you just know that you are at the divine right place in the universe. this is one of those times. i am typing this from the computer lab here in texas at the callaloo writers workshop.callaloo is a historic journal of literature of the african diaspora…each year they sponsor a two week workshop in poetry and fiction…no housing costs, no tuition, just communion on the strength of your work…

in the airport i met other kindred spirits…i looked closely at the black people wondering is he a writer? is she? it was easy to guess in the tiny american eagle terminal…i guess we carry ourselves a certain way in the world, but we found each other, no problem…

i usually handle ambiguity quite well, but there was something unnerving about this whole event…the situation was just too sweet to be real…something that i had dreamt about for years finally coming true, i was a bit overwhelmed…and it was about to get worse…

we met for a reception the first night…the students mingling and the instructors, writers we all recognized and respected sharing the same space…it was difficult for me to comprhend how the person who was on the poets and writers this month (percival everett) was standing in the same room with me now…and would soon be reading my work…

the lovely charles rowell told us how important it was that we were here and said things like we were the future of black literature…instead of reassuring me, that sent my stress level up a notch…

we broke into groups and introduced ourselves…percival immediately starts to give us an assignment…pretend that i am a baby with the full use of language and explain to me how to drive a car…what the fu**? someone complained that they couldn’t drive so he said instead, well describe to me in a page or so how internal combustion works, that will be better what? then he asked us to bring in our stories to read…there were no advanced instructions to bring work (but of course i had what i had submitted) so that put me out of sorts as well…but the damn internal combustion put me over the top…

i was already tired from the travel and staying up late the night before…too many mix of ages and noise…i thought i can not do this…if i have to do this every day i will just die…i even considered cancelling a trip to another workshop because my stress level was so high…i seriously wanted to pack my things and go home…seriously…

monday we had our first workshop…a fiasco with the copier didn’t help my stress level, but as soon as we started all of the stress disappeared…percival everett is a wonderful teacher…despite his stern looking author photos he is personable, brilliant and extremely insightful…he has a keen way of telling you very quickly what you do well…and coaching you on how to make a story better…he said that we were not a hospital…we were not here to save bad stories…we were the pathology lab, examining tissue, figuring out the disease, dissecting it…and through working on others stories, we would be able to make our work better as well…and that is exactly what has happened…

he also said a thing that has really made me think differently about all of those various drafts i have been keeping…he said that writing is a non-destructive art form…writing is not like sculpture he said, where if you knock off a hunk of stone there’s no way to salvage it…with writing you can edit a story and if you don’t like it, go back to the original…no harm / no foul…i was taking the editing much too seriously…like if i moved forward, i couldn’t go back…sometimes you don’t see the worth in some deleted section until later on…

much more to come…notes to make…i’ll post the internal combustion writing exercise later…

j