Besides, I’m beginning to wonder if long-form blogging as we’ve all known and loved it is going by the wayside in favor of quicker “text-bite” ways such as twitter or tumblr.

I know I’ve been finding it easier to use twitter to just bang out random thoughts and tumblr for random fun (not to mention the crazy conversations I’ve had). Hmm…I’ve been thinking of a creative use for this. I’ll need to marinate on it a bit more. Entertain yourself with my tumblr in the meantime. As an artist, I find how visual it is to be fun.

Octavia Butler Signing "Fledgling"; Photo by Nikolas Coukouma

My friends Chesya and Kay would probably agree with me about my next statement: When I’m stumped in my writing, I ask myself “WWOD?”… “What Would Octavia Do?” Octavia Butler‘s prodigious talent as an award-winning writer has been such an influence upon us.

Today would have been her birthday. She passed away three years ago and I was so sad to hear of it. Kay had loaned me some of her books around that time, and I just happened to come across them recently. This led to what I can only call an Octavia reading spree. From Imago (1989) to Mind of My Mind (1977) to Clay’s Ark (1984) to Patternmaster (1976), for a week I could not put them down. Back in 2003, I remember flying across the country to my wedding reading the harrowing dystopic Parable of the Sower (1993) and flying back from it reading Parable of the Talents (1998). I had read Kindred (1979) years before.

If you want to know who my biggest influence as a writer is, it was Ms. Butler. Her writing style–almost spare, yet masterful in her treatment of words and the unfolding of the story itself–is a joy for me to read. Visionary and futurist, the stories themselves are engrossing and thought-provoking. As a female African-American writing in the scifi/speculative fiction genre, she was a trailblazer and inspiration to me.

WWOD? Keep on writing.

St Lawrence Hall was an important site in the Canadian anti-slavery movement

The pic at left is of Toronto’s St. Lawrence Hall–an important site in the Canadian abolitionist movement. The Anti-Slavery Society (founded in 1851) invited lecturers such as Frederick Douglass to speak there and the North American Convention of Colored People met here.

I was in Toronto since a very good college friend of mine–now a professor at the University of Michigan–was attending a symposium entitled “Tales of Slavery: Narrative of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Enslavement in Africa.”

Since my best friend (his wife) and I are writers, he thought we would enjoy a panel on “How Novelists Construct Past Slaveries.” He was right. Given that two of my published stories involved slaves, I was absolutely fascinated. Moderated by Kofi Anyidoho of the Univ. of Ghana, the panelists all spoke on their challenges, inspirations and realizations as they tried to turn history into a story. The panelists included African-Canadian author Lawrence Hill (The Book of Negroes, US title: Someone Knows My Name); South African authors Manu Herbstein (Ama, A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade) and Yvette Christanse (The Unconfessed); and historian Natalie Davis (Fiction in the Archives, Slaves Onscreen, and Women on the Margins).

I found Mr Hill’s and Ms. Davis’ papers and answers during the Q&A to be the most compelling as I know the feeling of how going through an archives and reading things like lists can get you hyped and trigger questions that become inspirations, such as “Who were they? What were their lives like? What are their stories?”

I also liked Ms. Christanse’s honest answer to a question of “Can anyone write the story of another culture?” Her take on it was that in theory–yes–but there are certain stories that she’d be nervous about taking on, such as that of a Jew during the Holocaust. Chesya and I debate this question constantly, as, is it a matter of “appropriation”? Or as writers, shouldn’t we be able to write about anything or anyone if the facts are straight and the voice is true? That’s a whole other post for another time though.

Having been a history major myself and considering that I write historical fiction, I could see one problem if a historian wishes to create a work veering more towards creative writing than not. A comment was made about “Wondering what other historians would think.” I remember muttering, “We don’t necessarily care what you think. Who are you really writing for?”

Don’t get me wrong. No writer ever wishes to have their facts incorrect or to misinform others, but a creative writer is not the same as an academic writer. We can take some liberties where a historian writing a more non-fiction or scholarly work absolutely should not. We are not writing for scholars, we are weaving a story for the reader and there’s nothing worse than reading a novel that is just a stringing together of the author’s research notes. While I believe historians have the capability to write an engaging story, they have to be able to be skilled enough as a storyteller as well.

History is a great inspiration for fiction, without a doubt, but to make it come alive…one can’t forget the “story” part of it.

Zora Neale Hurston by Carl Van Vechten, 1938

A few years ago, I read Langston Hughes’ autobiography, The Big Sea. In addition to stories of his own experiences in Paris and Harlem among the minds and creatives that made up the Harlem Renaissance, some of the most interesting things he talked about was his time spent with the irrepressible sheer force of personality that was author and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston.

I recently came across a story from it that I had written down because it stood out to me. I remember laughing when I first read it, imagining her practically bouncing down a Harlem street doing this. Hughes said:

“She tells this story on herself, about needing a nickel to go downtown one day and wondering where on earth she would get it. As she approached the subway, she was stopped by a blind beggar holding out his cup.

‘Please help the blind! Help the blind! A nickel for the blind!’

‘I need money worse than you today,’ said Miss Hurston, taking five cents from his cup. ‘Lend me this! Next time, I’ll give it back.’ And she went on downtown.”

I remember the first time I read her masterwork Their Eyes Were Watching God and it was your usual dissected-to-death-beyond-meaning school assignment. Honestly, I didn’t really appreciate it until re-reading it years later and that time, it was the nuances of the words, the way she could make a character’s voice so true and her snap-crackle-pop way of writing that were more clear to me.

As a writer, it’s something you hope for…that the reader actually “gets” what you are trying to say. Otherwise, something can become lost. It goes without saying that we writers need readers and I think that we can evolve as readers. That at some point something “kicks” in and we become better readers. When I say “better” reader, I’m not talking about what we read–as to me the medium and genre doesn’t matter–but how we read and understand it.

I mean really, if the story’s not speaking to you…why would you listen?

Interesting writing in the restroom stall...

Yes…I really did take a pic of this while in a movie theater restroom in Toronto. No, I did not write that myself. My handwriting’s actually a bit more on the chickenscratch-y side and makes my schoolteacher grandmother shake her head sometimes while trying to read it.

Anyone else in there must have thought “Let me hurry up and get out of here” as I laughed in the stall while reading it. It did remind me that I needed to get cracking on this blog. Put some stuff out there in the interwebz.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “What do I want to say in this blog?” and finally, I’ve got an answer: It’s “whatever.” As in, whatever strikes me. Maybe art. Maybe writing. The state of the world of publishing or the world at-large. Maybe history or architecture or geek stuff or whatever gets me hyped.

Feel free to get hyped too…

Oh, and “Angels and Demons” was time in my life I can not get back now.

Poetry is life distilled” –Gwendolyn Brooks

That quote could probably apply to the arts in general. The creative process of trying to sum it all up in one piece as manifested through its maker. Either way, in the immortal words of Bender Bending Rodriguez: “I’m back baby!”

I took a bit of a hiatus from writing (long story) and thought, “I need a kick in the rear” to get back on track on the keyboard and bang out pages like I used to again. I’ve also got some of my art quilts out in the world on exhibition right now and I need to wield some paint and fabric and thread and get to cracking on finishing up some more.

So in the meantime you get to hear me grumble and rant and “philosophize” ever so slightly about writing, art, travel and culture, all sorts of other things and that big thing we call life.

Shall we begin?