Writing and magic (Hurston/Wright Writers Workshop)

Whenever I tried to write about my past couple days at Hurston/Wright Writers Workshop, I would put down my pen and reflect some more. The words wouldn’t come, at least not yet. It was so sacred, those moments of truth when my soul opened up to embrace my characters, embrace the reality of my immediate transformation as a writer. I was reminded last week that I’m a writer who’s supposed to see the world for what it is and beyond, including the people I write about.

Not often do they come to me naked and raw while staring at a reflection of myself in a mirror, wondering, marveling. Vulnerable and ashamed, I sometimes look away, delete them from my presence with the click of my mouse or a line drawn with my pen; cloak them with unnecessary adjectives. “They were there all along, you were just too afraid of them”, Marita Golden, my Hurston/Wright instructor, and acclaimed author of Don't Play in the Sun, After, and The Word-Black Writers Talk About The Transformative Power of Reading And Writing, said in one of her critiques. She challenged me to dig deeper, getting my fingers dirtied with the soil under which memories, emotions, and experiences are buried, some of them still alive and well. Like severed tails of lizards they dance about with their own lives independent of the dead carcass of doubt from which they came.

“Tell me your story, grandma,” I remembered asking as a little girl, fascinated by my grandmother’s tall tales about rolling calves and duppy in the country. This was before I realized that the universe conspires in mysterious ways to have me re-tell those same stories my ancestors told. My stories may not be about rolling calves and duppies, but about the secrets that lurk behind the darkest shadows of my ancestors’ pasts, secrets too restless to be laid to rest in coffins, secrets that wait till moonlight to run free among the cane fields and float above the river, secrets that some may call myal while others call relentless truths. This explains why many of the women in the workshop had eerily resonating themes as if we were there answering to the call of congo drums at a ritual where we are bequeathed our stories, bowing our heads to accept our crowns as griots. "Write from your heart, not your head until it’s time to edit," Marita said.

Writing from the heart. What exactly does that mean? Marita Golden was able to break it down in workshop, pulling apart intricate metaphors, beautiful language and ambitious plots with discerning tweezers to find depth in a character. What is this character’s biggest secret? What’s his/her motivation to do such a thing? What was his/her journey? In other words, are we listening to our characters or are we forcing them onto the page, crowding them with our own desires and expectations, fearing that our readers may make assumptions about us? A character is what makes the plot. Most workshops I’ve been in have focused on plot, but convincing the reader to care deeply about a character is magic within itself—--kind of like a spirit that has never been seen but is felt.

Thanks to Marita Golden and the supportive workshop in which my work was carefully critiqued, I was able to walk away feeling inspired after rigorously re-working my story, developing characters, and most importantly finding the courage to attack the page without fear. I walked away with a novel and a community of writers of color, extremely talented women warriors with great stories to tell. God must have answered my prayers when I had written in a previous blog how much I need a mentor and a strong community of writing pals, for I was granted this favor and much more.


The Furious Flowers serenade Marita Golden on our last day. Hurston/Wright Writers Workshop 2011, Howard University.

Nicole

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