Jericho Brown, who is the author of the American Book Award for Please, edited the anthology How We Do It. Black writers contributed to the eight chapters which contain thirty-two pieces. In his introduction, Brown states: “…this is a book of answers—answers to questions new writers ask every day…” While I am not a person of color, I thought that I could learn from the perspectives in the book and compare their questions and answers to my own.
Who Your People?
The first section “Who Your People,” contains four short pieces. The first addresses Rhythm in Writing or how best to transcribe in writing the speech patterns of the characters to model them more truly after those of real people. The second piece, Asking Questions and Excavating Memory: Creating Complex Fictional Characters, encourages writers to give their characters “a lifetime of psychological history and reasons why they can’t have the things they desire or deserve” and provides lists as guides. In the third piece, When a Character Returns, Rion Amilcar Scott tackles the question of how characters must be further developed when they appear later in a follow-up chapter or in a series. Jacquelyn Woodson wonders in What Do You Want from Me about why characters show up in an author’s head, how to determine what the character wants, and how the character is going to get what she wants—in the story and from the author.
What You Got?
In the second section, “What You Got,” Curdella Forbes’s piece, The “Natives of My Person” or Blood Is Not Enough, discusses the sticky business of race and recommends that authors use the conception of “kin and kinship” instead because the “imagination is an unbounded place, not a country.” In Sweet, Bittersweet, and Joyful Memories, Jewel Parker Rhodes compares writing memoirs—which can focus on powerful images, potent memories, and potent dreams—with writing autobiographies. Marita Goldman also addresses the composition of memoirs in How to Write a Memoir or Take Me to the River, emphasizing that “Memoirs now rival novels in popularity, are studied, critiqued by scholars, make the bestseller list, and at their best are a form of literature and art.”
Where You At?
In the third section of the collection, “Where You At?” several authors address place, environment, regionalism, and setting. W. Ralph Eubanks, in Looking for a Place Called Home, suggests “…there is no need to go looking for a place to call home unless you are lost.” He returned to his native Mississippi to rediscover his origins. He learned that “A place can sometimes help you see how the historical and lived experience intersect…”
Natasha Trethewey in her exquisitely heartrending (and long) piece, Abiding Metaphors and Finding a Calling, ties her birth as a poet to a near-death experience as a child, and her memory image of that day to a dream of her mother who was murdered at a later time of her life. The child of a Black mother and a white father, Trethewey deftly analyses her life in the South through comparative historical, racial, and metaphorical expressions designed to uplift one race and one history while blocking out the reality of another.
In a short piece, How They Must Have Felt—Imaginary Tulsa, Breena Clarke discusses the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Her grandmother had lived there before the massacre and after moving East, often recalled the city and its people with love. Clarke grew up with this image of the city and learned about the massacre later. When she decided to write a fictional story, she honored her grandmother’s memories, while placing the massacre firmly in print.
In a lively piece, This Louisiana Thing Which Drives Me, Charles H. Rowell interviews Ernest Gaines about writers who influenced him, why he writes, and what he writes about. Gaines speaks of his love for writers who write well, his longing for Louisiana, and discusses at length his book and film about Miss Jane Pitman.
How You Living?
The fourth section of the book is called “How You Living?” and contains four short pieces about the daily life and intentions of writers. The first one, Seven Brides for Seven Mothers by Rita Dove reacts against approaches that assume everyone writes similarly. She encourages poets to explore and embrace a stance toward writing that feeds their energy, “…linking body to mind and spirit….”
The second piece, Once More with Feeling by Camille T. Dungy, also a poet, encourages writers to “pay attention,” that is to be very aware of what is going on in a certain moment. She suggests the practice of setting a timer before writing. She also contributes a clear discussion of using the senses to improve your writing, including one I was unaware of: “Proprioception the sense of where our bodies are in space….”
In the third piece, Craft Capsules: An American Marriage Tayari Jones addresses the work a novelist must do to decide which character to foreground as the protagonist and how to deal with moral issues in a novel. She emphasizes that “The character with the most pressing material crisis will always be at the center of the story.”
In the final piece of this section, Craft and the Art of Pulling Lincoln from a Hat, E. Ethelbert Miller, a poet, ponders the contradictions about writing as a Black writer versus writing as a writer, asking “…why is a key necessary and what’s behind the doors?”
What It Look Like?
In the fifth section of the book, Jericho brings together five writers to focus on the topic of form in “What It Look Like?”
The poet Tony Medina’s piece discusses using music to stimulate and encourage students in Ready for the World: On Classroom, Craft, and Commanding Black Space. Medina, who takes a boom box to his creative writing classes, states “Music allows me to set a mood for creativity as well as influence the direction of my students’ poems.”
The second piece in this section, Wrangling the Line Meditations on the Bop is presented by Afaa Michael Weaver who provides an outline and a definition for the bop form which was invented in 1977 “in Mt St. Alphonsus monastery on the Hudson, out of the womb of Black resilience.
Tiphanie Yanique in Fiction Forms: How to Make Fun and Profundity Possible in Fiction compares the use of forms in poetry and fiction. She discusses how a common fictional form, “The Hero’s Journey,” is both sexist and racist and is exceedingly difficult to execute unless the hero is a white unattached male. She also explains how in her book, Monsters in the Middle, she deliberately employed different forms.
Another poet, Nikki Giovanni, in a short piece entitled Craft, demonstrates where her inspirations arise but protests that “I don’t have a craft.”
This section ends with an interview in which Michael Dumanis interviews Jericho Brown. They discuss forms of poetry, the difficulty of writing as a Black poet, the loss of a generation of mentors due to HIV, and Jericho Brown’s love of writing poetry.
Who You With?
The sixth section is called “Who You With?” and contains another five essays. Jamaica Kincaid begins the section with a piece called Those Words that Echo…Echo…Echo through Life. Someone asks her how she writes. She goes on to demonstrate how writing is repetitive, life intervenes, life is repetitive, and nevertheless, she eventually solves the writing problem.
Tricia Elam Walker approaches the question of whether writers should Write What You Know or Nah? In her own work, she has realized that it takes “Research, the powers of observation and insight.” And she suggests that writers write about “what you’ve come to know.”
In the third piece, Nations Through Their Mouths: Silence, Inner Voices, and Dialogue, Ravi Howard discusses the uses of interiority and dialog in fiction stating, “Once the writer develops the well of history, questions, memories, fears, and desires, the writing benefits from the anticipation of what is said and what remains within.”
The fourth piece, Writing Through Loss and Sorrow: Poetry as a Practice of Healing, by Frank X Walker, begins by saying that he used to joke that he wrote poetry “because he couldn’t afford a therapist.” He suggests that poets write their first feelings about loss and death in a journal so that they can then articulate their feelings and experiences in poetry.
The last piece in this section is another long interview in which they discuss cultural appropriation: An Interview with Barry Jenkins and Martin Jerkins.
How to Read
The seventh section of the book, “How to Read,” contains four pieces. Evie Shockley states in her piece on Nothing New: Black Poetic Experiment, “I want to lure you further away from authenticity, deeper into ambiguity, far past the clearly marked boundaries of Black Poetry.” She goes on to define “transgression” as going across a line to redefine a new territory. She suggests the aspiring poet read many other poets.
Yearning, Despair, and Outrage: Writing Loss in Fiction is presented by Angela Flournoy who after experiencing loss and having others say “I can’t imagine your loss” was particularly struck by the loss of life during the Covid epidemic. What struck her was individuals’ inability to imagine and empathize with others’ loss. She refers to the “long tail of grief” and the “sharp teeth of sorrow.” After discussing several fictional death scenes, Flournoy asks the writer of fiction: “How can we truly understand what we have meant to one another without acknowledging what it means to have all of it come to an end.”
In the third piece, Journal, Terrence Hayes reflects and ponders on his own teaching, his topics, and his students over time using a journal format for his commentary.
The last piece in this section by Carl Phillips is called Muscularity and Eros: On Syntax. Phillips states “The relationship between pattern and the meaningful disruption of that pattern that gives poetry the muscularity to become memorable.” He goes on to say that a poem “is a bodily thing” and “not just a bodily thing but an erotic one.”
Going Back
The concluding section of the book “Going Back” is comprised of three pieces. The first by Elizabeth Nunez on Plotting the Plot reveals that during the Covid shutdown, she began to watch Lauren Lake’s Paternity shows on television and became fascinated by the “plot.” She goes on to compare the show’s usage with Shakespeare’s great tragedies. She outlines the essential elements of the plot which in her estimation include mentions of important authors and events.
The second Re-Vision by Mitchell S. Jackson plays on the meaning of the word “revision.” Jackson intersperses advice to his students on revising manuscripts with short examples of stories about young Black people who did not survive. The essay helps the reader see and re-see the lives of the young Black people as well as glean useful information on revising their own work.
And, the last piece of the book, The Art of Revision: Most of What You Write Should Be Cut, by Charles Johnson provides detailed and useful advice on the kinds and numbers of revisions in which writers should engage to produce a finished work. Johnson ends by saying, “Craft is certainly one thing. I would also like to think that certain works of art transform the artist.”
How We Do It is an authoritative publication. Aspiring and experienced writers alike would benefit from a deep dive into this book. I have found it to be readable, uplifting, and informative. This is an impressive book.
My Writing Goals for 2023
Publish my second book of poetry:
I drafted descriptions for the Amazon site.
Finish, request feedback, and send my first novel out for review:
I enjoyed doing additional research to write new sections of this book.
Continue to work on my other novels:
I have been reviewing old songs and videos from the period of one of my novels. What a wonderful excursion into memories. Now I need to do the same for the other novel.
Continue to develop a network of kindred spirits in the world of writing and publishing:
Boulder Writers Alliance: I attended the BWA Happy Hour in November, collaborated with our techies on setting up voting for officers, and hosted a BWA Poetry Circle featuring Beth Franklin who operates the online Colorado Poetry Center.
At the beginning of December, Gary Alan McBride’s Writers Who Read group discussed a novel in an experimental format—Trust by Hernan Diaz. Dias used a unique format to highlight how sexism in writing can “white out” a woman from the story she lived.
Denver Women’s Press Club: I attended our holiday party at the Club House.
Women Writing the West: Our critique group met and went over one member’s short story, another member’s chapter, and about 2000 words of my novel.
Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers: I read the newsletter and enjoyed the piece on Carol Berg.
Document my writing progress through my blog and post it on the seventh day of each month, one blog per month in 2023:
Today is December 7, 2023, and I am posting my twelfth blog of 2023. Having chosen this past year to read books on writing by well-known authors and write reviews of the books in my blog, I can affirm that I made an excellent choice. Their distinctive thoughts and voices have expanded my understanding of writing fiction. These authors all now feel like good friends who support and improve my own work. I am indebted to them all.
Today in History:
Akiko Yosano, a Japanese poet born on December 7, 1878, died on May 29, 1942. An incredibly prolific poet, Yosano wrote more than twenty anthologies of poetry and eleven books of prose. She also birthed thirteen children. She was known as a social reformer, feminist, and pacifist.
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