First appeared in Left Coast Writer’s Roadwork
Anyone who says writing is a lonely business has yet to spend time with a headful of fictional folk, bent on having their way. Unlike us stodgy, predictable humans, by necessity, characters are self-serving demigods in complete service of effective story, conflict and change. Writers must shape them into minions capable of eliciting empathy from readers. This gloriously symbiotic relationship can be downright neurotic.
In his 1947 book, The Short Story, Kenneth Payton Kempton called this work at hand the chronology of composition, a spectrum of emotions fluctuating between ecstasy and despair. I can surely attest to that. However, over the past decade or so, one of my characters helped me find a sane way of working together; a method discovered during early morning walks.
This routine began in September 2001 when my husband and I became homeshoolers, i.e., general contractors for our singleton daughter’s education. As I took on my new role as lead teacher, I shelved the manuscript for my first novel and switched to collecting story/character ideas in spiral notebooks. I began each weekday with early walks before class. This was my only time completely to myself, or at least I assumed I was alone.
While I designed ways to network with our homeschool group around experiential learning, and worked on lesson plans, fiction ideas worked on me. I saw scenes as empty stage sets, injected with objects, weather, smells and sounds, waiting to be populated with characters. I relished the solitude and creativity of those walks, but it wasn’t long before it became clear—I was definitely not alone.
Three years into homeschooling, I joined Left Coast Writers®, a San Francisco Bay Area literary salon hosted by indie bookstore, Book Passage with regular meetings to hear guest authors and other industry pros read, talk and share around all things writing. As soon as I started stirring those simmering story pots, many characters, old and new, sprang to life, infiltrating my peaceful walks.
One morning, as I contemplate cool ways to introduce third grade algorithms, a young man named Clarence, with a sawed-off pencil tucked behind one ear, approaches me and says calmly, “What you waiting for?”
Then, from the shelved pages of novel #1, a young woman named Dracena, dressed in iconic 1985 shoulder pads, waves a plane ticket to New York City in my face and says, “What good is this so-called immortality you keep promising us if it’s spent shut away in a file?”
Dracena’s hair stylist, standing behind her says, “Miss Thing, you need to get busy!”
On and on my characters raged, high-jacking my solitude. Their tirades worked. Like the old days when I was single and living in Brooklyn, words pushed me out of bed again. I tried to split my evenings between lesson plans and fiction; novel #1 beckoned, but I couldn’t seem to find space in my brain for curricula, group classes and fictional worlds.
When the kid went off to middle school, motivated by opportunities to read at salons, I rescued stories languishing on floppy discs and in spiral notebooks. It felt good, but did not silence my disgruntled crew. Seems nothing I did was ever good enough!
To gain order, I designed a special set for them: a character waiting room. An expansive room where their growing numbers congregate. The most irate stand up front holding forth, others lounge in chairs, on sofas napping, dipping snuff, smoking, plugged in to cell phones or listening to transistor radios; reading by candle light or from various screens. Noise from the front is deafening as veterans infuse new comers until the whole room is in a frenzy.
So one morning I call them out. “Dang! What more do y’all want?” I ask, “I have a productive schedule going, and this loud, crazy room has even inspired me to start a second novel.”
“Yeah?” a voice pitches up toward the ceiling, “well what about that first novel you started? What happened with that?”
“Wait a minute!” I insist, “y’all need to chill. When is it ever a bad thing to have two potential novels!? It only increases your chances of making it out of this room!”
A hush falls over the room, but doesn’t last.
A 45-year old divorced mother named Florida speaks up, “Won’t nobody make it out of this room if your pages don’t make it out of those dusty files!”
Their rants escalate.
Then Indicca Bright ambles toward me. She’s 23, a new character from novel #2; self-assured single mother holding the hand of her 3-year-old daughter, Cricket.
“You ought to interview us,” Indicca suggests, “that way everybody can have they say AND we can get some peace and quiet ‘round here.”
“Indicca! I love that idea!” I reply, and let me just say—although she is a minor character, Indicca is one of my favorite. And what’s not to love about a toddler named Cricket?!
I start interviews right away, wondering why I never thought of this.
For years on my early morning homeschool walks I jotted notes in small pads, before switching to a digital recorder and finally to my cell phone’s voice memo. Season upon season, I became a neighborhood fixture: black woman, red ski jacket, or summer hoodie, baseball cap, walking and writing or talking to her cell phone.
People seemed genuinely interested to learn that I was writing a novel. A middle-aged blond woman with a black, vintage Mercedes in her driveway wanted me to find a place for her in my book—even though she never asked what my story was about. Not worth explaining that there’s no room for the villainess she envisioned in my historical fiction/family saga dramatizing yet another grossly under told American story.
Novel #2 word count increased and characters lined up for interviews, proving Indicca Bright’s suggestion to be spot on, bringing order to chaos and—inadvertently—turning my characters into writers. Even the most mutinous started waiting pensively with paper, quills, pencils, pens, typewriters, and laptops, prepping for interviews; and they—as much as I—looked forward to annual research treks back home to southwest Georgia.
Since my parents and sister passed away in the 1990’s, going home is bittersweet. Gone are Ms. Irene’s signature pats on the back, Mr. Silas’ hearty laugh and Dr. Bettye Jean’s infectious creative zest. Gone is our “home house” with its smells, meals and memories. Scores of cousins, now scattered, were always a car ride away—either across town or an hour south “down home” to Mitchell County. For many years, my morning walks in Georgia were from the home of dear friends, now, more and more locals offer Airbnb’s. Still, I’m a tourist in my hometown.
With each trip back my (our) research deepens, interviews continue, but my characters up the ante on my home turf. They seem humbled by place and hungry to know more about the real folk of my life—living and deceased—who inspire/inform stories. But these characters can’t fool me. I know exactly what they’re up to. The writer in each one of them is ruthlessly pursuing new material; looking for fodder to give their interviews zing in hopes of ensuring a spot above “minor character”.
I visit many factual locations in the story, such as Albany State University’s campus, remembering the 1960s when this HBCU was still a college, and my childhood house—now a parking lot (for real)—stood across the street from Wiley Hall, a women’s dorm. College Avenue, the street leading to campus, was then called Hazard Drive, the surname of an early ASU benefactor. Back then the street was lined with mostly wooden houses filled with hardworking folks raising families, some renting rooms to college students.
Hazard Drive was less than a quarter of a mile and contained a universe. It was a mélange of Black culture, both blue collar and white collar. From our front porch, we heard distant, early morning singing and chanting as sorority and fraternity pledgees crossed the burning sands in initiation rituals. After school I joined a cadre of kids playing hopscotch, inventing games and riding bikes.
Our K-7 Hazard Laboratory School was one door down from my house. Friends, kin, neighbors, faculty, staff, and college students populated our world. Football games, concerts and Greek step shows were standard community entertainment. We neighborhood kids helped make tissue paper flowers as floats took shape all around campus for much anticipated homecoming parades. This was a lively, magical place to grow up. I still mourn the loss of my real childhood rooms, trees, cars and yards, and long to step into every fictional scene I’ve created.
I was a scrawny, curious 7-year old during the factual Albany Civil Rights Movement. My older sister, Bettye—who was only 12 at the time—begged our parents to let her join. Their answer was a full gallop “no”. Their non-violent protest took place within the walls of our home, visible in their roles as mentors to many college students, and in their family, church and community leadership.
Our parents grew up in southwest Georgia during the 1930s—when the lynching of Black people for sport was common place—and through the Great Depression, sharecropping, and Jim Crow. They entered adulthood during WWII—my father served in Korea—and they watched family members move north during The Great Migration. They knew firsthand the heinous effects of American bigotry and physically sheltered us from its reach for as long as they could. When the time came, we left their nest with the strong sense of self and social responsibility required to face racism. So while I have no actual memories of the Albany Movement, its tenets were the same we practiced in our home, the same I carry to this day.
Novel #2 takes readers inside the terrors and triumphs of the Movement, fictionalizing protest marches, sit-ins and mass meetings centered around two hero characters: Fletcher Dukes and Altovise Benson. They show up in quadruple form in the waiting room: first as teenagers to be placed on Shiloh Baptist Church pews the night Dr. King spoke; and 50 years later in a chance meeting on a grocery aisle at Piggly Wiggly. Can you imagine meeting your teen self, hanging out in a room? No mere mortal could ever hope to do this! These fussy, entitled characters take for granted how amazing that is. But they do know that together they all help me find new ways to process story.
All of this is proof that writers—or anyone—should never give up. James Baldwin said it best: “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words; discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.”
Novel #2 spawned characters I could never have imagined when I began novel #1. Kudos to all my willful characters; we ended up with a two book deal. Thanks to my agent, Steve Ross, and Executive Editor, Retha Powers at Henry Holt & Company, novel #2 will be my debut book, The Peach Seed—and has a pub date: August 2023. Novel #1, Headrag, will soon follow as the second book.
We’re lucky when all things line up: sparks burn hot, process is fast and we’re ready to receive. Although it certainly was not the case for me, it does happen. But more often than not, characters or ideas percolate for as long as needed—months, years—waiting, watching (and yes, whining and moaning)—but as long as you stay in your process, don’t lose heart if this happens. It’s because your creative babies need time—to trust you. 🍑