Theory of Writing—v.3

VIGNETTES

Holy Ground

I almost never know what I am writing until I write it. Writing is something like this: I have a spark, something small and alluring that I can neither grasp nor release. I make myself small. I sit in it until I am eaten up, devoured by that sparkling world with a gentle tongue, a world that instructs me and feeds me images and language things that were before unknown to me. An unsettling suspicion becomes a short story. A dream becomes a novel. A sonic pattern becomes a poem. It is not so much the words themselves that are the inspiration or the goal. It is the place from where they come, the place they take me. It is the ground, the making holy of the ordinary—subjects, places, dances, struggle, anger. All it requires is becoming small and walking the terrain of that ordinary and watching as it reveals its land, its holy terrain which is responsible for all things creative.

An excerpt of “A Short History of Scars” exemplifies my theory of writing in practice. The original idea for this creative short story was a snapshot memory of summers in the home of my adolescence. The scene in my head that became my “holy ground” was the waking up “under the buzz and breeze of the fan in the window” (1). Out of that scene, the story uncovers a landscape of events that take place over the course of four seasons in the life of the protagonist. The creation of that landscape is attributed to the theory on holy ground, or writing as a form of exploration.

Chasing Shadows

What is that following me? A sound I always here. Footsteps, a swift movement that diverts my eyes. This is the theory that impresses itself upon most of my writing: There is a world behind a world, behind the world. There are shifting curtains, swing, in delicately in the wind of a past moment’s chaos. I like to step in. I like to peek behind the known world, especially the places where things converge, and find what exists there. In writing, there are always one or two curtains to tangle within, always a stage or more, and a few actors and directors. They appear to the natural eye, the untrained reader, as mere shadows that are not worth chasing. They come in and out of the scene of life and we forget them as soon as we witness them. Writing is taking notes on them. When did they appear? Context. Who might they be? Author. Why are they here? Purpose? What is their part in the play? What are their props? What kind of play is this anyway? Medium. Genre. What do they say? Have they any lines? Language. Grievances? How do they grieve? Tone. I slip back before the curtain, where I sit in my seat. Audience. I am anything but an onlooker. I am a participator in meaning making. I write and the shadows come to live on my page.

This is an excerpt from the short story, “The Passion According to the Panther”. The story hypothesizes the life and capture of Sara “Saartjie” Baartman, an African woman who was stolen from her people in the early 1900’s to tour Europe as a spectacle in a mass exhibition. The theory of writing is evident here in that the writing takes historical “shadows” as context and inspiration for a sorry that brings the past to life.

Whose tongues are these, anyway?

There are always speakers. The trick is to know who is speaking and, more importantly, for whom? Do they have the pathos— or credibility— to speak on behalf of others? As a brown woman, these are questions that I as a writer oftentimes find myself entangled in. My response as a reader is just as important to the text as it’s intent. This is my theory. There is more to voice than we think, and on any given page there are generations, masses of people and their political affiliations, speaking in a long and often incoherent string of dialogues. I like to pick one, just one and locate myself in it. For instance, what would Virginia Woolf’s black servant have to say about “A Room of One’s Own”? Let us title it, “A Nation of One’s Own”. It is an essay about the Black and brown artist in the Western Hemisphere, unable to write freely or lucratively because they not only are denied a room, or place in society, they are denied a nation, an identity, and a home as well. Stance is likely the most applicable rhetorical tool here. I relocate the story into my own rhetorical situation, thereby discovering a new stance.

In this excerpt from “We Have Always Lived,” I debate the credibility of various narratives concerning Haiti. Like author Mayra Montero,
authors have long taken problematic creative license with Haiti, its politics, poetics and people. The theory of writing here, “*whose tongues are these, anyway*,” challenges the “haunted house” narrative of Haiti. When explained with the right *tongue*, the short story “reveals that the haunted house of Haiti is not so much haunted as it is misunderstood by those trying to understand it from the outside”.

Follow the drinking gourd.

Writing is often an investigation. You notice something while reading. You research. You investigate further. In your gut, you suspect you are on to something bigger than yourself. Despite never seeing the full picture, you suspect something to be true. You find a few scholars and experts to agree with you. You make their points clear as it pertains to your case. You quilt patch by patch of truth together until you make a quilt of some proportion. Maybe you or someone you know can lay in it. Maybe they can find comfort. Rest. The Inquiry-Based Research Paper is the most appropriate example of this kind theory in practice. Writers must embark on a journey or discovery as they seek answers from a variety of sources in one question or inquiry if their choosing. Sometimes, this one question becomes many. In 2018-2019, my inquiry was—what is the poetry of mourning for black poets?

This is an excerpt from “Beyond Consolation” Or *Strange*ness, *Estrange*ment, and *Strange-*ing in the *Elegy for the Black Body*, 1955-Present”. The inquiry based thesis does in investigation into the pattern of elegies created by blacks in America, especially after the pattern of state-sanctioned killings of black individuals and groups. Following the “drinking gourd,” or clues, is a theory of writing that is keenly undertaken in this genre.

Dear Reader,

I chose vignettes for my theory of writing because, quite honestly, I could not narrow down my theory to just one. It seems to me that for every kind of writing objective—inform, persuade, explain—there is a corresponding theory. Vignettes capture this really well by showing the theory, its application, and the rhetorical tools at that theory’s disposal. There are a number of personal theories that I have that spread across disciplines, of which I think art, history, theology, and creative writing are the most important. These theories, however, can be applied to any sort of writing that I engage in and thus are served well by the vignette.