Everything I write is crap. Honestly..It is really not good...but, instead of quitting (which I really really really want to do), I've decided to take a step back and put together an outline of my novel. I'm not sure if it's a violation of the NaNoWriMo rules or anything, but I simply can't write another word without figuring out where the heck this novel is going.
Anyone else having similar issues? I found a bunch websites with tips on how to outline chapters and plan out character bios. Hope this helps...:)
So, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf holds a sacred place in my heart. I first read the book in high school. I'm not sure why my tiny all-white high school had it and I'm certain I was the first one to check it out in over 20 years, but when I read Ntozake Shange's words...man!!
It was like I was transported to another place...another home where there was pain and sorrow, but where the women who were hurting chose to overcome. The book was tragic and hopeful at the same time and, as the angst-ridden teen that I was, I felt a sisterhood with the characters that has lived on to the present day. I must admit (because I never have before) that I stole the book from the library (teeheehee). Not exactly stole, I guess. I just never returned it to the library. I reported it as lost and kept the book in my secret box of things. Please forgive me:) I'm sure I paid some sort of re-stocking fee...
Anyway...
So, no, I was not excited to see that Tyler Perry was adapting it for screen. Though I did enjoy Why Did I get Married 1 and 2, Perry's best known works (Madea 1, 2, and 3) were worst than horrible. The thought of him getting his blacksploitation hands on Shange's work seemed somehow sacrilegious. When the announcement of the film happened months ago, I steeled myself and decided that I would never set foot in that theatre.
Now, fast forward to today. It's been in theatres for weeks and it's the only thing my friends want to talk about. The reviews are mostly positive and Tyler Perry is working the media rounds like a pro. ::Sigh:: I have to admit, my interest has been piqued.
If you're like me, you're gonna need a bit of extra coaxing to get through this film. Check out Bassey Ikpi's hilarious "For Colored Girls" survival guide below.
I think I'm gonna see it this Saturday. Jesus take the wheel.
:)
For Colored Girls Who Need Motivation When the Oprah Endorsement Ain't Enough BY Bassey Ikpi via Huffington Post
1. Watch every single Tyler Perry movie before this one. All of them, from Diary of A Mad Black Woman to Madea Saves Christmas. This way, you'll be familiar with all of Perry's work and there will be no surprises. And then remember that For Colored Girls will be better than any of those movies. It has to be.
2. Don't read Ntozake Shange's play before you see the movie. This is not her play. This is something else. Something different. You know how Starbursts have real fruit juice in them but it isn't fruit? Think of For Colored Girls as Starbursts and FCGWHCSWRiE as fruit. This makes sense, trust me.
3. Go with friends. Go with as many friends as you can round up. Sit in the same row. Hold hands. Say a quick prayer and just lean on the person next to you when the melodrama ain't enough.
4. Remember that it could be worse. He could have cast himself as Lady in Wig. Madea could have been in this movie. She is not. This is good news.
5. Though I'm still hesitant, I do know that Tyler Perry is a marketing genius. If this is successful, maybe -- just maybe -- more movies that tell our stories in better ways can be made. Maybe, if this is successful, Tyler Perry will understand the need for black women to tell their own stories and start putting his billions of dollars into producing and assisting female directors creating meaningful, smart projects. If this is successful, this is a real possibility.
Or he will make For Colored Girls II: Still Colored and Sad.
...Neither had I before I read a short story written in that literary form. I mean...I'm sure that some teacher or someone in my life mentioned it at some time...maybe...?
2nd-person narrative is essentially when the author refers to one of the characters as "you", giving the reader the sense that he or she is a actually "in" the story.
Here's some more info about this form from the all-knowing Wiki.
Perhaps the most prominent example of this mode in contemporary literature is Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City. In this novel, the second-person point of view is intended to create an intense sense of intimacy between the narrator and the reader, causing the reader to feel implicit in and powerless against a plot that leads him, blindly, through his (the reader’s and the narrator’s) own destruction and redemption:
"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might become clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not. A small voice inside you insists that this epidemic lack of clarity is a result of too much of that already."
It's a pretty refreshing style. It's not very popular (probably because it's difficult to do in a compelling way), but it might be cool to explore in my own writing. It changes the reader from spectator to character, in a slightly unnerving way. You open a book, expecting to see someone else's life unfolding on the pages, but instead, that person is you... Love it!
I'm actually thinking about changing my novel to make it all 2nd person!
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need!” - Marcus Tullius Cicero
Anyone who knows me knows I'm a total and complete bibliophile. I devour books...not read...devour :) Since I've moved closer to downtown, Cincinnati's Main Library has become my stomping ground. So, I was overjoyed to learn that they were recently named a Star Library by Library Journal’s Index of Public Library Service (LJ’s Index). Library Journal is a publication that rates libraries based on the different services they offer.
I've included some details below, but all of the mumbo jumbo just means that my Cincy Libray rocks!! If you love the library as much as I do, you might want to consider donating to their annual fund.
America’s Star Libraries for 2010 were selected after rating 7,407 public libraries. Star library status was awarded to just 258 libraries. The October 2010 ratings are based on Institute of Museum and Library Services public library data for 2008. Scores are determined by rating four per capita service output statistics: library visits, circulation, program attendance, and public library computer use.
7th in Hennen Ranking Earlier this year, the Library ranked 7th among libraries serving populations of 500,000 or more in Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings, Cincinnati’s highest rating ever. Hennen’s top ranked public libraries are considered the best in the nation.
10th in Collection Size The American Library Association also ranked Cincinnati’s public library in the top 10 for collection size, 1 of only 3 public libraries to make the top 10. Ranking 10th with a collection of 9.2 million items, our Library is in the prestigious company of the Library of Congress, Harvard University, and New York Public Library. 10th in Circulation
It’s important to note that with this recognition Cincinnati’s library has earned the distinction of being the only library in the country to be ranked in the top 10 on all library ratings: Hennen, Star, busiest, and largest collection.
Also known as "sudden fiction, microfiction, micro-story, postcard fiction, prosetry and short short story", flash fiction is a literary style marked by its brevity. Flash fiction is typically anywhere from 300-1,000 words and has been gaining steam since it was established in the early 90's. I'm nearly always tardy to the party, so I'm not surprised that I'm just getting hip to this. I think I'll enter the contest, though. I'll also be sure to post my entry here, for some peer review.
As you all work on your entries, here are a few tips from PFI Magazine's site on how to write totally kick butt fiction. The post is a few years old, but the tips are still very relevant. Check out their site for the full post.
The Essentials of Micro-Fiction BB Camille Renshaw
Micro Fiction, by nature, is defiant. It defies length, boundaries, and expectations. But tight, provocative fiction requires analysis and editing. Taking an idea and distilling it into a “micro”- cosm of its original self is challenging. So what are the essentials of Micro Fiction?
1.Length and form obviously matter. The average micro fiction will be less than 400 words, with some exceptions that reach as much as 750 words. The form is strictly prose. If the novel writer is the carpenter who structures a whole house, and a short story writer is the decorator of one of its rooms, then the micro fiction writer is the mailman who looks into the box before dropping in the household’s letters. Readers discover something brief and intimate in a very short space.
Alice Walker, the prodigious author that blessed the world with the Pulitzer prize winning book The Color Purple and many others is at it again. This time with her new work The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker. Love this woman! Adding this to my Amazon gift list as we speak. If you love me...:-)
Alice Walker’s career has spanned four decades, from critically acclaimed novelist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple, to influential essayist, poet, activist, spiritual mentor, and popular blogger.
In The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker, the unique vision underpinning Walker’s extraordinary body of work is explored in a series of conversations between Walker and other significant literary and cultural figures, including Gloria Steinem, Howard Zinn, Pema Chodron, Claudia Tate, Margo Jefferson, William Ferris, Paula Giddings, and Amy Goodman. Each conversation represents a different stage in Walker’s artistic and spiritual development; taken together, they offer an unprecedented angle of vision on her career as well as on her personal and political development. Noted literary scholar Rudolph Byrd sets Walker’s work into context with an introductory essay, as well as with a comprehensive annotated bibliography of her writings. The World Has Changed is a major new addition to the Walker canon and an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the life and writings of “a muse for our times” (Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!).
Before I opened my very first James Baldwin book, the title alone was enough to tell me that this man was pure genius. The Fire Next Time, and every Baldwin work I've read ever since, has rocked me to my core and wedged his beautiful words and provocative ideas securely within my heart. Baldwin was truly a revolutionary of his time and continues to challenge us to see the world through a different set of eyes today. Thanks to the Getblog for getting me hip to this very candid interview below.
Before I start, I must say, I am not a language snob. Yes, I love fine language and thoughtful poetry, but I can throw out the slang as well as anyone else. There is a place for causal conversation and there are words that are useful in casual settings.
But to elevate those words to rock star status by naming them the top words of 2009? Shameful. That's exactly what the Oxford American Dictionary did this year with their list of top words. These included the words un-friend, sexting, hashtag, and intexticated. What the heck is intexticated? I have never heard anyone say that stupid, made up word...in life! And, last year's list wasn't any better. The top word of 2008 was....wait for it...“Hypermiling.” It's when you try to maximize your gas mileage. I mean, it's a useful word, but the top word of the year?
I think not.
What is HAPPENING to the English language?
All I know is that if I start to see these words cropping up on standardized tests and junk, I'm going to scream...for real!
::sigh::
Check out the Reuters piece below on the demise of the English language...I mean the top words of 2009.
Enjoy!
"Unfriend" named word of 2009 BY Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Miral Fahmy
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – "Unfriend" has been named the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, chosen from a list of finalists with a tech-savvy bent.
Unfriend was defined as a verb that means to remove someone as a "friend" on a social networking site such as Facebook.
"It has both currency and potential longevity," said Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer for Oxford's U.S. dictionary program, in a statement.
"In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year."
Other words deemed finalists for 2009 by the dictionary's publisher, Britain's Oxford University Press, came from other technological trends, the economy, and political and current affairs.
In technology, there was "hashtag," which is the hash sign added to a word or phrase that lets Twitter users search for tweets similarly tagged; "intexticated" for when people are distracted by texting while driving, and "sexting," which is the sending of sexually explicit SMSes and pictures by cellphone.
This video has been making its way around Nigerian circles for a few weeks, so I decided to share it with all of you:-) Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian-born author, gave this speech on the harm that can come when we only hear one-side of the story at the recent TED Conference.
Wonderful speech!! You have to listen to fully get it, but here's an excerpt from the introduction.
"What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books, by their very nature, had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify. Now, things changed when I discovered African books...Because of writers like Chinua Achebe... I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that people like me - girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form pony tails, could also exist in literature."
Enjoy peeps! This totally opened my mind tonight.
Wanna know more about Chimamanda? Check out her Wiki. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born September 15, 1977) is an acclaimed Nigerian writer. She comes from Abba in Anambra State, southeast Nigeria. Her family is of Igbo descent.[1]
She was born in the town of Enugu but grew up in the university town of Nsukka in south-eastern Nigeria, where the University of Nigeria is situated. While she was growing up, her father was a professor of statistics at the University, and her mother was also employed there as the university registrar. At the age of 19, she left Nigeria and moved to the United States.
Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was published in 2003 and won the Best First Book award in the 2005 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, named after the flag of the short-lived Biafran nation, is set before and during the Biafran War. It was published by Knopf/Anchor in 2006 and was awarded the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction.[4] Her third book is a collection of short stories titled The Thing Around Your Neck and was published in April 2009 by Fourth Estate in the UK and Knopf in the US.
It is my firm conviction that literature can actually free us! It can open our eyes to worlds we've never known, open our hearts to the heartbreaks and joys of others, and open our minds to the possibilities that lie ahead. For this small group of homeless adults in Boston, the book club they have formed has allowed them to find a sense of normalcy in their unpredictable lives.
“It’s five people in a book group, not 5,000 people fed, but it’s five people I can pull aside and talk to,’’ said Tibbetts - the group's founder. Indeed Tibbetts. Five people...whose lives will be forever changed by the ability to expand their minds. As you can tell, I'm loving this:-) and I was so so happy to find out that similar book clubs for the homeless are cropping up all over the country. There's even one here in Cincinnati through Ink Tank.
Read more about the Boston club below -
The word is their bond From a rare friendship, a book club for the homeless is born
By Jenna Russell, Boston Globe Staff Write
At the crest of Beacon Hill in a well-appointed room, the Tuesday morning book club is tearing a novel apart.
The critique, on this warm early summer day, is merciless, and as it heats up, the meeting crackles with complaints. There should have been more clues to help the reader unravel the mystery, Donnie insists. Ned, between bites of a glazed doughnut, dismisses a main character as unbelievable. Rob is irked by the same character’s inconsistencies.
“For someone who knows everything about her son, she doesn’t know a damn thing,’’ Rob says, his voice dark with disappointment.
The men drinking coffee at the round wooden table are dressed casually in sweat shirts, jeans, and sneakers. Some of their faces are lined beyond their years. But as they deftly flip through paperbacks assessing literary merit, there is no sign their lives are anything but normal.
For two lively hours every Tuesday morning, in a church meeting room with old oil portraits, they are book club members first and homeless people second.
The story of the book club, now in its 10th month, is a tale of ordinary city life upended. It began with a stunningly unlikely friendship, between two men from different worlds: Peter Resnik, a high-powered lawyer on his way to work, and Rob, a homeless man guarding a friend’s shopping cart on Boston Common. Through months of daily conversations, that began with jokes and sports talk and gradually delved deeper, they found a common interest: literature. And when they saw the bridge that they had built, they recognized its potential for others.
In a short time, they say, the book club has proved its power to reach homeless people and build their confidence. Emboldened by its success, Ron Tibbetts, a Beacon Hill church deacon and longtime homeless outreach worker, has launched plans to replicate it. His new nonprofit group, the Oasis Coalition, aims to establish dozens of small social groups citywide, filling the gaps left by large, institutional programs that offer the homeless food and shelter but little or no personal connection.
“It’s five people in a book group, not 5,000 people fed, but it’s five people I can pull aside and talk to,’’ Tibbetts said.
Have you ever been part of a book club and (oops) forgot to actually read the book?? hmmm. Now, imagine being in a book club where everyone forgot to read the book...but no one wants to admit it...so they just stumble and mumble through their thoughts and feelings. That's exactly what this clip is. lol.
I could take the Harlem night and wrap around you, Take the neon lights and make a crown, Take the Lenox Avenue busses, Taxis, subways, And for your love song tone their rumble down. Take Harlem's heartbeat, Make a drumbeat, Put it on a record, let it whirl, And while we listen to it play, Dance with you till day-- Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.
