Tag Archives: Writing

We all have a voice. Can you hear it?

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For awhile now, I’ve been bristling when I hear people, writers, artists, celebrities, and politicians say they are the “voice for the voiceless”. Or they’re giving voice to the voiceless.

In so many respects, I would be considered a “voiceless”.  I’m Mixed Blood, Indigenous and Black. I’m over 50. I’m a woman. I was born into poverty and raised by a single mother in a small white town in Minnesota where I could count the families of color on one hand.  Statistically, I probably wasn’t supposed to make it out. I definitely shouldn’t have the education and degrees I have or the healthy family and relationships, a strong career, and a sense of self value.

I get that I beat the odds. Am beating the odds. And that it’s a privilege to be a storyteller. And a greater one to be able to do this job everyday, honoring this creative life I have.  And yet, to be clear, even though I write about women of color, pain, violence, healing and survival, I don’t believe I am giving voice to the voiceless because…they…we are not without voice.  My job is to create and hold a loving space for them.

Our voices have been oppressed. stamped out.  We’ve been silenced by racist and misogynistic systems and institutions designed to keep us quiet. We’ve been beaten, our voices strangled. It’s been forcefully driven into us that our voices don’t matter so we should shut up. We must shut up. Be quiet or else.

But all that doesn’t mean we don’t have a voice. We did. We do. And it scares the shit out of some folks. That’s why they work so hard, so violently, to shut it up. Shut us up.

We have been whispering in the dark and singing into the winds. Preaching and laughing, crying and screaming.  But have you been listening?

We are not without voice. We just might not have been heard. Yet.

Is it okay to pray for Trump to be removed from the White House?

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Seriously.

This is a question that has been heavy on my mind. Stops me in my morning prayers when I get to the part about the concentration camps, the broken families at the border who are enduring an atrocity that so many privileged white people of this country have no fear of EVER trying to survive through.

I pray for the children to have strength to survive. Survive more. These kids came many  many miles running from violence and death already and are now living in cages, in cells, in hell. I ask the Great Spirit to be with them and bless them with strength. And yes, I do feel how weak that is.  I question how much my prayers are really worth.  Like when we send “thoughts and prayers” to victims as if that’s a means to help mend and heal, to create change. But in my defense, in my state of tearful prayers every morning, that’s all I can do in that moment.

Then I pray from them and their families, for them to survive this wound that has been caused by the heinous bigotry of Trump, his minions and those who march in line with his hateful beliefs about immigrants, about brown and black folk.

I counter my state of soulful sadness, my deep burning anger with a call to action, praying for those in power to make the changes to stop this. For those with ANY power to to stop this. From the voter, the protester, the advocate, the lawyers, those who can afford to donate, those who put their lives on the line going to border; I pray for those who are creating and igniting political careers to make change. I pray for each of us to do what we can to stop this. To end this genocide (because you know, this country has committed too many of them in our history and our grounds are soaked with so much blood I fear we won’t survive the lifetimes it’s going to take to heal).

I am not optimistic in my prayers and am grateful that the Great Spirit brings me a little comfort in my state of sadness and desperation.

At this point in my prayers is where I stop. Where my next thought is to pray for his removal from the White House. I hesitate because I want to leave it wide open to what that means. Impeachment. Losing in 2020. But then my mind goes farther and I get choked up.  Is it okay for me to pray for this removal? For the images of storming the White House, figuratively and…dare I say literally to pop up in my mind in the midst of a prayer? I don’t pray for his physical harm but…  I admit there’s a but here that makes me ask this question; Is it okay to pray like this?

I believe in forgiveness and compassion. I want to be kinder. But… men like him don’t deserve my efforts. The evil he possesses along with the power that he has…(HOW COULD ANYONE VOTE FOR THIS?? HOW?) his rally cry for hate, for bigotry, for an eradication of brown people which is the grand plan…add that all up and THAT makes it okay for me to pray for his removal! Right?

I have a novel I’m working on called Stands Alone about a Mixed Blood cop who with the help of her ancestors takes on a white supremacist who starts a race war.  The bad guy, Father Raimond, has an eradication plan that means he sends his ‘family’ members out into the city to kill brown folk.  He calls himself “The Chosen”  (yeah, I’ve been working on this for a couple years so image the chill from the news last week of Trump calling himself “chosen”)  My cop, Tanner Stands Alone, is half Indigenous and half Black, and the warrior women who live in her blood are fierce AF! And the battles are strong.  The cost and the devastation is immense.  Sadly, true to life.

I’m sure that this story along with other ones I got brewing are influencing my prayers or is it the other way around?

Stands Alone is gritty and violent. It’s a war.

What is happening in our country is gritty. And violent.  It’s a war, too.

So, it must be okay for me to pray what I do? Right?

Hell, yeah.

Hitting send on the query…

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It’s hard to believe that what started as an image I couldn’t shake would become this novel years later. Become STANDS ALONE.

They were feet. What I saw. What I felt were feet running. It was night and the ground was a tough terrain but these feet knew how to move over it. Through it. With it. They were women’s feet. Black women’s feet.

I didn’t who they belonged to, where they were running to or who they were running from, but they were running swiftly.

Then I had an image of tall prairie grasses that sway and dance in the wind. Walking through them, tenderly touching the wild flowers was a woman. Then she ran. She had long black hair flying out behind her.

These images stuck with me until I discovered my main character. Tanner Stands Alone. A Minneapolis detective. Half Black, half Native with warrior women for ancestors. And they rise from her body to fight a white supremacist who starts a race war.

As more images and scenes filled in the blanks, ya know the ones, in-between present and somewhere out there, where my imagination brews, I felt something stronger with this story. Something larger.

I sketched out a pilot for it and wrote it summer of 2017. It was okay. Just barely okay. But the story was big.  I hired the brilliant Jessica Blank to read it to help with some development. As we discussed it, she asked if I ever thought of writing the novel. This question made me look at the story in a different way. An even larger but glorious way. At the same time, I was itching to write a novel. I had some chapters of a different story. I had begun to work that prose writing muscle again but whenN November arrived, I did NaNoWriMo and started with a blank page, writing STANDS ALONE the novel.

So many drafts later, I’m here now. I have the query letter, the synopsis and the database.

I woke at 4 am with visions in my head of typing up the emails, of cutting and pasting in the pages, of hitting send. I got up and got ready. Which means I spent some time on Facebook. I played with a different TV project. I cleaned the bathrooms. I pulled weeds in my front lawn. I baked bread. I showered and made myself presentable…for…my computer??  I put on my power Parshall, N.D. t-shirt. (Yes, I’m related to the Parshalls the small town on the Rez is named after). I put on my power turquoise and some 80’s music (Blondie, The Cars, Madonna), lit some sage and a candle for my mom because I really want to call her and tell her what I’m doing with this story. With this novel. And I want to hear her voice tell me how excited she is for me. I want hear her wish me luck. So I’m gonna take a couple quiet minutes to hear her spirit say that. And then…here we go.

Before the search begins…agents

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Can I tell from looking at their photo on the literary agency website if they’re going to be my agent?  Is there something there that can give me the extra know, that wink to my future?

I know. I can’t. But yet my thoughts go there. I look at their smiles and wonder what they’re voices are like. What it will sound like when they call and talk about Stands Alone? Is that a voice I can listen to for many calls? For great meetings? For maybe, not so great meetings?

I don’t know for sure what they’ll be saying, since this is will be my first agent. For my first novel. But I’m hoping for a lovely voiced woman who laughs at my jokes and finds me fascinating for writing such a tough hard crime suspense novel about being Mixed, history, warrior women and rape. For writing about fighting and winning.

Can I tell that from just looking at her photo? I sure as hell wish I could.

I’m building my agent database right now. I’ve been searching Publishers Marketplace, Query Tracker, and researching other writers who are in the vein of Stands Alone to find their agents. I’m doing Google searches and reading interviews and Twitter accounts.

I have a couple more super smart people in line to review my query letter and synopsis and then, I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready.

I’m anxious.

And feel super vulnerable. But driven and dare I say…believe in my own craft even though I still have so much more to learn and am working and writing every day. I’m creating story and birthing characters that I throw into pits of fire of pain, grief and oppression or dump in the middle of dark wildernesses created by their own fears or by some way their parents fucked them up and then hope that the trail becomes clear to get them out of there. Never unscathed but at least out to where the sun lives.

I feel like I’ve come into my own. And my voice is clear. And I hope to find an agent who sees that. Gets that. And wants to join me for that often blind rushing run through the wilderness.

Pages to go…gulp!

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I’m pages to go.  Just 20 or so to get to the end of this round of revisions for Stands Alone. I set a deadline for March 26th because the plan was to go to AWP with this novel ready. Tucked under my arm. Well, not really, tucked there but ready on my laptop and on multiple disc drives. But I got sick. Really sick and by Monday night, I was going down fast. I canceled my trip and hit my couch. I spent the next few days taking soaks for aches and pains, drinking tea, napping and bingewatching Tin Star. Both seasons. And of course, looking at photos and posts of friends in Portland at AWP, making myself feel worse.

AWP was not a golden ticket to landing an agent or finding a publisher. Not at all. There are none. This is hard work. Perseverance. It’s about the stars lining up AND talent AND determination AND craftwork AND networking AND AND AND…. I missed an opportunity. This time.

So this morning, as I opened up the word doc to go back to line edits and rethinking, rejiggering passages, and hopefully deepening my characters, I stopped to think about this journey. How far I’ve come from an image (yes, I’m still beginning stories with a Black woman’s feet running) to a pilot to a novel to multiple drafts to beta readers and now…queries for an agent.

I think about how much I’ve learned about myself, my skill and what continues to drive me to tell the stories that I do. I reread and rewrite painful acts of against women and let my weeping take me through to tell of their triumph, too.  I see the slivers of myself and my story in some of the women. I write their strength, their uniqueness, what makes them cry and shiver, what makes them run and what makes them fight. I am forever changed because of them.

Gulp.

Next step will be sending this story, these women warriors, out into the world.

I’m pages to go to let them fly.

Gulp. Sigh.

Chuckle and grin.

Yeah…  I got this.

 

 

 

Creating a White Supremacist Character

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If there’s at least a tiny part of ourselves in every character we create, then what does that mean when it comes to creating bad guys? To creating the narcissist? The evil? To creating the one who wrecks havoc and tears through whatever and whoever is in their path?

Of course, writing to the humanity of these characters is the goal. That’s what gives them flesh. Finding their underbelly, exposing it, and then healing is a goal. Maybe. Destroying them? That’s a righteous goal, too.

I’m thinking about this as I prepare to go back into my novel. It’s been with beta readers and now I’m ready to enter this world again, which means I have to pull up a chair at the table headed up by a white supremacist. Of all my characters, my bad guys, and there’s plenty of them; I write crime suspense so my bad guys do heinous things, creating Raimond Davies has been the toughest.

In Stands Alone, my novel about a Mixed Blood cop who takes on a white supremacist, their ancestors are the soldiers in this war. Which means I wrote their histories, too. I know who Raimond’s father was and what he did to him. I know who his grandma was and how filthy and mean she was. I know who Raimond was as a small boy at the mercy of the adults in his life and how that set him on a course of hatred.

I think that in the many hours I’ve spent with this story, and the many more to come, my own ancestors settle on the loveseat in my office. Native men and women who fought the destructive forces of white men for their families and their tribes. African women who endured unimaginable atrocities and yet never stopped fighting for their freedom. They keep the sage burning, the drums pounding as they wrap their arms around me, whispering that this is the story that I need to tell. That only I can tell. They say it’s okay. That I’m safe from the horror on the page, from the horror in my imagination. They tell me I’m honoring the fight. Their fight.

My fight.

But damn.

Too pissed to write…

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I just may be. Yes, I’m writing this to get some of these feelings, these big emotions out, but I’m well aware of how I can’t actually get to the page to write creatively. To work on the stories, give voice to the characters I’ve committed to but now I have to ask them to wait. Stand by.

I’m pissed. Life can be truly shitty. For so many of us. For so many.  For the people who are oppressed, those hated because of gender, race, religion and who they love.  I’m pissed for those who fear the world outside their windows and those who fear the monsters in their homes. I am pissed that this country is a shit storm of powerful men exerting their hate on others through legislature or lack thereof.

I’m pissed that the ebb and flow of feeling helpless and rising to the fight is thrashing my poor mind and body around so much so, I’m close to losing my way on the waves.

I’m pissed that the emotion of anger has its root in fear and pain. And that maybe I’m pissed first because I can’t bare to feel the pain down below the surface of my brown skin and I know that’s a false belief because I can still feel it. Saying it isn’t so isn’t truth.

I’m pissed that grief is a mutherfucker. I’m pissed that my mother is dead. And my dear friend died this week. And children are scared. And women are crying. And I can’t eat chocolate the way my heart craves because my full and ill body system is exhausted from just trying to carry me through the day, through the dark times.

I’m pissed that my anger is keeping me from the page because real life is raging so much louder than their stories and try as I might, I can’t find my way out of this world into the other.

I’m pissed that I’m still pissed. And feel like I have been for years. For centuries.

Loving True Crime…?

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I put a question mark on that because it’s weird. I know. I don’t ‘lovelove’ true crime, like it’s a good thing. Not at all.  I ‘love’ writing stories about crime, though.  In them I can make the women the victor. I can take down the bad guy. I can create suspense that’s entertaining. I hope. Above all else, don’t bore, right?

It’s difficult to write good crime stories.  But that’s my goal.  I often joke that I wish I could write a romcom because they’re light and about love. Ya know, a woman who doesn’t believe in love anymore or thinks they missed theirs but then the very cute and maybe annoying dude they work with, or are forced to work with, or sells them bagels by day but works as a God-sent guardian for runaway youth or has a dream of opening a diner and she just happen to be the inspiration for him, ya know, with all her quirky but sexy ways… If I was to write this story they’d stumble across a dead body on their first date, he’d be implicated somehow and she would have to solve the crime but quickly because there’s another dead body. And this time it’s a child. There’d be an amazing show of gunshots and racing through dank and dirty alleys that smell like old piss and dying dreams. And there’d be blood splatter when the chick would catch the guy, who happens to run that same organization for runaway youth but does heinous shit to kids cuz he’s working out his own ish. But our lead could give a fuck. She’s taking him down and if that same cute guy still wants to screw then she’d be down for that, too, when she says so.  And then… And then… our lead would get a commendation for bravery which she’s too humble to accept. She goes for street tacos and a cold beer instead.

Hmm…not a romcom, huh?

When I started writing I used to keep a folder of true crime stories that could be inspiration at some point. This made for some interesting looks and conversations if anyone caught what I was printing at the office. I work from home now where I can wrap myself in my mother’s blanket before I read the crime news.

These days I save articles online. Interesting enough, I don’t watch a lot of true crime shows or documentaries.  Hmmm…I’m gonna change that. That’s a creative writing goal I’m adding to 2019.

So, if you love true crime, too…what are you favorites?  Which ones are unique and well-told stories.

Hit me up with your suggestions.

And Write On!

 

 

A Storyteller’s Lazy Susan

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screenshot 2019-01-09 11.05.10

You know what a lazy susan is, right? Aside from this nagging question of why do folks think Susan is so lazy, I find myself coming back to a visual of one when I think about the stories I’m telling. The stories I’m writing. The ones that have space in my head. Some of them.

Years ago I had the pleasure of hearing the brilliant, award-winning playwright, Susan-Lori Parks, speak at a bookstore in St. Paul, MN.  She was so great. I’m just gonna take a second and sigh here.

I was a very new playwright working in theatre administration but filling my days with plays and workshops and soaking up everything I could from the more successful than I.  Which was pretty much everyone in my theatre world!  lol!  But to hear her speak was a thrill.

She told us that her plays, the projects she’s writing at any one time are kept on a lazy susan of sorts in her mind. I am completely paraphrasing this so there is no direct quote from her. She explained, though, how she would spin that lazy susan when she got ready to write and where it stopped, there would be the story she worked on. I think this was the part of her talk where she was sharing process. Some writers take one story and only one at a time, while others, like me and Susan, have multiple ones. (notice how that reads like we’re friends, me and Susan. We’re not but ya know… )

Since then I have learned the value of following the sage advice of having more than one story, one project, one script, one book, at a time because if the question from some producer, agent, publisher, director, investor is “What else you got?” then you have to give them something.  Shrugging and saying “Can I get back to you in a month…” doesn’t fly.

So some mornings, it’s the lazy susan that comes to mind when I sit down at the page. Which story is calling for me to “come on in, the water’s warm” or which character is demanding to be heard, to be seen.  Or which story is a murky fog on the page aching for some light to cut through.

This the curiosity of being storyteller.

Of course, this means there’s a lot of voices in my head and sometimes I look and feel a bit dizzy but it’s a good kind. A writer’s kind.  So, don’t worry about me. I’m really okay.

The love of a story prompt

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I gave myself a goal this holiday. For the month that I am spending in MN with my family. That goal was to continue honing my prose writing chops by writing short stories.

I have a novel in works out to beta-readers so I’m sitting on starting revisions or the second book of that trilogy. (I CAN’T WAIT!!! And yes, imagine that in my best Oprah-esque voice) And I have all these characters sorta milling around in my head.

Okay, some of them are more demanding of their stories than others. They’re mostly cops. Female cops in gritty cities or small towns. Badass chicks who have to hunt down some evil POS and do right by the badge they hold dearly. Some are women fighting for their families, for their lives. For the world that may be kicking them in their asses but it’s the world they’re committed to save. So, I guess the image of them milling around, sipping tea and watching holiday baking shows in the afternoon doesn’t really fit them. (actually that’s me when the work is done…lol!)

I needed a way to get these stories to the page so I put the word out to my online writing friends- incredibly talented women who are so far ahead of me in the prose fiction journey, accomplished novelists and authors who have had stories published online in the top journals and in beautiful collections, just all around inspiring, talented storytellers. I found some sites that have prompts to jumpstart a story. And I’ve started popping in on an incredible writing session with book mentor, Ericka Lutz http://erickalutz.com. 

In her sessions, writers would gather in zoom room for a timed writing session. She’d give us prompts if we wanted them or needed them. Set a timer and we’d go. Aside from seeing these other writers at their computer, intense looks on their faces, sipping tea or staring off, however they were creating their magic on the page, I was seeing that they were doing it like me. One word at a time.

These prompts, though! They were like lightening in a bottle. BOOM! I had a line of dialogue that gave me a direction to take my undercover Native cop, Carla Killingbear, to the alley to confirm the dead girl was the missing girl. She and her partners disagree on how swiftly they had to move on a suspect she developing a relationship with but had no concrete evidence. Yet. This story, Skye Isles, will be a longer work of fiction. O MY GOD!! Another novel??! YUP YUP! I’m excited and so is Carla Killingbear. I didn’t even know she was waiting to tell her story until I got the prompt. Joy. Joy. Joy!

The next prompt I used in another session was a place. Ericka said country store and I immediately saw Becky’s. A dusty place Off The Highway in New Mexico. And I saw Stella, a young Native girl, in old guy Coozer’s truck as he raved about how much he loved Becky and that she would be able to help Stella get her car fixed that died on the highway. Stella was on her way to California, on a grief healing journey after her mother’s death. What they didn’t know was who else was in that country store and the murder that was going to happen. BOOM! I WAS SO HAPPY! That prompt opened up a whole new story world with these incredible characters! A short story that moves with intrigue and suspense. More Joy, Joy, Joy!

If you’d like to connect with Ericka, you can find her on Facebook at Spark the Second Fire https://www.facebook.com/groups/sparkfire/.

If you have other links to writing prompts, let me know!

Write On!