Take no prisoners

It's another meeting of the Insecure Writer's Support Group and so, like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime - here I am. For more info on this supportive group for us creative neurotics click the link.

Toni Morrison has died. I don't dare mourn her without sharing what that means with this group. When I think of her and her writing I think of her absolute bravery in refusing to be anybody but herself. When her novels were rejected by the writing establishment in the early days of her writing, she did not bend to become someone else. She knew that what she wrote was challenging to some and incendiary to many. She took no prisoners. Her writing and her living was a constant approach to those who wanted to sleep walk through the racial divide that was and is her country. She told it as she saw it and if people's feelings got hurt, well tough. I saw her call out a British journalist for her racist questions and you could see that journalist rethink her whole life in the moment before she talked again. In a moment she became Morrison's student, humbled and willing to look again. That is powerful. 

In my last post I talked about my feeling of not being a writer anymore. As I explained it didn't mean that I wouldn't write but that I felt the pull to drop the stuff around it. That is still true but I have since realized it wasn't all of the truth. Another part of this has been my stuckness around my novel Crooked Knife. I think my block with it has been that it centers around some issues that I feel so passionately about that I scared myself. What if it was too much - I've seen people's eyes glaze over when someone won't shut up about some social justice issues and I feared that reproach. As well, the story takes place for the most part on a reserve. Was I making hay out of the misery of a people? Was I stealing another people's story? And that is just a part of it - the story behind the story cannot end well. It already hasn't. This novel wouldn't change anyone's mind - or so I thought in those dark hours. 

About a week or so ago I began to see things differently. I saw that none of those were reasons not to tell the story. They might be reasons why no one would pick it up but that is not my concern. At least not now. I do not pretend to know things that I don't know. It is the story of a person like me who longs for the social inequities to end, who is passionate about the environment and for the children who inhabit dangerous places to have refuge. She is passionate and sometimes stupid. Like me. And I realized that I don't need to make excuses or wait for someone else to tell the story that I want to read. 

This is our precious life to use as we see fit. Thank you Toni Morrison.