The Craft of Creative Writing: Final Portfolio
Content:
Process Statement and Intro
I. On Saving Humanity from Itself
II. How to Rationalize Becoming an Alien
III. Put Your Knowledge to the Text
Outro
Process Statement and Intro:
Show and Tell
My portfolio is a mashup of 3-4 of the assignments from our class. In the first two sections, I show the reader (you) some of the themes, from our weekly readings, that stood out to me, via revised versions of my assignments. In the third/final section, I use storytelling to demonstrate the themes introduced in sections I and II.
Similarly, I’m using the pieces in the first two sections to tell you about the themes that stood out to me over the weeks; and the last section to showcase those themes in short story form.
Throughout the portfolio, you’ll find short clips from videos and songs intro and outro each section. In addition to breaking up the monotony of text on a screen, my intention with these clips is to offer a moment for you to take a break. The video and song clips I use throughout this portfolio show you something about the text that it (the text) does not or cannot tell you.
As I’m thinking about it, this show and tell theme can apply to my portfolio in a number of ways. Feel free to leave a comment, if you can find another way this show and tell theme is at play.
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The last clip in my portfolio is a snippet from a Soul Train performance of “Show and Tell” by Al Wilson. The lyrics I’d like to call out from this clip are “show and tell – just a game I play to say I love you.” This is meant to serve as an outro to my portfolio as well as a big thank you to JJ, Isaac, and each of my classmates for your thoughtful feedback and passion for writing.
The lessons I’ve learned, and feedback I’ve gotten from the writers, in this class have been invaluable. A majority of which (lessons and feedback and lessons from the feedback) have converged to reveal and affirm (to myself) the writerly instinct that I already have, inspire future works, and establish the beginnings of my own writing practice.
As I complete the last three courses in this creative writing program, I look forward to getting more feedback and refining my writing / my creative process. I’d like to come away from the program with my certificate as well as a writing community of (willing) workshop buddies!
As I continue to write, I’m going to take the leap into self publication. Inspired by the in-class workshops we did for two of my pieces, part of my writing process may include using short stories to build a framework for more ambitious stories. For example, my next writing endeavor will be to use the Medusa story I wrote for one of our assignments as an epilogue to an exploration of the character Herophile, the diversity of the ancient Mediterranean region, and the Sybil priestesshood. Having a community of like minded writers to workshop with would be ideal. Another lesson I’ve learned in this class – workshopping + feedback are integral parts of my writing practice.
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If I were to give future Lauren any writing advice, it would be the following:
Trust your instincts, keep asking yourself questions, and get some feedback from other writers.
Got writer’s block? →
Read some good writing.
Read some bad writing.
Re-read some of your own writing – not to pat you (myself) on the back . . . not that there’s anything wrong with that (patting oneself on the back).
Also, not everything needs to be so economical. As you write, let yourself wander. See where you end up.
This may be the key (or part of the key) to writing longer stories. → this is something I struggle with. For this struggle, I blame word count and the role it played in the grading of my work. For example, -10pts for not meeting the word count of an argumentative essay prompt an 8th grade English teacher decided upon . . . or some such bullshit.
I. How to Save Humanity from Itself:
We Talking About Destroying the World to Save Humanity
With all Gay’s talk of elders and oldheads and stealing away and stealing a way, I thought of how being Black is so familiar to me. Every image he brought into the frame of his poem – within the larger (or smaller?) frame of his analysis on Dr. J’s impossible leap – was distinctly Black and familiar.
For example, he didn’t write the words side by side anywhere in his poem, but the words “behold” and “star” were so frequently close together throughout this book, that I couldn’t help but put them together myself and be reminded of Behold The Star. A very old, very Black, song I learned at a very old (old in the context of the legal education of Black / African / formerly enslaved people in the US) Black institution, from an old Black man, named Doc. Actually, his name is Dr. Kevin Johnson – a potential Dr. J, but we never gave him that nickname. What literary synchrony that could have been!
Anyway, I learned the song as a first year student at Spelman College (an HBCU). I was in the choir, (the glee club, but i don’t like using that term because people tend to think Glee, the show) and we were getting ready for the annual Christmas Carol. Behold the Star was the first song I learned with the Morehouse men’s choir (another HBCU), and during one of our first group rehearsals, Doc held auditions for the song’s male solo. The student who got the solo that year was one of those glottal tenors. The kind of voice that sounded like a horn, like an actual instrument, all on its own. We performed the song sitting down, so that he could stand and be seen for his solo. I don’t remember there being a spotlight, but his voice (without being too obvious in my writing here) served as spotlight enough. He was like a star. Or his voice was the star. Or he and his voice were reaching for a star, together.
“It is the star of Bethlehem,” he would sing, “peace, peace on Earth,” and “good will to man.” The choir would hum a steady chord, beholding his voice with our own voices as he sang (or pleaded, or demanded) “Behold the Star,” and again “Behold the Star! Behold the Star up yonder!”
After listening to a performance of the song for the first time in 5-6 years, I realized that I forgot the soprano soloist in my initial recollection of the piece. Similar to her tenor counterpart, she stood to be held and beheld by the choir and her audience.
I should say, Behold The Star is a song written and composed by Thomas Washington Talley, in the first half of the 20th century, for the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Talley was a chemistry professor at Fisk University (another HBCU) and a collector of African American folk songs.
This song and its arrangement warrants its own detailed analysis in which the varied dynamics, tempos, layering cannons, and the like can be examined in more detail to reveal a deeper association with beholding stars, Black personhood in the United States, Christianity and its complex role in Black oppression and community, etc. However, to most efficiently serve the purposes of this piece, I will highlight that, upon reflection, the song was composed to behold the stars that were those soloists. On the campus of a historically Black college, a Black choir and its audience beheld two Black students as they asked them to do so. Even the imagery of one of the recorded performances highlights the urgency with which the tenor soloist demands that we behold the star, and the peace that it may offer humanity. As he sings, a silhouette of his profile beside a star fills the frame.
Here is a link to that performance.
* * *
Back to Gay’s book.
Every image he brought into the frame of his poem was distinctly Black and familiar.
“We talking about destroying the world
for the earth”
I interpreted Gay’s language to better suit a theme I’ve noticed while consuming the work of a few of my favorite Black artists, – ending the world to save humanity from itself.
3 Black artists who suggest ending the world to save humanity:
N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy (book series) → end the world to save the world
Octavia E. Butler’s Lilith’s Brood → Alien take-over to save humanity from itself
Beyonce’s Renaissance act i → Alien superstars to save humanity from itself
As Jemisin shares in her series, the end of the world rarely means anything for Earth - the planet will be fine. The end of the world, for us, means a deconstruction of existing systems for the construction of new systems. Per the artists who authored these bodies of work, the construction required to save humanity from itself may only be possible after the end of the world.
But then there’s the struggles for power amongst what’s left of humanity at the end of the world. This is where the alien take over comes in. As Butler states in her series, Lilith’s Brood, human nature is, in itself, contradictory. Social, intelligent, but hierarchical. Our nature prevents us from collectively changing how we organize ourselves. A completely alien species will need to introduce a new way to be.
A new way to be holding each other, together. A new way to behold ourselves.
What if our extraterrestrial educators never show up? Then we’ll have to become aliens.
Stick with me.
Beyoncé said it most harmoniously: “you won’t break my soul,” as I am an “Alien Superstar.” In other words, those of us who are able to preserve the version of ourselves that we’ve defined for ourselves – despite and maybe in spite of our nature and the oppressive systems it has produced – are Alien Superstars. After the end of the world, this is who must construct those new systems we need.
Consider this – after the end of the world, Alien Superstars will save humanity from itself.
This is an artist’s rendition of the alien species from Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler.
II. How to Rationalize Becoming an Alien:
History is a Mess, and a Maze, and a Web too
“TIME is the dispersion of intensiveness” (Loy).
“The past remains wild” (Eckes)
“Mess . . . calls to Order . . . mess places place in the center of its disheveltry . . . Order’s displacement is in eyeshot of its reinstatement . . . mess is . . . the passage from Order to garbage. Thus, mess is liminal” (Kearney)
“. . . culture [is] Perhaps humanities biggest mess . . . its most fertile shit” (Kearney)
“I make my poems to make a way through what I often perceive as mess” (Kearney)
“Every word is a spur, an outgrowth, a departure. Language, like the city, is wild, even while it inhibits our freedom, our ability to make peace” (Eckes)
* * *
Time weakens the intensity of the present. I believe that’s why people are often inclined to rewrite history.
With this in mind, there’s no need to get too attached to any specific version of it.
With this in mind, history is a mess.
People debate history – who’s right, who deserves rights, whose rights should be prioritized, etc. –, despite its changing all the time. In doing this, they add to history. Changing history. Adding another alcove, another thread, or two or three to the maze / web of history.
We turn ourselves around and wrap ourselves up in our own mess, and lose access to the lessons that we might learn from facing our history.
All is not lost!
History’s lessons are tangible in spite of its current state of mess. Our mess is liminal.
It is very close to no longer being a mess. Meaning, it is even closer to making some sense.
This is why I write. To make sense of the mess.
Which brings me to language.
Language is a mess, and a maze, and a web too. Whose center is unidentifiable because of the complexities of its development over time.
People debate a word’s etymology, adding to the thing’s history. Adding another alcove, another thread, or two or three to the maze / web of language.
We turn ourselves around and wrap ourselves up in our own mess, and lose access to the freedom that fluency in language can offer.
All is not lost!
The freedom language offers is tangible in spite of history’s mess. Our mess is liminal.
It is very close to no longer being a mess. Meaning, it is even closer to making some sense.
This is why I write. To make sense of the mess.
* * *
Given that History is a Mess,
“In many Black American vernaculars, mess understudies for shit” (Kearney).
“CEASE to build up your personality with the ejections of irrelevant minds.
NOT to be a cipher in your ambient,
But to color your ambient with your preferences.
NOT to accept experience at its face value.
BUT to readjust activity to the peculiarity of your own will.
THESE are the primary tentatives towards independence” (Loy).
* * *
Given that history is a mess, look inward, not backward, to find fulfillment.
Given that history is shit, define yourself for yourself, and whatnot.
Given that history is a mess, take its lessons with a grain of salt, or caution, or whatever is your preference.
Given that history is shit, be cautious of people who too zealously reference the past as great.
It was not. A great mess, maybe.
III. Put Your Knowledge to the Text:
In this section, I’ll share a couple of stories that I feel exemplify the themes introduced in the “On Saving Humanity from Itself,” and “How to Rationalize Becoming an Alien” sections of this piece / portfolio.
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Content:
“Medusa and Herophile'' → Although this is not a story about the end of the world, it is a story that demonstrates how simple it is to rewrite / reimagine history and history’s stories. Reimaging history is arguably the first step in becoming an alien.
“P4” → This is an apocalypse story in which an alien species saves what is left of humanity after the end of the world.
* * *
Medusa and Herophile
Herophile was now unsure if bringing her niece on this journey had been a good idea. Their passage to Pytho had just begun, and the girl was already a distraction. The Hellenic sailors who manned their ship glanced at her endlessly. Herophile worried that their distraction would result in her being lost at sea, somewhere in the Mediterranean.
Medusa was beautiful, and she had some knowledge of this. She shared the rich complexion of the Nubians south of her home in Alexandria, but her ancestry was clear in the broadness of her features and the tight coils of hair that shaped her locs. Her mother’s family originated in the far West African empire of Yoruba. Their prophetic work as Sybil brought the women East, to the wealth of the Nile and Egyptian, Nubian and Kush lands. Growing up in Alexandria, Medusa was accustomed to being acknowledged as a unique beauty for her West African features.
Aboard the Spartan ship that sailed Medusa and her aunt, Herophile, to the Mediterranean island, Pytho, the pale men who powered the ship’s oars would pause their rowing for moments at a time to stare, as Medusa passed. Only to return to rowing when prompted by the crack of their captain’s hand against a bright red scalp, burnt from the sun.
“A gorgon,” one of the men spoke. Crack. And back to rowing.
Medusa ignored their stares and murmurings. She was preoccupied, imagining her new life as a Sybil’s apprentice.
P4
To avoid the traffic of the heavily utilized P1-P3 parking levels, the building’s small community of roller skaters and bladers went to P4 to do their skating. Since it takes so long to get down to P4, and since there is ample parking on P1-P3, no one makes the trip.
Being so far underground, P4 can feel like a post-apocalyptic relic of some long lost people.
So, it was almost fitting when the group of skaters who lived in the apartments above the parking garage in question were enjoying their weekly lesson on P4 as the world ended.
After their lesson, the skaters made their way to the elevators. The elevators were out of service, – the building’s elevators were often out of service – so they took the stairs up to the lobby. It’s difficult, but not impossible to ascend and descend a flight of stairs in a pair of skates.
As someone opened the door from the stairwell to the lobby, sunlight did not shine through the windows that framed the large foyer. It was 11am.
“Is it supposed to rain today?”
“No,” someonelse replied.
Skates still on her feet, she rolled across the lobby to the building’s front door. When she pushed it open, a strong gust of wind blew a cloud of ash into her face. She covered her mouth and sputtered “what the fuc –” before being cut short by a fit of coughing. As the door swung shut, her coughing turned to gagging, then convulsing. Skates still on her feet, she lost her balance and fell to her hands and knees. She spat bile then fell flat into her own mess.
The darkness that blocked the sun was not caused by rain clouds. It was caused by ash. When the girl opened the lobby door, that ash filled her lungs.
A small group circled around the woman on the ground.
“She's dead –”
“Look,” a sob interjected.
Through the lobby’s windows, the skaters saw shadows scattered across the street. Bodies. Dozens of people seized by the same fit as the woman who lay dead on the ground.
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