Novels

"The one discipline you need in the first draft: to follow where anger, or delight, or laughing take you."
(Carol Bly, The Passionate and Accurate Story)

The one discipline needed of any artist is to follow—themselves. This is also the one discipline that requires the most vigilance and courage.

The way of the artist is unpaved. Each artist must make their own path through terrain known only to them. Vigilance is required as many editors, critics and audiences ask you to be, see, write, and feel something you cannot. They then ask you to create from this space, a space that negates you and your vision.

When you experience a person's art you follow them, and the choices they've made. In writing I've heard it say you follow their breath. As you shape the words, reading out loud or even in your mind's ear, you pause and shape the words they've laid before you.

When working, writing, I follow the voices. They come to me and I scramble behind. I've always respected them and devoted, to them, my full attention. I'm not sure I follow anger, delight or laughter, but I've learned to work without an immediate knowledge of direction. Sometimes, when I write, I think this is crazy. I'm cannot write this. If I wasn't destined for hell, I am now—with this chapter I have made my fate certain. During those moments vigilance is required—hush now—keep writing. And I do. In this way the writing asks more of me than I thought I was capable of giving, revealing aspects I had never considered. I've learned to let my idea of the work go and listen.

Like Coltrane I practice everyday, aware that scales (reading and writing, speaking and listening) keep me agile of mind and spirit. Creating requires agility, endurance, and strength.

(In the history of Jazz men and Blues men)
"Who had to find their voices, and not be echoes.
Who had to have a vision, not just a stand.
And in the end, had to be true to themselves.
Because all imitation is suicide.
All emulation is a sign of an adolescent mind.

All of us imitate.
All of us emulate.
But the ones who love us,
the way Monk loved Coltrane,
you don't need to imitate. . .
go on and find your voice."
(Cornell West)

"It's all about the choices "
(Terrance Blanchard)

Obsolescence

In Beyond the Writer's Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction Carol Bly presents a challenging project: 100 stories.

She suggests we ask children to endeavor to learn, verbatim, 100 stories by the age of 18. She does not, as emphatically or clearly, state that this attempt, this devotion, requires they have access to 100 stories, and a person to listen to their recitations. I ask that you keep this in mind as you read along and determine how this project can work for you (regardless of your age).

Bly argues for the merits of this project, offering the following observations:
1. Storytellers use Language.
2. If children are asked to memorize great stories—they will use classic language.
3. They will hear themselves speaking great words.
4. They will hear themselves narrating the lives of creatures very unlike themselves.
5. They will directly experience something other.

This lays the groundwork for many things.

I ask you to add to the notion of classic languages, the project of learning and using ancestral languages (often considered endangered, impracticable, extinct, or obsolete) for your own 100 Stories project.

Bly further argues that memorizing and telling 100 stories (to listeners) lays the foundation for empathy. Children will fill their mind with classical feelings and humor. She also writes, for the purpose of this project, "do not translate the language of each story into something familiar, current or provincial." She says you will lose the wonder and the tone—I agree and add you will lose much more.

Bly writes: "Children love strangeness if they're not afraid of it, and they are not afraid of it when they get to say the strange words in their own voice. When they tell stories of unlike creatures and unlike places they free-heartedly exercise curiosity about otherness—about things that will never be like what they know."

Further details about the project, as defined by Bly are on pages 163-170.

Some insights I had while reading Bly's project and her understanding of story. Her 100 stories project provides a concrete way (for people who do know how) to relate to the unknown, without killing it. She asks the young storyteller, and the related listener, to allow the mystery of the unknown and to memorize its language. She asks them (us) to relate to others without changing them, or reducing them to the known, the understandable or the same. She asks the young storyteller not to kill others, but to take the details of them into our mind and memorize them. Perhaps so we can recognize them when we encounter them? Perhaps to know they exist, even if we never have the honor of meeting them.

Many might ask who does this?

I do.
We do.
The Urban Nizhóní do.

Many ask who has the time to do this? (Meaning memorizing stories is impossible, or not worthwhile.)

I've heard and been persecuted by the notion that the oral tradition is always one generation from extinction. Stories need someone to tell them. They need someone to listen to them. Given the state of books and libraries I have an easier time now when I make my argument that books and archives are equally vulnerable to loss (by decidedly different means and methods). They need someone to care for them and read them too.

Devoting our lives to the stories that walk among us is more then a contemporary possibility, or a creative nonfiction workshop idea, it is an essential part of the project of life.

This project has merit, especially when you make a devotion to the stories themselves and the ethics of storytelling. Please remember, this project is not founded on theft. Do not go stealing stories. Make an honest and true devotion to story and start there. Start with your own stories, respect them. If you do not have access to them, start asking around, start reading.