Interruption for a cause here guys. I'm still working on the 30 day author platform challenge, but I wanted to interject here to mention a project I'm working on. I'm not sure how many of you are fans of West Indian Fiction (I'm pretty sure most of you have never even heard of the genre) but being a Caribbean author, I've been bombarded with the standard of fiction writing in the Caribbean to be the likes of Sam Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, George Lamming et.al. If you've never heard those names, I advise reading some books (The Lonely Londoners by Selvon, A House for Mr. Biswas by Naipaul, and In the Castle of My Skin by Lamming are among my favourites by these authors). Having been influenced by this and the concerted postings of the anecdotes of my friend Angelo Bissessarsingh on his facebook page, I've decided to give this thing a whirl. I've decided to do a weekly column with my writing and post it where available to see if I can get some readership involved. I plan to include all the diaspora of the Caribbean region, especially of the small rural district where I grew up.
Have you ever been inspired by a friend? I'f love to hear how...
Have you ever been inspired by a friend? I'f love to hear how...
I just wrote a blog post that talks about this a little bit:
ReplyDelete"If a friend wanted to go out to lunch or meet for coffee or a movie I’d always find a reason not to go or I’d cancel last minute. It wasn’t the fault of my friends: it was me. I just didn’t have the same level of trust with them. That changed the summer my husband was hired to star in a play in Colorado. While he rehearsed during the day, I stayed alone in the condo and wrote. I didn’t dare venture outside. As a matter of fact, I was a nervous wreck just being there, thousands of miles away from my comfort zone – our home in West Hollywood. And then a good friend came to visit, and I had a choice to make: spend all of our time indoors (there’s a limit to how much telelvision you can watch) or venture outside with our friend. I was a wreck trying to decide what to do. What was I afraid of, you might ask. That’s certainly what the therapist had asked me, when I called her frantically all the way from Colorado. “What if something bad happens to me?” I told her. “I trust my husband to help me, but I’m not sure about my friend.” Well, thanks to that therapist (See Item #2 above) for saying: “You’ll never find out, Darlene, unless you get out of the house.” So my friend (Jeff) and I went fishing at a nearby river. For a first step, it was a big one. A big step that turned into an even bigger stumble: I slipped on a rock on the muddy river bed, fell backwards into the water, and I couldn’t move. My ankle was sprained and I couldn’t get back up. I was trapped there and my head was slowly sinking under water. Jeff did what any of my other friends would’ve done: he laughed. I looked ridiculous, spread-eagled, still wearing a cowboy hat (somewhat cock-eyed on my head), and still holding my fishing pole. But Jeff did something else too: he came running, reached down to stop me from slipping completely underwater, and he helped me back up to my feet. Easier said than done – we slipped and slided along the muddy river bank, both of us now laughing (and me wincing in pain and hopping on one foot). Jeff saved me from drowning. And he taught me that day that I could feel safe in the world with a friend."
Getting out has never really been a problem for me, but writing about what you know is probably the most engagin way to create fiction.
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