On The Push To Produce Work: Notes From The Trenches 5x2i2w

Brilliant Editions • New York, New York

2014

Table of Contents

Title Page Books by K Ibura Introduction Novel Writing Freewriting and Asemic Writing I/We Seeking and Receiving Critiques Freeing Your Work Through Limitations Chapbooks: Feeding Your Writer Self The Story of a Dissertation Journey Surrendering the Ego Surviving by Percentages Achieving With Ease About the Author Copyright Notice

Notes from the Trenches Series On the Psychology of Writing On the Struggle to Self-Promote On the Push to Produce Work On Finding Your Voice

THERE’S USUALLY a three-ring circus running through an artist’s mind at all times. There are multiple identities with multiple urges and goals. The multiplicity of needs can cloud the most important part of being an artist—the development of work. One thing any artist with longevity has to figure out is how to produce work. How to produce work consistently and effectively. This simple act is the core of every artist’s identity. The study of artistic productivity is also the study of what blocks us and what stops us from being productive. Of all the things that have preoccupied me over the course of my career—my voice, my value as a writer, the level of my craft, the community I build, the notice I receive from readers—the one thing that I have consistently needed to understand is how to create work. Over the course of your career, the logistics of your life will change, your attitude to your work will change, how your work is received will change. Through all the changes, you will need to learn how to produce work under whatever conditions you are living under. I had to learn how to produce work as a single woman making the transition from college to the working world, I had to learn how to produce work as a mother of a young child with growing responsibilities, I had to learn how to produce work as a writer who struggled with the form of the novel. The one thing that never changes is the need to crack the code of producing work. The older I get, the more the other concerns fall away. Over time I realize that I don’t have much control over how my work is received, or how fast my skills develop, the one thing that I can control is the consistent production of work. I control it by being committed to my productivity as a lifelong problem to solve. I accept and understand that the parameters of my productivity will continue to change. As time marches on, I will continue to examine my own habits, identify what’s holding me back, and create practices that keep me moving forward. More than anything, that is my biggest responsibility to my creativity.

Be well. Be love(d).

K. Ibura

November 23, 2014

THE THING I value most about my friendships with artists is the spillover, the little tidbits behind the scenes that reveal how another artist is getting it done. In one of the circles of artists I am a part of, a friend returned from the annual Cave Canem workshop and challenged a group of us to write a poem a day for one week. As the group delved into the challenge, we started off giddy, reveling in the fun of creating new work. Then it got rough. I held on for three days, but by the fourth day I was dry. I forced myself to write the fourth poem and eked out a fifth. When the week was done, I hadn’t written seven poems for the week, but I was thrilled to have written five poems in one week. That was five more poems than I had written all year! I kept that little burst of productivity in mind over the course of my own writing efforts. When I’m stalled, I think about the components of the challenge that made it successful: a group commitment, a defined amount of work (one poem per day), a defined amount of time (one week). Surely this type of challenge couldn’t be sustained forever, but could it get me through productivity blockages? This year I am quietly trying to convince myself to start a new novel. I don’t want to write a new novel. I’d like to magically fix the one I have. I mean, who writes 400-plus pages just to throw it out? After shopping the novel around to agents and editors, I received wonderful encouragement and the clear understanding that my novel’s structure needs deep and profound help. There’s nothing—no plotline, no consistent arc—holding the novel together. It’s a rambling series of stories that are loosely sewn together to create a piece of multigenerational fiction featuring touches of autobiography. I labored for years working on that novel because I fervently believed that it would be the next step in my career. What it turned out to be, however, was my very own one-woman novel-writing workshop. The trick of productivity is that it’s not just about producing work, it’s also about learning how to produce work. The process of wrestling with my first novel brought me a lot of skills and awareness that I needed, but it didn’t get me what I really wanted: a publishable novel manuscript. I was so committed to the novel, that I took myself on a three-month writing trip. It took two whole months for me to sur the profound overwhelm I felt about the project and start analyzing my novel’s structural needs.

Once my thoughts were clear, I could see that I’d overdeveloped the beginning of the novel and underdeveloped the rest. I decided that I could only control the distribution of my efforts by planning to spend an equal amount of time on all sections of the book. That’s where the math came in. I decided to break up the novel into four sections and each section would have four chapters. I tried to hold back the self-criticism about how long it had taken me (eight weeks) to decide how many chapters the book would have. Instead I started comparing my chapters to each other. I discovered that some chapters were 28 pages long, and others were as short as 14. I decided to normalize the chapters at approximately 20 pages. I could see instinctively that the chapters that were less than 17 pages didn’t quite delve deep enough into the story, and those that were over 25 pages rambled on for far too long. Ironically, I feel that objectivity and productivity go hand in hand. Usually blockages to productivity are mental and/or emotional. In reality, we don’t really run out of ideas or talent. Creating this objective structure helped to direct my editing and rewriting. I was no longer just pushing words around on the page; I was altering the story to create a balanced engagement across chapters. To balance out the impact of my overworking of the first half of the book and neglecting the second of half of the book, I decided to define how much time I'd spend on each chapter. I already knew I could write three hours a day, five days a week. So I decided I would work on a chapter a week. Whether I was writing or editing, I had to be done by Friday so that all the chapters would get the same amount of attention, and consequently be equally developed. By the time I figured all those logistics out, I was ready to write and my time was up. The paradox of productivity is that—despite the fact that we don’t always have something material to show for our efforts—true productivity never leaves us empty-handed. I came back from that writing trip with a new love for painting, a luscious tan, and a profound sense of inadequacy. I felt that I had wasted those three months because I didn’t have a completed novel in hand; but what I didn’t know, was that what I learned about structure, evaluating, and time management would stay with me forever. Now when I work on large projects, I have clear parameters and processes. I can slack off and ignore my parameters, I can choose an alternative process, but I have objective, realistic guidelines to measure my progress. I’m proud to say that my organizational techniques helped finish that first novel, but my journey as a writer repeatedly shows me that productivity is about more

than just producing work. I had produced a novel, but it wasn’t structurally sound. It was—in short—a practice run. I was shocked to hear Jack Womack, one of my instructors at the Clarion West Writers Workshop, say that you might have to throw out not only your first novel, but also your second and third ones. But each novel you write, each book-length work you produce, teaches you about the craft, and by your fourth novel, you should know what you are doing. The notion of a novel as a place to develop your craft was mind-boggling to me. In my world you write a novel once you have it all together. The years of writing and talking with writers taught me that one of the biggest mistakes a writer can make is to think in of “ends.” “At the end of me writing this novel, I will be an amazing writer, I’ll be published, and I’ll just crank one amazing novel out after the other.” The reality is each novel, each story is a place to expand and grow and learn the craft. Any novel a writer completes will be the best novel that writer can create in that moment. But after it’s published, if the writer continues writing, s/he will also continue learning and growing as a writer and the next novel will (hopefully) reflect a new understanding of the craft. Deciding to write a novel brings up a lot of fears, especially for someone who has written an unsuccessful novel. Starting a novel has sent me into a tailspin. Who wants to blow their savings on a writing trip only to come back with some “good material”? One of the hardest pills to swallow is that artmaking is not an input-output machine. I may declare that by the end of a writing trip, I want to have a manuscript ready to send to publishers and agents, but that declaration means nothing if I haven’t laid the groundwork, tried and failed enough times to learn my own process, and gone through as many drafts of a novel as necessary to figure out how long it takes to get it right. Ultimately productivity is as much about the process as it is about the product. One of the most valuable questions artists can ask themselves is: Am I willing to invest the time and effort in producing enough work to learn what it takes to be productive?

Be well. Be love(d).

K. Ibura August 22, 2001

A FEW months ago Tim Gaze, a zine editor interested in experimental fiction asked me to write a piece for his zine. He had read the first speculative short story I had ever written, “Of Wings, Nectar, and Ancestors,” and wanted to me to send him something in that vein. In “Of Wings, Nectar, and Ancestors,” I switched voices between standard English and “broken” English. The play with language was inspired by my experience learning to speak Spanish. While studying abroad in the Dominican Republic, I had a really difficult time expressing myself. I had lots of wonderful and intelligent things to say, but my grasp of Spanish was slippery. I might want to talk about the sociopolitical influences of merengue and guava fruit, but all I could say was: “The dog is nice.” I became fascinated by the idea of intelligent beings limited to juvenile levels of communication. In “Of Wings, Nectar, and Ancestors,” I created a character who was not only struggling with language, but also with society itself. She was a recent arrival to Earth and saw everything through foreign eyes. When I was writing it, it was an honest attempt at fictionalizing my very real alien perspective on life in the Dominican Republic. I wasn’t trying to create anything bizarre or experimental. I was just trying to entertain myself. Yet, when I read it today, I see how difficult it might be to read a piece that is half written in a fragmented language. Here is a section that WaLiLa, the otherworldy being, narrates: “call malkai me fuse re-flames. me fire burn long way to club. we go in club. i excited. i holding on wrist malkai. i feel air white & thick on me skin. me eyes see sticks skinny people use to spread air thick. glow of light on end of stick make me think home. i feel burn in me nose. malkai tell me is scent: smell of rum. me heart pumps to music beat.” Some readers see it and love it. Some readers see it and try to struggle with it, but ultimately find it too challenging and give up. For them, the fragmented language is too much of a barrier. Still others struggle with it at the beginning, but then the story takes over and they are able to flow with this new way of speaking. I have since moved on to other themes and expressions, so I told Tim I had not written anything like that since, so I wouldn’t be able to send him any experimental fiction. Undaunted, as a good editor should be, he sent me a few copies of his zine and said maybe I could write a new type of experimental fiction since I’d done it before.

Tim’s zine was truly inspiring. He obviously has a love for the work he publishes and skimming the contributors list. I could see that he sought out writers from all over the world to include in his vision. The energy on the page was palpable. It reminded me of Red Clay, the zine my friends and I put out during my senior year of college. “Send me three words,” I said, “and I’ll send you a piece.” He immediately sent me three words, and I wrote them down somewhere and went on with my life. Sure I intended to write something eventually, but in the meantime, I had other things to do. Last Thursday, weeks (months?) after he sent me three words, I received another package in the mail. This time it was a copy of Asemic 2, another zine Tim publishes that features asemic writing. Tim describes asemic writing as “text with no semantic information, yet in some sense still a text.” When you open the magazine, there are all these scribbles in it. It looks like handwriting, but it doesn’t say anything, you can’t read it! On first glance, I thought, This is useless, what’s the point of this? Then I read Tim’s statement on asemic writing. I was specifically caught by the following section: “[Hand]writing does not just contain semantic information. It also contains aesthetic information (when seen as a shape or image) and emotional information (such as a graphologist would analyze.) Because it eliminates the semantic information, asemic writing brings the emotional and aesthetic content to the foreground. By contrast, email is writing almost devoid of aesthetic and emotional content, apart from what the words contain. Asemic works play with our minds, enticing us to attempt to ‘read’ them. Some asemic works make the viewer hover between ‘reading’ (as a text) and ‘looking’ (as a picture).” I must be an intellectual, because after reading Tim’s thoughts on asemic writing, I decided to give the zine another try. I flipped through the entire book, taking time to look at every page. I can’t say what I got out of the experience consciously, but when I closed the magazine, I was inspired. I believe I was inspired by the rawness of the expression, and the immediacy of it. Each page contained doodles stretching across a blank background. There are no directions and no guidance; you interpret the markings however you interpret them. So I decided to sit down and work on a piece for Tim immediately. Now there was absolutely no difference between the me who put off writing the story and the me who decided to write the story. I always had the means to produce a new piece of fiction; I just hadn’t committed to it. I’ve found that, as I get older, it gets harder and harder to commit to producing new work. There are

just too many other things vying for my attention. Whenever I notice myself stopped in my writing, I always try to strategize a solution. During this period of my life, where the daily schedule is a compelling deterrent from producing work, I’ve turned to freewriting as a bridge between inactivity and productivity. I freewriting is somewhat related to asemic writing. Freewriting is the act of sitting down to write without a preconceived notion of what your content is going to be, drawing from outside sources of inspiration and writing whatever comes to mind. The point is to turn off your editor, to not censor and not worry about making sense so that you can tap directly into your fountain of creativity. In other words, you produce work by removing your concern about the result, and focusing instead on the immediate process. I’ve used freewriting in many different scenarios. It can be a good tool for circumnavigating writer’s block, deepening or developing a character, imagining new directions for a story, hashing out the arguments in a nonfiction piece, or simply keeping your writing gears flowing. When you’re setting up a freewrite, you start by identifying a few words or a scenario. You can ask people to give you words (as I did with Tim). You can open a book and place your finger blindly on the page and pick up the word or fragment you’re pointing to. You gather in a writing group and have each person write a description of a person (Bettina who sells bows on the corner), a place (in the fork between the giant’s toes), or a situation (Superman decides to become a drag queen) on a slip of paper. Then, have everyone switch descriptions and write using a situation, place or person someone else has set up. The point is to use ideas that come from outside of yourself. Then you decide how long you’re going to write (10 minutes, 15 minutes) and start writing. You don’t stop writing until the time is up. If you can’t think of anything, you write “I can’t think of anything to write” over and over again until your brain hits upon something. A successful freewriting session circumvents your conscious mind. Every writer has their own tropes and arguments that they repeat over and over again. Freewriting has the power to take you outside of where your conscious mind would take you into a fresh new realm. I use it to grease the wheels of my idea machine. The daily details of being an adult can suppress (but not destroy) the creative impulse. When I’m confronted with a random combination of words, my mind interprets it as a game (can I find the connection?), or a puzzle to figure out.

I have a collection of freewrites that I can use as the foundation for new stories, or a place to develop a character that I can supplant into an existing story. I’ve also discovered turns of phrase or a fresh way to construct a scene through freewrites. You get the idea, freewrites can spark a writer’s creativity. They can add texture and variety and creativity to whatever you’re working on. It’s a low-pressure approach to producing the building blocks of new work. Also, because it comes from your subconscious rather than your conscious mind, it’s pure play. It has the power to transport your expectations of the kind of writer you are, destroy your limitations of theme and perspective, and introduce you to a new facet of your creative self.

Be well. Be love(d).

K. Ibura September 27, 2001

WRITING IS a very solitary act. Yet it, like many other art forms, is only fulfilled in community. It lives when it is read by others. Some artists don’t like to be influenced by others while developing their work, but I find a large part of my progress as a writer, and as an individual, is based on interaction with others. From the beginning, my father, Kalamu ya Salaam, was my editor, spurring me on to create work and submit my writing for publication. His questions about my content and his challenges regarding my themes caused me to dive deeper into the theoretical questions of my work; therefore, his had a direct impact on my writing. Years later, I now have two friends who read and comment on my work. Almost everything I submit for publication has been through one, if not both, of their hands. My friends’ responses teach me about the strength and weaknesses of my work. Badly phrased fragments, underdeveloped sections, and uneven characters can under my radar easily, because often I’m filling in the blanks in my head, but not on paper. Outside eyes catch and stumble upon those awkward places in my writing and push me to work harder at creating a smooth ride for readers. This process is something my mother, Tayari kwa Salaam, would call “I/We.” My mother used to call me up from time to time to talk about the theories she was developing for her PhD dissertation. “I/We” is one of those theories. Well, she’s decided it is a methodology (rather than a theory): in other words a method to approach critical thought. My understanding of I/We is that it is the process of developing an idea or a thought by partially birthing it in private, then bringing it to your community (whoever that may be) for discussion and contemplation, then using the ideas sparked by discussion with the community to cement your idea or thought into theory. She’s embraced this as the methodology for her dissertation. She finds that she is able to have a stronger grasp on her ideas through discussion with others. Her most exciting theorizing happens in conversation with her community. The moment my mother explained the I/We methodology to me, I recognized I/We as a profound experience I had with one of my essays: “Navigating to No.” Just now, as I type this, I realize that I began my career as a writer out of an I/We moment. The first story I ever wrote (as an adult) was entitled “How Far Have We Come?” In 1991 a classmate of mine had a bizarre experience while reading

a Haki Madhubuti book on the train. A white man—who happened to be reading over her shoulder—became so incensed by a particular age regarding white people’s fear of black people that he knocked the book out of my classmate’s hand, and eventually hit her. Although everyone else on the train was black, no one came to her aid. After the classmate told us this story in class, the thought of this happening in 1991 would not let go of me. It just kept running over and over again in my head. I wrote the story down as a mechanism for coping with its persistent presence in my mind. Basically, the intensity of the incident pushed me to produce my first published work. As a writer, I decided to fictionalize part of the event to demonstrate what was so horrifying about the incident. In my story, at the moment when the character is hit by the man on the train, she suddenly finds herself back in time, sprawled in the cotton fields—her back burning from the sting of a whip, a book on the ground inches from her fingertips. The classmate assaulted by a self-righteous white man became an enslaved woman beat by a zealous overseer. I sent the story to my father, he suggested I send it out for publication. The Black Collegian published it in 1991. They paid me $100. It was years before I made that kind of money from a piece of fiction again, but it was a major turning point in me considering myself a writer. For me, being receptive is a large part of producing work. Being touched by life and following through on recommendations and requests to submit often leads me to develop stories and sparks new ideas for writing projects. My largest experience with I/We transformed me personally as well as professionally. In 1993 a friend of mine told me she was raped. She “rushed over the confession quickly. She didn’t really want to discuss it. Why?—because it wasn't a ‘physical’ rape. He didn’t have a gun or a knife and he didn’t beat her up. They were, in fact, friends. She was attracted to him, it was late, and she was in his home.... Although she clearly believed she was raped, she couldn’t explain why she considered it rape.” —from “Navigating to No.” I found myself fascinated by my friend’s story. How could you say you were raped and not be able to explain why? How could these things happen? I never forgot her story. In 1995 I told a male friend that someone “seduced me.” He said “Oh, you trying to say you didn’t want it?” “No,” I said, “I mean he made it happen, but I wanted it.” He said, “No, seducing is when you make somebody have sex when they

don’t want to.” “Are you crazy?” I said, “That’s rape.” As we were arguing about what seduction is and isn’t, something clicked. I realized if men think seduction is making women have sex when they don’t want to and women aren’t strong enough to say no in the face of extreme pressure or harassment, that’s how “date rape” happens. Two people with two different definitions for seduction and two very different models for interaction. I put together my female friend’s rape story with my male friend’s definition of seduction (two elements from my community—the “we”) and wrote a personal essay entitled “Seduction vs. Rape.” “Seduction vs. Rape” was published on an Internet publication called Topsoil. A college professor found it and asked if she could use it in her classroom. So here I am, having a discussion with a larger community through work produced in response to two life conversations that had an impact on me. As Frank Gasper, one of my professors at the Antioch University L.A. MFA program suggests: Follow the heat. Conversations and concepts have friction and energy. They create internal disturbances that compel you to engage. Often those ideas that irritate and won’t be denied can form the core of introspective work that matters. There is a definite relationship between the artist and the artwork. Our personal growth influences the work we produce. It not only influences the topics we tackle, but also informs our approach to our work. In this case, the work I was producing spurred both internal growth and was informed by internal growth. Additionally, the conversation about seduction vs. rape continued in my life and work. In 1996 I suffered the same type of sexual experience. I clearly didn’t want to have sex, but the man was not picking up on my signals. When he didn’t respond to my mumbled suggestions that we should slow it down, fear set in. Rather than confront him, I went along with his program and had sex with him. I went home the next day and didn’t tell anyone about it. Some years after, I decided to develop “Seduction vs. Rape” into a full-length magazine article. I didn’t intend to tell my own story, in fact, I don’t think I even put my sexual experience in the same category as my friend’s experience. My plan was to focus on men’s and women’s differing definitions of seduction. I embarked on a series of interviews and talked to as many men and women as I could about seduction and sex that isn’t quite seduction, but not quite what our society defines as rape, either.

In interacting with my community, I stumbled upon many disturbing sex stories. Women who had given in to sex up to five times, women who were forced into sex in their own homes, women who clearly said no and were raped. In discussing all of these experiences, I found that I wasn’t so unique. My experience was almost textbook; my shutting down in bed was scripted. I completed the article and almost turned it in when I realized an essential element of the issue was missing from the article. The huge chunk that was missing was my own story. After delving into so many powerful conversations with women I ired, I was ready to connect my personal experience to the larger issue. The process of hearing about similar sexual experience healed me. I spoke to various “victims” who had been both stronger and weaker than me, yet no matter how “appropriately” we had handled the unwanted interactions, we had all suffered the same struggle. Those conversations freed me to relate to the unwanted sex as an aspect of our society that needs to be healed on a worldwide level. Additionally the conversation helped me to approach the issue from a more balanced perspective. My new draft of the article not only told my story, but discussed what both women and men contribute to the issue. Completing the essay helped me see tactics both women and men can use to make their sexual experiences healthier. The cycles of this work continued to ripple outward. I published the article under the title “Navigating to No” (the article can be read on my website), and the emails started pouring in. I got over 100 emails from women telling me their rape stories: PhDs, teenagers, mothers, wives, college students. Emailing me with stories like, “Just last week...” “I cried the whole time...” “I thought he was my friend...” “He said we were going to watch television....” I got about three or four emails from women and men saying I was ridiculous for holding men able; women are responsible for what happens to them. I also got emails from men saying, “Oh, that’s why she just laid there?” “A friend said I raped her and I never understood; now I think I do. Then I got a detailed response from a 24-year-old man that even further expanded my understanding of the conversation. After providing advice about how important it is for women to clearly and consistently demonstrate their lack of agreement/interest in the sexual act, he shared his own experiences with pushing women to have sex. (The letter can be read on my website under “Male Response to ‘Navigating to No.’”) His lengthy letter was disturbing and at the same time, it provided valuable insight into a social ill that I (and many other women) had been dealing with as a

private issue. Producing work is an extremely personal process, yet your work can go on to influence so many people. Producing this one essay eventually led to invitations to do a college presentation, appear on a television program, and do two radio interview. The more I discussed the issue, the more I was able to discuss the gap between women’s and men’s perspectives in engaging, nondefensive . My perspective on unwanted sex had become so broad that when a man challenged me on the truth of what I was saying, it didn’t feel personal. I understood his comments as an illustration of our society’s attitudes and a demonstration of how little women and men understand about each other’s lives. If we allow them to, the places in our lives where we have friction, questions, and unrest can guide us to produce potent artwork that speaks to our larger communities. My mother’s definition of I/We gives me words to explain this miraculous series of events that impacted my emotional health, my artistic output, and my understanding of the world we live in. I love knowing that, just as other people’s work and ideas influence us, we influence others. Just last week, I got an email affirming the power of I/We in sparking artistic production. A dancer and a performance artist, after hearing about my catcalling essay asked to read it. After reading it, he was inspired to do a performance piece on the topic. He says: “By you expressing your ideas and voice, I was able to find my voice. It is a tag team, if you will. I appreciate this process that life offers, it gives life flavor and movement which is unplanned and unlimited.” Life provides an unlimited source of inspiration and information from which to produce work. Do you dare dive in?

Be well. Be love(d).

K. Ibura November 9, 2001

IN WRITING an essay for an anthology, I was recently stumped. The topic felt unwieldy. Despite pages and pages of writing, I couldn’t get the tone and feel of the piece. The content in the first draft was too personal. The content in the second, too dogmatic. I put both the first draft and the second draft to the side and started a third. To control and limit my ideas, I started the third draft by writing a numbered list of reflections. Each item was just a paragraph long. This format helped me to create tighter parameters for the information I was including in the essay. It guided me away from my emotions and allowed me to communicate what I intended without diversions and veering off topic. After creating my list, I developed the essay’s structure and finally reached a tone and degree of personal content that I felt comfortable with. Though I had done all I could with the third draft, I knew the essay still wasn’t balanced. I knew there were some holes in the argument/information. Rather than send the essay to the editor, I sent it to six people who either had engaged with me in conversation about the theme of the essay or are trusted friends who regularly give me on my work. I took this step because I knew the conversation generated between me and the six readers would help me further clarify exactly what I wanted to address, identify extraneous sections of the essay, and create a more objective point of view. For me, seeking criticism from friends is like submitting my work to a think tank. The gut reactions my friends provide reveal weak points in my arguments, point out sections that create confusion (sections in which I did not communicate clearly), and demonstrate the range of perceptions the public may have in reading the published piece. In my first few edits I seek these issues and I am able to find some inconsistencies on my own, but some flaws never become apparent to me. Some lapses in logic are blind spots that aren’t ushered into the light until someone else points them out. The writer, after spending so much time developing the work, may find herself lulled into ignoring unresolved plot lines or trains of thought. Her personal perspectives can be myopic and repeated readings can deaden objectivity. I find fresh eyes invaluable in uncovering lingering questions instantly. When we’re producing work, we’re closely tied to our ideas. The work is born within a writer’s imagination. As the work is birthed, the writer knows every nuance and angle her brain can conceive. When the writer hands the work over to someone else, the critiquer can provide a new angle on the concept. Trusted

readers can bring a tangible breath of fresh air blowing through the writing. Multiple paths suddenly open. Paragraphs that were stuck are freed, and in that freedom the writer can now see which sections are incomplete and in need of more explication/description/direction. It is almost like with critiques, the writer gains a road map of how much deeper s/he can delve, the stretch of space that can be travelled, the new vistas that can be folded into the landscape. On a practical level, having my work critiqued allows me to produce work more quickly. Particularly with my essays, I can mold a mess of words into a concise essay much more effectively after receiving clear, well-articulated critiques. Some writers balk at the concept of other brains contributing to their work. I don’t think other’s ideas and perspectives make my work any less mine. Once the chaos in my jumbled drafts is illuminated, I’m freed to do a deep dive into the material. I’m no longer encumbered, stumbling around to find my way. In reaction to other’s questions and concerns, I become certain of my direction. With the behind me, I go flying toward powerful communication and expression. Equally as important as getting your work critiqued is knowing when critiques hit the mark and when they fall off to the side. When an artist knows her craft and what she’s trying to achieve, a good critique speaks to what the artist instinctually understands about the work and expands the sense of what she wants the words to achieve. Good critiquing is expansive. It points out elements we are blind to when we’re working, but that are clearly relevant when spoken. A powerful critique immediately breaks open many new possibilities and directions for the work. Receiving critiques is an essential part of producing work. Ironically, the more experienced a writer I become, the better I am at accepting, processing, and integrating critiques in my work. However, it’s not always easy to recognize good when I receive it. Sometimes, no matter how on point the critique is, I can’t see the wisdom of it until much later. I one story in particular (it is always harder for me to accept suggestions for my fiction than for my nonfiction) that was critiqued as being too long. The critiquer went on to suggest shortening a particular age. I reviewed that age and found every word of it to be relevant and essential. One year later I submitted the story to a contest. After the entry, I received a note from the contest saying the story was wonderful, but its length worked against it. I decided to return to the story to see if I could discover any extra material to cut. Ironically, I ended up cutting exactly

the age the critiquer had suggested a year back. Another essential component of producing work is learning to dismiss false critiques. Both false and honest critiques have the power to rip you down low, but false critiques never provide a pathway to improving the work. It cuts your efforts into shreds and gives nothing back. Once we learn to discern between true and false critiques, we can weed out the personal attacks masquerading as critique and throw them in the mental trash where they belong. My friend once went to bring her photos to a big-time magazine photo editor. From the moment she sat down with her portfolio, he ripped into her work—he criticized her perspective, her use of light. “You have too much reverence for your subject,” he said. “You have no talent” is not a critique. It is a personal attack. Whether someone believes you have talent or not, those words only serve to destroy an artist’s perception of self. My friend has not shown her portfolio in that city again. She was totally demoralized. In an editing class I once took, the teacher introduced the concept of maintaining a positive working relationship with the writer. Editors should not only point out the weaknesses in a piece of work, he said, but they should also seek the most respectful, nonconfrontational methods to do so. We were graded not only on the editorial choices we made, but also on how we directed the author to our suggestions for changes. I got high marks on my editing, and low marks on the delivery of my editorial suggestions. I would like to say I learned how to critique with grace in that class, but it would be a bald-faced lie. As an editor, I sometimes get into a very stringent critique mode. I look at the work before me and start cutting and suggesting changes without considering the artist’s connection to the piece. It’s so easy for me to be “objective” and cut to the bone without realizing that I am treading heavily on my friends’ work. It’s so easy for readers (including me) to forget that writers’ words are connected to their hearts. For those honest critiques that are so unadorned or aggressively stated that they burn, we writers need to learn how to take a pause and thank the person giving the critique, while allowing our egos to rage internally. Once our minds are clear, we can take the time to turn over the criticism, look at it from every direction, then figure out how it can the work. Perhaps someone called your work “infantile” and you disagree, but when you actually open your mind to considering the critique you do see a certain naivete to your work. If we can

deflect the blows to the ego and look at what’s wrapped inside critiques that hurt, we can empower ourselves to improve our craft through critiquing. The true purpose of a critique is encouragement. Critiques encourage us to go further with our ideas and to push ourselves toward crafting the best version/draft of our work. Effective critiques nurture a piece into a higher state of development. In taking the work seriously, critiques attest to the value of the work. The act of bringing your work to others to be critiqued is an investment in the betterment of your craft and your artistic output. The act of generously and rigorously offering critiques is an investment in the growth and strengthening of fellow artists. As strange as it may seem, deconstructing a work is sometimes the most powerful way to build it up.

Be well. Be love(d).

K. Ibura March 1, 2003

MY MOTHER is at the bitter end of her struggle to complete her PhD. In the final throes of her dissertation, she finds herself pulled in more than one direction. On the one hand she wants to explore all her ideas to the fullest; on the other, she wants to get her degree. With her defense date fast approaching, my mother’s major adviser told her to pull together all her prepared material and hand it over. As we discussed exactly which parts of the dissertation my mother was going to turn in, she kept asking if she should include unwritten chapters. I recommended my mother turn in what was completed and leave the rest for another time.

Her: “You mean, don’t even present the material I intended to prepare on black women’s contribution to my work?” Me: “Is it prepared?” Her: “No.” Me: “Then don’t even mention it. You are at the end. It’s time to complete.”

Producing work is something of a cyclical process. When you produce a piece of writing, it feeds your courage and confidence, and you move forward knowing what you’re capable of. Knowing how to complete work expands your capacity to produce work. As a writer—especially as a new writer—it is so easy to get trapped circling the drain of a good idea. You become convinced that you can complete the work by delving deeper into the idea. There is a time to explore your ideas without limitations but there is also a time to wrap things up. It might be thrilling to think of artmaking as a magical process, but unless you pair that magic with structured parameters you will get lost in a haze of your own creativity. The danger of trying to say everything is that you can exhaust yourself and never complete the piece. You start off energetic and excited, and the more you write the more lost you become. I know that I’ve lost my direction (if I ever had one) when I become disengaged. Instead of choosing an entry point and diving in, I’ll sit at my computer and stare at the story/essay blankly. Progress halts and I am

dominated by the pressing need to take a break. It’s not just me who is discombobulated, my work becomes a big mess too. I try to shove in too many ideas and the message becomes jumbled, the meaning unclear. Jumping into a creative piece with no structure is great for brainstorming and kicking off a story, but if you want to continuously produce work, you will eventually have to learn how to reign yourself in. The conflict or contradiction of creative output is that when you are in the thrall of your ideas, you are motivated to create, but it can be hard to be selective and work on some ideas while leaving others undeveloped. Very often we overestimate what’s required of us in of scope and underestimate what’s required in of structure and craft. Sometimes we writers have a complete work and don’t even know it. When we conceptualize our writing as a complex chain of ideas, we’re more focused on giving each idea time to shine rather than selecting ideas on the basis of how well it serves the whole. Then when we exhaust ourselves before exploring every point we wanted to present we feel as if we have failed; as we flounder, we run out of steam. Once I set out to write a story involving a New York City bathroom attendant who works mojo on the clients who come in to use “her” bathroom. Perhaps the idea was a good concept, but not a good story premise, because the first thing I decided to write about was her past. I planned to write about her powers and describe how she came to New York City. But, in telling the backstory, I exhausted myself. After I had written about her childhood, I shut down. I quit writing because the story was way more work than I had the energy for. I was sad. I thought it was a missed opportunity. I set the story to the side, but the deadline kept nagging me. One day, I realized the part I had written, the “backstory” about the woman’s childhood was a story in and of itself. It was for me, a perfect example of how we writers don’t always know when they’ve said enough. Writers can try to cram everything they have/know into their stories and novels. We make a lot of assumptions about our work. Often, rather than trying to tell the best story possible, we’re trying to prove ourselves. Therefore, we think everything we write must be good enough/deep enough/relevant enough. Ironically, attempting to create a great piece of work can create a barrier between the writer’s intention and the reader’s comprehension. The more ideas/elements/techniques thrown into the work, the muddier the piece gets.

For my story in progress, I decided to cut back on the plot and limit the story to one defining moment in the woman’s young life. Creating this limitation helped me finish the story. I edited it, sent it to the editor, and got it published. I felt satisfied that I had done right by the character and gratified that I completed the work. Creating a limitation of structure, length, or scope can do a lot to help mold the content, direction, tone and completion of a piece. For me, parameters don’t confine creativity and limitations don’t destroy freedom. By setting tight restrictions, I am freed from the buzz of everything that “should” be said about the theme, and I flourish in the luxurious certainty of where I shall not tread. It seems counterintuitive to claim that limitations free a piece to be, but witnessing limitations at work made a true believer of me.

Be well. Be love(d).

K. Ibura April 5, 2003

AS PART of the series of readings promoting Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, I found myself at the Asian American Writers Workshop. The building was thrumming with literary and community energy. There were origami swans soaring across the ceiling, the names of Asian American writers adorned the walls, the names of sponsors were affixed to folding chairs, and a poster onishing students to let go as writers and to treat each other well during critiques was hanging on the blackboard. It was nourishing to be surrounded by so much positive energy. I was inspired by how successfully the center was encouraging self-expression. The event started with an open mic. As it was women’s night, any male poet who got on the mic had to read a poem by a woman first. One young man held a yellow photocopied chapbook in his hand. He said he’d be reading a poem titled: “Three Asian Boys” by Ishle Yi Park. I had seen Ishle perform at a weekly open mic at Bar 13 sometime back, but I didn’t know much about her. As I listened to the young man reading the poem, I found myself enjoying the turns of phrase, smiling at the references and taking the emotional leap to sit for a few moments with the poet’s soul. I thought the last line was especially powerful and felt immediately moved to spend more time with Ishle’s words. I asked if they were selling Ishle’s chapbook there at the Asian American Writers Workshop. They were. I bought one and took it home. Cracking it open, I found myself intimately placed in a Korean woman’s life confronting lily-white college classmates, her lover, racism, fear, travel, and a family history of abuse. I was fascinated by the simple turn of events that brought her thoughts and feelings to me. I was cognizant that it was her will to produce a chapbook that transported her poetry to my fingers. No one decided her work was worth it. No one put their stamp of approval on her. Perhaps someone had encouraged her to collect her poems in printed form, perhaps it was her own idea. Regardless, through her own actions, she shared her art and her self with strangers, simply because she believed her work was worth it. When I was studying publishing in 1995, mainstream publishing’s official term for self-publishing was “vanity publishing.” The rationale was, you were being vain or stroking your ego if you published your own work. I accepted that explanation at the time without much critique, but now, years later, I realize the publishing industry is not a trustworthy source for characterizing self-publishing. There are so many assumptions and assertions made with the term “vanity

publishing.” By labeling it “vanity,” the mainstream publishing industry asserts that they have the right, the proper objectivity and taste to decide what material should be published and the writer doesn’t. The word “vanity” asserts that a financial investment in one’s own work is egocentric, while a publisher’s investment in a writer’s work is validation. The term “vanity publishing” invalidates the writer’s judgment. Having seen editorial reports at mainstream publishers where readers and editors have trashed books stating “the plot is weak, the writing lazy, characterization stereotypical, but we should publish it because it’s going to sell,” I know mainstream publishing is not the bastion of quality and taste. When those same books end up on the New York Times Bestseller List, it is clear that blanket claims of merit and quality by mainstream publishing are laughable. While I’m certain some self-published authors are motivated by vanity, it’s irrational to negate work simply because the author published it themselves. It’s also wrongheaded to laud work simply because it was published by a mainstream publisher. The game is much more convoluted than that. In a way, putting out a chapbook is a brave move. In printing their own work, writers assert that their work is valuable and worth reading; that their words should be put in permanent format. While I don’t doubt that the self-stroking ego-centric motivation behind some self-publishing ventures, I have begun to find poignant, powerful reasons for making chapbooks. One writer friend wants to capture her words to share with her family and keep a record of her creative efforts. Another writer friend is exhausted by the submissions process and is eager to see her words in print. As for myself, I have so much work that is simply sitting on my hard drive, not doing anyone any good. I’m wondering if it might be better to let the stories out to breathe and move around in the world, than to keep them locked up until a buyer comes bidding. So many of the conversations about self-publishing are focused on financial advantages and possibilities, but I’m not looking at chapbooks from a business perspective. Divorced from the financial realities, chapbooks are a vehicle for writers to speak directly to audiences, as well as an act of self-validation for creative efforts. I also came to understand that creating a chapbook can contribute to a writer’s own self-development. I once was asked to read at an event where the organizer encouraged presenters to have a product to sell. Even though commerce and selfpromotion went against my instincts, I took the plunge. I had a designer create a tiny little chapbook of one of my stories. I printed the pages at Kinkos, folding

and collating each book by hand. I sold a few chapbooks at the event and carried the remaining books at other readings I had in the following weeks. All my appearances were planned to publicize anthologies I had contributed to, so I felt like I was breaking some rules of propriety by pumping my own product at a group event. At the same time, it was gratifying to see my chapbook go from my hand to a reader’s palm. I was present at the moment my words were going out walking in the world. My words had travelled the world before, but when I publish a short story in a book or post an essay to the web, I’m not present when the readers engage with the work. Publishing through mainstream channels can feel removed from my daily life. After I turn in the story or essay, everything happens without my participation. But now that I was selling my work hand to hand, the material was becoming a tactile part of my life. I could feel the sensation of my work entering the lives of readers. The distinction of knowing what it feels like to participate in the distribution of my work was a revelation to me. There had been a time when I thought chapbooks were a symbol of self-centeredness or failure. I had been suckered into believing self-publishing was vanity publishing, but now I understand selfpublishing can be an expansive experience creating a new dimension of my identity as a writer. Now I see chapbooks as a dynamic opportunity to share your ideas and creativity freely. They offer writers the ultimate liberty of being able to speak directly to readers. But it’s about more than freedom. At a recent master workshop as part of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, a woman asked Cassandra Wilson how to confront the lack of musicality in today’s music. Cassandra Wilson said (among other things): Feed yourself. For most writers, feeding ourselves means seeing our words in print. For others it means sharing our work with loved ones. And for almost all of us, it means giving others the opportunity to experience our creativity and share their gratification and appreciation with us. Making a chapbook is a self-centered act, but that does not mean it is motivated by ego or vanity. It is an act of honoring the artist self. It can be the last stage in the creative process—making real, making material the workings of our creative spirits and hearts.

Be well. Be love(d).

K. Ibura May 6, 2003

MY MOTHER has worked her way through her PhD program while struggling with a learning curve the average PhD student has already mastered. As a graduate student she’s had to learn not only the canon of her field (curriculum theory), she’s had to learn critical academic thinking. She’s required to work with established ideas about the field, and apply those ideas to her experiences, as well as theorize her own ideas. She writes: “When I enrolled as a graduate student at LSU, I had great difficulty reading as well as speaking about our assigned readings from what seemed like a small library of books and journal essays pertaining to curriculum theory. Every curriculum theory professor expected each student in their courses to write a 30page, journal-ready essay. Hard as I tried, I did not what I read, had little to say in class, and my final papers were less than 20 pages long. Despite my continued efforts, semester after semester went by with what seemed like little improvement. I began to feel like something was wrong with me and worried if I could continue in graduate school.” I cannot imagine how my mother made it through. Knowing how to read, discuss, and write academic responses is like knowing how to speak a foreign language. Once learned, it becomes intrinsic, but before you can speak it, you spend a lot of time frustrated, bewildered, stumped. Most PhD students learn these skills gradually throughout their undergraduate careers. My mother completed her undergraduate degree through continuing education way past the time when college-level academic habits are usually formed. As such her graduate school experience was filled with stress. Her professors fell in love with her honesty, charisma, intelligence, and difference (she is unapologetically black-woman centered). They believed in the fresh perspective she brought to the field. They also honored her PhD-level expertise in the real world. As the founder of a groundbreaking independent school, she had lived the theory she was learning about in grad school. Consequently, they overlooked woefully short or unacademically written papers to usher her forward and encourage her growth. Perhaps they were taking a gamble that in the end, her writing skills would catch up with her ion and 30 years of experience in education. After the torturous journey of combating intimidation, struggling to speak the language of academia, fighting to find a voice in a foreign environment, and completing the rigors of PhD coursework while being isolated from friends and family, my mother was faced with one last hurdle: a dissertation. Her dissertation

was required to be 150 pages or more, contain a minimum of five chapters, reference a substantial amount of literature, and be a contribution to the field. No matter how much love my mother’s professors had for her, the dissertation committee would not be able to accept anything less than a dissertation. She would have to cross the T’s, dot the I’s and comply with every requirement. These professors were now responsible for approving my mother to become their peer. The university—the institution that would rubber stamp the committee’s approval—sent a representative to sit on the committee to ensure that the decisions were impartial, that the PhD degree was merited by academic achievement, that my mother’s success was earned. I, along with many of my mother’s friends and colleagues, spent hours on the phone with her discussing her ideas, wading through possible topics, trying to organize theories into one conceptual whole. There were many breakthroughs, and aha moments, but somehow, no dissertation was forthcoming. Everyone was wondering: When, when, when is this going to be done? There was frustration, anguish, uncertainty. And through it all, we were cheerleaders promising my mother it would be well, she would succeed, it would be done. A year ed and the deadline was closing in. The fast-track deadline had whizzed by. One afternoon my sister and I were on a conference call with my mother and my sister asked a really basic question. Something to the effect of, Have you mapped out your dissertation? Do you know how the chapters are put together? And I huffed impatiently. I was certain this was the wrong approach, of course she knew how the dissertation fit together, hadn’t we been talking about the chapters for months? I was shocked by what my mother’s answer revealed. She said she didn’t know how the pieces fit together. In fact, she didn’t know how to pull her ideas together, she had no idea how to tackle so big an endeavor. All this time we had been wrestling with concepts and themes, and the problem was fundamental. She did not know how to write a dissertation. She did not know how to create a large thematic project and break it down into workable chunks. She did not know what she needed to know to succeed. We were suddenly clear that we needed a different approach. We needed to help her with structure, construction, direction. We had to identify themes, figure out how they fit together, and come up with a formula for the completion of a dissertation.

As a writer, it is easy to take writing for granted. It’s sort of like dancing. For those who know how to do it, it seems so easy, natural, seamless, intuitive. But for those who don’t, it’s a struggle to come up with “moves,” keep the rhythm, and go with the flow. I realized I could talk theory with my mother till the cows came home, but that wasn’t going to get her a PhD. My job was to talk writing. As a writer, my mother had a tendency to hit it and quit it. She’d fit what she had to say in 10 pages and be done with the chapter. Then when her professors wanted more page length, she’d look for more to say. We developed a mantra: no more creating. Every time she started talking about new ideas, I’d ask her ”Are you creating?” She’d say, ”Oh yeah, oh yeah. Thanks for stopping me.” Instead of trying to create new directions and answers to the professors’ concerns, we focused on deepening and expanding what she already had. We discussed how to expand on an idea. We discussed drawing paragraphs out of two or three isolated sentences by building on a theme. Working with her forced me to examine how I build a sentence, paragraph, chapter, or thought. I had to figure out how to translate what had become instinctual into clear, easy-to-follow steps. Working on the dissertation was tough. The toughness of the job was not limited to the actual writing of the dissertation. The toughness of the job was rooted in my mother’s default belief that she wasn’t going to make it. That she couldn’t write. That her ideas would never be clear. In order to work with my mother and her words, I had to find ways to dismantle the self-defeating thoughts that kept her paralyzed. Months later, my mother’s adviser was impressed with my mother’s theorizing and excited about the dissertation. Finally it was time to turn in the entire dissertation to her committee. We thought we had the problem licked. My mother insisted that she wasn’t ready. Both her adviser and I were ive. We were sure she was just being dramatic and self-deprecating. Then I got the phone call. It was my mother saying, “I won’t be defending. My adviser says the dissertation isn’t ready.” When assessing the material my mother had given her as individual chapters, the adviser insisted that the dissertation content and theorizing was fine. But when the adviser saw all the material together, she saw what was lacking. My mother did not have a dissertation. She had a loosely connected mass of papers that did not meet the length and structural requirements of a dissertation. A new defense date was scheduled. A new plan of attack was formulated and my

mother set about trying to write a dissertation once more. Her phone calls to me became more frequent and more desperate. She was less and less confident in what she was doing. She was lost in the various versions of her work and bewildered by contradicting advice coming from friends, colleagues, and advisers. When I and others pressed her, asking, what do you want to do? She said she didn’t know. Finally I understood what my mother had been trying to communicate all along. She needed help—real help. Not a phone call, not cheerleading, but some real partnership and direction. “Do you want me to come out there?” I finally asked her. She gratefully said, “Yes.” Half of my job was convincing her that she was going to succeed. The year she spent working on her dissertation only to be told that the document she produced was insufficient had seriously withered her self-esteem and certainty. I employed whatever I could—sweet words, tough love, encouragement, and praise—to keep her going. We got clarity from her adviser and put together a schedule for completion. We spent days holed up in her tiny campus apartment working out sentences, mining old papers for relevant material, and making connections. I was not only called on to be a writing coach, but to be a cheerleader and a motivational speaker as well. Possibly my most significant task was keeping her writing. I could not let down my negativity radar for a second. Whenever she stopped to think about the endeavor, she easily slipped into tiredness, doubt, exhaustion, and defeatist thinking. Central to our conversations was my insistence that she was doing a great job. I drew on my experiences as a “failed” novelist to convince her that the process she was going through was normal. I drew parallels between learning to write a novel and learning to write a dissertation. I knew the difficulties intimately and was able to commiserate and inspire. Up until the end, my mother’s exhaustion and frustration made her vulnerable. Yet, little by little, her attitude began to turn around. When she turned in her first few chapters, one of her committee said, “Looks like she has a dissertation here.” Each positive comment bolstered her confidence. With praise, she began to recover ownership over her project. She mumbled “I don’t know” less often. She rediscovered what she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it. The praise encouraged the theorist in her to stand up and take the driver’s seat. When she pushed my ideas to the side in favor of her own, I felt proud and excited. As her backbone emerged, so did her voice. It was a beautiful thing.

As you are pushing to produce work praise, faith, and are irreplaceable. Writing a dissertation is a massive undertaking. Writing a dissertation while certain you are destined to fail is damn near impossible. It takes confidence, creativity, and conviction to push through the doubt. As writers, if we employ anything less than the full arsenal of our defense tactics, we won’t be able to complete novels, publish essays, and craft fiction. When hacking through the morass of writer’s block, writer confusion, and writer failure, the “truth” is irrelevant. You may or may not be a “good” writer. Regardless of your talent, you have a unique voice. Your job is to figure out what tools you can employ to keep yourself going. It is essential to give yourself whatever you need to move forward. It is not only essential, it is what matters most.

Be well. Be love(d).

K. Ibura July 17, 2003

ONE OF the things I have never wanted to embrace was the sheer amount of work writing takes. Novel writing in particular is a long game—and it can be harrowing, depending on your level of practice and your outlook on the process. What doesn’t help the process is the self-judgment, the denial, the rejection of reality. In Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art author Stephen Nachmanovitch discusses—in depth—the creative process, while dissecting the profound blockages that fuel the vicious cycles of inaction that keep artists circling their artistic expression without delving deeply into the work. According to Nachmanovitch, the biggest culprit of blocked creativity is self-judgment—an act that imprisons artists in procrastination and perfectionism. Knowing that procrastination is often the result of self-judgment, I am constantly seeking tactics and approaches to entice myself to create new work. Selfmanagement is the artist’s domain. We are often firing on so many cylinders that we make it impossible to produce work just for the sake of the work itself. We have demands from the work. We want it to serve a million purposes that may or may not be relevant to the act of creation. My ego wants to create deep, meaningful work. My artist self just wants to create. My ego wants to write something that will change minds and shift consciousness. My artist self just wants to take something from my imagination and manifest it in a material form to share with others. My ego wants to win, to be great, to be among the masters. My artist self just wants to grow and experiment, to revel in my own creativity and enjoy the ride. Surrender means silencing the nagging voices. Silencing the voices that say: You should be “this” type of artist. You should reach “these” heights. Your art is not here to serve your fantasies. Surrender means removing your art from the pimp block and refusing to use it as a means for building your self-esteem, shoring up your ego, or gaining social acceptance. Not that your art can’t do all of those things…it can. But not because you force it to—not because you need it to. Surrender also works in the opposite direction—if you create something you deem “unworthy” of your greatness, surrender allows you to get past the shame and move past the cringing, rather than berate yourself for not being a “better” artist. Free Play gets to the heart of it by distinguishing between constructive judgment and obstructive judgment. In the book, Nachmanovitch explains that constructive judgment “facilitates…action” on “a kind of parallel track of

consciousness” and destructive judgment runs “perpendicular to the line of action, interposing itself before creation (writer’s block) or after creation (rejection and indifference). The trick for the creative person is to be able to tell the difference between the two…” We must learn to decipher between, for example, demanding excellence of yourself and demanding that you become something you’re not. While we sit around fascinated with measuring up, we are avoiding making art. At the end of the day, all the ways that we judge ourselves and consider our work “less than” we want it to be all boils down to fear. In Free Play, Nachmanovitch states that the Five Fears that Buddhists believe stand between ourselves and our freedom are “fear of loss of life; fear of loss of livelihood; fear of loss of reputation; fear of unusual states of mind; and fear of speaking before an assembly.” He goes on to say, “Fear of speaking before an assembly sounds a little silly next to the others, but for the purposes of [this book] it is the central one; let us extend it as “fear of speaking up,” “stage fright,” “writer’s block,” and our other old friends. The fear of speaking before an assembly is profoundly related to fear of foolishness, which has two parts: fear of being thought a fool (loss of reputation) and fear of actually being a fool (fear of unusual states of mind).” Humans are so talented that they can be enormously productive, while being not at all productive. I spent many years working on a novel that had a “wow” concept, but never quite got off the ground. I avoided writing stories that I judged too “common” or too “boring” or too “expected.” I decided that if my work wasn’t “brilliant,” I didn’t want to release it at all. All of this can be translated as the fear of being found out as a fraud or an imposter (also known as the “not good enough” syndrome.) Having identified these fears as blocks to creativity and productivity puts me in a different mindset about how I define myself as an artist. Any part of me that wants to put out the most mind-blowing product at the peril of all creative output is an enemy to my artist self. My need to write is stronger than my need to be brilliant. I fear never producing enough work to reach my full potential more than I fear losing my reputation. This realization causes me to disconnect the judgment, or at least set it to the side and prevent it from running the show. I send drafts of my work out while it’s still rough. I focus on the execution of the work rather than attempting to assess its merits. My job—I’ve decided—is to make the art and get out of the way. I could keep working on micromanaging my output, and working to decide whether it’s “good,” “profound,” or “right,” but

I’ve decided my art is more about expression than about building a reputation. This gift is best served when I dance with it than if I try to meld it to my own purposes. At the end of the day, the life I want to lead consists of me making work. What good is a reputation if it stops me from living the life I want to lead?

Be well. Be love(d).

K. Ibura August 15, 2005

EVERY ONCE in a while a friend confides that she is sure she’s been kicked off my writing blog. “It’s been a long time since I received a new post, maybe you don’t want me on your list anymore,” friends will speculate. I assure them, that no one’s been kicked off my blog. “It’s not you,” I tell them, “it’s me.” And it is me. It’s me who hasn’t been able to convince herself to complete a blog post in the past year. And it’s also me who refuses to write a “Dear John” letter and call the whole thing off. If this were a romantic relationship, I would be the weakest link. The hot-and-cold lover who won’t call it quits, but won’t show up for dates, either. A therapist would have a field day with this conversation. As the divine order of the universe would have it, this ime with my blog is actually the perfect illustration of my current relationship with writing. When I try to describe this bizarre juncture in my career, I slip into double talk; I make a statement, then double back to contradict it. The point is: I’m a writer. I’m a writer like I’m a woman. I could stop wearing skirts, but that doesn’t change my anatomy. I have stopped writing blog posts (and all other work), but that doesn’t change my identity. When I don’t write, I feel it. Ideas back up in my mind, and I mope, mourning the loss of working in a special milieu—of being a writer writing about writing. The truth is I’m going through a transformation. Gone are the days when a story idea was its own burning bullet compelling me to create. Over the years, my talents as a writer have grown, my emotional need to write has shrunk. It’s like that nose dive in sex that some of my married friends complain about. Just when you can get it all the time, other things intrude on your interest in it. There are just too many things to be done. Introduce children, mortgage payments, and building nest eggs to the conversation and sex just shrinks and cowers in the corner. “Oh, just get to me when you can,” she whispers, all forlorn and neglected. So maybe I mistakenly married writing while I was being so prolific a few years back and now I just don’t feel like “doing it” anymore. Try as hard as I might, I can’t explain why I’ve lost my drive to write. So the question is, what to do? It is a question every artist must ask. When all the elements of my life are clamoring for my attention—the children and the bills and the sustenance desperately, fervently, tragically need my attention—how do I continue to create art?

I can’t lie. Before I had my daughter, the imioned drive to write had already started crumbling. Before she transformed my life, I had already distanced myself from inspiration, relying instead on external triggers to lure myself into starting a new story. Back then, my trigger was an invitation; I swore to write a new story or essay anytime someone asked me to. At the beginning of the vow, the invitations flew fast and furious. But the less I wrote, the less I was invited to write. The invitations slowed to a mere trickle until there I stood in a desert of production—no external triggers and no internal desires. The divine joke was that when I had the chops to write a coherent piece of fiction relatively easily, I faced a more basic challenge: I could no longer coax myself to simply sit down and write. While trying to figure out how to return to my writer self, I came across an essay by Charles Derry entitled “A Year Like Any Other” in the September 2005 issue of The Sun magazine. In the essay, Derry does an incredible job detailing and sharing his journey through cancer. As Derry moves into a section about learning to see his cancer as a gift, he talks about his cousin Adriana, “the only cancer survivor in [his] family of victims. Diagnosed with a late-stage, inoperable lung tumor, Adriana had been given only a 2 percent chance of living five years. That was more than 15 years ago. What was her secret?” Adriana describes her secret as this: “If you want to live, you need to do everything you can to remain positive. I took…what do you call it? Oh, right, astragalus and shark cartilage. I think that added 3 or 4 percent to my chances. I took it for five years; I went broke taking it, but that was okay.... And I ate. I ate no matter what. I figure maybe that gave me another 5 or 6 percent more. I ate because my son came back to force me to eat. Sometimes he put the spoon in my mouth. Even when my radiation and chemotherapy made me crawl on my stomach to the toilet and I was vomiting blood, I forced myself to keep eating because I wanted to live. And sometimes, Chuckie, gee, I collapsed on that tile floor, I was so weak. But I continued to go to work. I figure that helped. And I spent time outside. And so, yeah, I tried to find my hope where I could. And prayer, too. And oh, Chuckie, I thought about your mother sometimes while I was sick, and especially about my dad, who just wasted away—and I think Aunt Frannie just wasted away like that, too, and I thought, ‘No, I’m not going to die like that. I’m not going to.’ So that’s what I’d say to you: I’d say you got to make your own decision on what you got to do, and increase your percentages where you can, and hope for the best.”

Adriana’s advice is brilliant. It is, in truth, the only way we achieve anything in life: by percentages. What no one tells you as a writer is that you won’t always be the writer you are now. Your circumstances, your habits, your desires, and your output will change. For some of us, the difference will be slight, for others —like me—it will be drastic. The only way to survive a desert of production is by percentages. The only way to produce while beset upon by everyday responsibilities is by percentages, by making small commitments and moving forward by degrees. My own way of clinging to percentages usually involves someone else until I can put myself back on track. It could be a PhD candidate I have goal-setting meetings with, a novelist I meet with for writing sessions. When you are in the hinterlands, far, far away from the ease of writing, you need something else to move you forward. Gone are the days when writing defined me. Now I have to define writing. I have to pick up a really large and sharp knife and cut out a space for writing. Then I have to show up and play the numbers game. I survive by putting in the percentages, doing my small, scattered part to bring my writer self back from the edge of existence and putting her front and center, where she belongs.

Be well. Be love(d).

K. Ibura March 13, 2007

A YEAR is just a concept—just like a month, a week, an hour, a minute, and a second. These are all concepts that some human being created to manage this great stretch of awareness that is the human experience. These carefully calibrated concepts are sometimes the only things that help people to continue living. “This day will be over soon,” they may soothe themselves by saying. “This year is a struggle, next year will be better,” they may say consolingly in tough moments. Metaphysical deconstructions of time notwithstanding, I like to use the new year to set a mantra that s me in adjusting expectations and making my commitments to myself more doable. One of my favorite mantras is “achieve with ease.” This mantra came after two tough years of tussling with the contradiction of being a writer who wasn’t writing. I spent those two years vacillating between constructing elaborate plans that would force me to write, and bemoaning the fact that I was not writing. After repeated failure, I tried giving the dream back to God. I just didn’t feel the same pull to produce. I put on a brave face and said, “God, I’m no longer a writer.” I swore to God that if I never wrote again, I would be fine. “Give me another ion,” I went on to request. “It doesn’t have to be a grand sparkling dream; it doesn’t have to make me look brilliant or feel fabulous. I just want to be happy. I want a good life, and maybe a patio like the one we had in Oaxaca.” I followed my private conversation with God by making public proclamations about the end of my life as a writer. I told anyone who would listen that my dream had exhausted itself and my inability to write was beyond my control. I tried to explain that this dream that had fueled me since college, that had gifted me with absolute certainty that one day I’d be a full-time writer, had given me the confidence to drift through life with a (relatively) unruffled brow, to accept the times that I wasn’t writing as just momentary lapses because my true writing future was out there waiting, beckoning even, for me to come closer. I told them how different I felt of late. How, in my quiet moments, there was no beckoning. There was just me, making complicated plans about how to continue being the writer I knew myself to be. There was just me, the person who was the writer, trying to push the person-who-was-no-longer-a-writer into being a writer again. It made for very awkward moments when I had to introduce myself. No one within earshot would accept me omitting my writer identity from my

introduction, but then when it had been introduced, people wanted to talk about it—the writing that did not exist—and wanted to know what I was currently writing—nothing—and generally wanted to meet her—the writer who no longer existed. During this dark period, I went to a dinner party and met a woman who was in an anthology with me. When I introduced myself—first name only—she said, “Are you K. Ibura?” And I said, “I am.” “You’re a real person?” she asked. And it was as if I were talking to myself. Are you a real person? The writer you once knew has evaporated, does that mean you no longer exist? Does that mean the work you have done no longer speaks to people? Does that mean that the work you have already written is suddenly mute and has nothing to say? Ironically, I got my answer to that question months before this dinner. After years of shockingly low productivity, I received an invitation to participate in an artist talk at the Brooklyn Museum. I was absolutely shocked to have been invited. Because I was estranged from my writer self, I expected that my identity as a writer had halted for the rest of the world as well. The event organizer explained that she had requested my participation because the characters from one of my stories live with her almost daily. As she described her connection with these characters an important distinction became crystal clear to me. The work that moves us lives in the moment we engage with it and in all the moments we it. Art, once made, endures over time. For artists, however, art lives in the actual act of artmaking. There is an inherent contradiction in the fact that the fruit of the labor is what makes an artist in the public eye, while it is the labor itself that makes an artist feel complete. From an emotional perspective, I felt that due to my lack of labor and productivity as a writer, I was no longer worthy of literary notice. How could I consider myself a writer without writing? While talking to the event organizer, I finally and fully understood that if any of the artists responsible for mesmerizing, powerful work stop creating, all the work they produced in the past remains. Just because they have stopped creating does not mean that the products of their artistic production disappears. In truth, there are many ways the term ‘artist’—or writer, in this case—can be defined. A writer is a person who wrote the text the reader reads. That writer is timeless. A writer is a person who commits her or his time to writing. That writer exists only in the present moment, and must recommit daily to writing. A writer is also a

character, an image, an idea, or a prototype that lives in each individual consciousness. More than my lack of productivity as a writer, my idea of what a writer is was killing me. The imaginary artist in my head was illustrious, and effortlessly productive. When I no longer matched that image, I became deeply dissatisfied with myself. I did not understand that my concept of what a writer is was flawed, I was too busy thinking that I myself was flawed. When I finally began to recognize how detrimental this image I held in my mind was, I began to bear witness to all the tiny ways I was murdering my impulse to write. In my last few years of active writing, I was no longer writing from a place of creative instinct and imagination. I had begun to clutch on to my writing production as a port into a beguiling future. I was writing my way into a literary Shangri-la that would save me from the monotony and drudgery of regular life. Every published piece brought me closer to my imagined tomorrow, a tomorrow in which every word I uttered would be a beacon of brilliance ushering dispirited masses into transformation, rapture, and enlightenment. This idea of writing, this ironclad certainty that everything I wrote would become a brick on my road to literary success was not fueled by the hard work of creating and editing and engaging with ideas. It was fueled by my very real need to believe in a charmed future—a tall, dark, and handsome stranger, if you will—that would exempt me from grappling with the mundane realities of life. In the absence of writing, I became unmoored. Without writing, I no longer knew who I was. I had not only lost my day-to-day identity as a writer, I had also lost my vision of my future self. I now lived stricken with the fear that if I continued to not write, I would fail to live up to my talent and my potential. Furiously churning out quality work was my insurance, my guarantee that I was stepping into a well-deserved, acclaim-rich, literary future. After years of attempting to force myself to keep writing, I needed a new vision. I came to the conclusion that my fantasy for my future was a bit overwrought. I still nurtured the dream of fulfilling my talents as a writer, but I decided I could no longer define myself by that dream. I may or may not become—as I’ve always imagined I would—one of the most important writers of the 21st century. But being a “successful” writer is no longer the only way to fulfill my dream. The real fulfillment of my dream is to be a healthy, balanced, creative, and productive person. My one and only dream is to live a joyful present as I step into a joyful future. If I never write another word in my life, I will not have

failed to live up to my potential. In fact, it is impossible for me to fail to live up to my possibility because who I am and everything I do is my possibility. As a non-writing writer, I can still go to conferences and sit on podiums and talk about my work. As an inactive author, I can present something I wrote five years ago. I don’t have to spend my life executing a five-point plan to become the writer I always knew I was meant to be; I just need to be the person I am. That is how I decided the only way to keep producing work is to forever find ways to achieve writing productivity with ease. The secret to achieving with ease is moving through life with no drag—no woulda-shoulda-couldas clinging to your ankles; no I’m-not-doing-it-rights hanging around your neck; no I’ve-lost-my-mojo dripping from your breath. And certainly no gold-plated futures that make you feel crappy about all you’re not doing in the present. To achieve with ease you must say, I am okay with myself. I am enough, I’ve done enough, and everything I do from this point on will take me to where I need to go. Shifting my mindset created a new credo for all my writer selves (one I share with any of my fellow artists who may be grappling with the same issue). I’m guided by the understanding that all that I have done up until this point is complete in and of itself. It is not a precursor to what is to come. It is not a signal of great promise. It is, in and of itself, an oeuvre and it is enough. Whatever is yet to come is coming at its own pace in its own time. (Exhale!) The circle is complete.

Be well. Be love(d).

K. Ibura February 1, 2008

K. Ibura is a writer, painter, and traveler from New Orleans, Louisiana. Her work —which encomes speculative fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry—is rooted in speculative events, women’s perspectives, and artistic freedom. Her fiction has been published in such anthologies as Dark Matter, Mojo: Conjure Stories and Mothership as well as such publications as Lightspeed and Apex magazine. Her essays have been published in a range of anthologies and publications, including Colonize This, When Race Becomes Real, Utne Reader, and Ms. magazine. She is the author of two collections of short stories, Ancient, Ancient (winner of the James Tiptree Award) and When the World Wounds. Her first novel and first book for young people, When the World Turned Upside Down, is forthcoming in November, 2021. She is ionate about sharing strategies for writing and personal freedom through her workshops, her Patreon posts, and this ebook series. You can keep up with her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and via her website: kiburabooks.com.

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