Hey y’all
I’m thinking about how I can reduce friction in order to create more resonance and consistency for myself—especially in storytelling. In my case, in both writing and drawing. I think templatizing things will help my mind recognize that I just need to find the formula, fidget with it until it works, and then stick to it.
You’ll see a formula very similar to this in the coming newsletters. I did a similar thing with drawing formulas. Looking at pictures and recreating my own story behind them.
With drawing, I’m working on the fundamentals. In many ways I’m at the start still. I think fundamentals, a sound foundation, is possibly the key to any endeavor you wish to pursue. This is why I’m a broken record with my son on getting basketball fundamentals. If you can get a good grasp of the fundamentals, you’ll have the basis for resilience in your singular endeavors and in working with teams.
We’ve been doing drills on his math times tables and will continue to do the timed one or two-minute sprints. He loves them and always tries to one-up himself. These fundamentals, I believe, will take him far.
Drawing fundamentals, then, are the anatomical drawing tutorials and sketch everyday challenges that I’ve been avoiding. It’s also helpful in comics to just draw other people’s settings and place stick figures in for positioning to get practice at rich background work.
Imitate, then innovate.
My eldest and I went on a walk earlier this week where we had tons of ideas about our comic and recorded them on the Voice Notes app. Yesterday we replayed that recording tried our hand at storyboarding together, and got through about three panels before distractions took over (my son took the phone and jumped down a rabbit hole of other voice notes we’d recorded since the pandemic + my neighbor called, and 90 minutes later it was hard to return to the work). So we’ll be working on that bit by bit over the summer.
I’m going to climb on the horse again for the anatomical drawing and daily sketch work to build the muscle, as it were, in order to build my foundation (and my portfolio).
It’s okay to get the ugly stuff out of the way in order to get to the best stuff. And sometimes, the ugly stuff is not as ugly as we think.
That’s how you make yourself a storyteller.
Consistent, sometimes monotonous, oftentimes not our best work, through interruptions and explosions in time and space.
I’m also going to hunker down and join this write everyday challenge. It’s day 8 now, but not too late to start. It’ll be good consistent practice for us if you care to join. And that’s the point of fundamentals.
In striving to get better, I need to give myself the opportunity to have as many reps as possible. This is what will make me the storyteller I want to become/already am.
“If you haven’t got it, you can’t show it. If you have got it, you can’t hide it.” - Zora Neale Hurston
“Wooooooow. Wow. Take this and go see Dr. Sherald.”
Ms. Karwinski, my fourth-grade language arts teacher, sent me to the principal’s office with a note she’d written and my paper in hand.
I left through the door of the classroom, walked the long hall with its painted concrete block walls, and pushed through the double doors leading outside the 3rd - 5th-grade building.
I crossed the gray stone walkway with the awning above that led to the main building, where the principal’s office was sandwiched between halls dividing the lower grades.
I waited patiently to be acknowledged and told Ms. Mazyck, the school secretary, that I was there to see Dr. Sherald.
She eyed me, wondering if she’d have to call my mama—the look in her eye told me it wouldn’t give her pleasure, but she wouldn’t hesitate if she had to. When you went to a predominantly Black school in a sleepy southern community where everyone went to church, attended school, worked, and lived amongst each other, there were no secrets.
Ms. Mazyck pressed a button on the dark grey phone with its circular springy cord and singular red button amongst the grid of blackish grey buttons and said, “This child waiting to see you.”
I didn’t wait long before Ms. Mazyck looked at me and said, “Go on back.”
My fourth-grade self entered the big cavernous office with books lining the shelves of the wall.
I’d only visited her office once before—the previous year. Kevin Maxwell and I had gotten into a fight, and Ms. Ford, my grandmother’s classmate, sent us directly to the office. After a stern talking-to together, we took our licks apart. I waited outside of the office, and I heard what I now remember as either two or three slaps with the wooden paddle against what was presumably Kevin’s bottom. I saw him emerge teary-eyed before he told me, “Your turn.”
I remember being told to grip the seat of the wooden chair and bend over. My fingers gripped the sides of the wooden surface, bracing for the inevitability of what came next. She paddled me on my bottom swiftly and hard. I remember the shock of it, not because I wasn’t used to spankings, but because I’d never gotten a spanking in school, and certainly not with a wooden paddle.
Now, a year later, I knocked on an open office door, full of timidity, even though this time I’d done nothing wrong.
Dr. Sherald welcomed me in, took both the note and the paper, and sat down while reading.
I don’t remember exactly what the assignment was, but the result was me writing an alternative ending to Jack and the Beanstalk.
Her eyes traveled the note, and as she set it down, began traversing my paper. I remember holding my breath.
She actually laughed.
A couple of times.
Then she pulled something out of her desk and pressed down twice on the top of my paper—to the left in the white space before the top line, and to the right towards the margins, there were two blue stamps on my story.
Wow.
I walked back the way I’d come, this time full of happiness I couldn’t describe. Ms. Karwinski showered me with praise on how good my story was, and Dr. Sherald, too, thought it was excellent.
I showed Grandma when I got off the bus, and when my mom came to pick me up from Grandma’s house after work, I showed her too. Grandma had it announced in church on Sunday. After church, grown people told me to keep on “gettin’ my lesson” and doing good. That it would pay off.
It made me so proud to feel that something like that came from my mind, and here were all of these adults approving of it. Approving of me.
That it wasn’t just something I learned or got right on a test but something I did. This was seared into my memory, making me crave future moments like it.
I wish I could say that I never looked back on writing and storytelling after this. But this is not true. So much of my responsible self pushed this girl aside and told her that she didn’t have room or space to invent stories. That was not how real folks earned money and made a living. Even Zora Neale Hurston, the Patron Saint of Black Women Writers (dubbed so by Alice Walker), died in poverty. She who could say it better than anyone, couldn’t sustainably live on it. It said more about everyone else, but also, Mama didn’t raise no fool.
Best do something else.
Reflecting on this made me realize how little of adulthood is engaging in your calling. In adulthood, there is not a whole lot of people encouraging and community enveloping you in love and good wishes.
No one pats you on the back at work because you’re expected not to screw up. And if you are doing something that is your calling (some people would be happy for you, most would ignore it until you’ve done enough to warrant attention, and a select few would swallow their tongues for the opportunity and space that you undeservingly have to follow your pursuit and wish you well in their begrudging envy while telling you how cute of you to harken back to an early desire).
It wouldn’t feel real to be able to do it.
And yet, today’s internet and world are allowing many, many people to do this. To build the lives they want.
So why not you?
Why not me?
One thing is clear: community is the difference.
When you feel genuine support and kinship, when you have no idea where the next great thing will come from or if it will at all, but you are encouraged by being surrounded by a sea of people you are connected to, the sea of belonging. People in community hope that the tide carries you high. People in community are available to give you feedback while building your boat for the eventual ebbs. People in community place blue stamps on your page, and tell you not to hide it. They show up with you every week to shoot in the gym, to work on the fundamentals, and to encourage you to get through til the next time.
What I’m Reading:
I’m working on a project on Zora Neale Hurston, and in researching some of the works about her work, found this article about Zora and Langston, the book written about her friendship and later falling out with Langston Hughes. The book mostly immerses the reader in their friendship before the falling out, it’s aim to focus on the years of love and friendship before the betrayal.
I’m reading Zora and Langston now and going to pair it with You Don’t Know Us Negroes. I shared this article with you all last week on that collection of essays. This book review is also a good article on the intellectual rigor of her essays. It also resonated with me because I love bread crumbs, so I’m excited to read You Don’t Know Us Negroes to fall down the rabbit holes it leads to.
What I’m Watching:
Writer hunter harris curated a Juneteenth playlist for Apple. I’m still going through some of the pictures there. I’ve seen many of these (some are part of the Black experience growing up, having watched them).
You can check out hunter’s newsletter hung up here (this is a Substack referral link).
I also watched Tina Turner’s documentary, Tina on HBO. I was very familiar with her story having watched What’s Love Got to Do With It as a child. I was also super familiar with the “Anna Mae” jokes that continued for decades after at her expense. It must be a weighty thing to tell the truth, to get it out there and over with so that you’re not asked about it again, and then to have it rear it’s ugly head all of the time. How exhausting. I pray she is resting in peace now.
What I’m Writing/Contemplating:
I’m writing about more personal finance and Black generational wealth and generative community-building. What it looks like, and how we strive to build it with what we have, in this moment. I’ll share more as I write more.
Thank you all for reading, and I hope you have a safe and healthy week ahead!
Dekera, this was a lovely read! I love the way you spend time with your children. How cool that you record voice notes of your walks!