As you may have noticed, it appears that I have a lot to say about myself these days. When I started this blog, that wasn’t really my intent. I wanted this to be a safehouse for my fiction and/or poetry until I found someone willing to publish it—or just in case it didn’t get published at all.

In the event that my work did find a professional home, I’d then use this blog to provide updates for book releases or story publication dates… and any unusual or intriguing anecdotes about that process.

Foresight. I do have it, sometimes.

But when I don’t, we get events like the one I’ve begun to write about now, events that often prove rife with potential for prolific, inelegant, honest work. As I begin to mine that work, I wonder if this it would have life in the “market,” which is already pretty oversaturated with pregnancy and single mother hood tales.

This leads me to poll below.

If you haven’t already, read the posts that have inspired it here, here, and here, then come back and weigh in. If you’ve already been reading, just weigh in. I’d really appreciate any and all of your feedback.

i feel like there should be more to say than this, after having been out of school for 2.5 months now. but i really don’t have much to show for summer, save two novels read, a ton of relaxation, a renaissance of enthusiasm about the NE corridor, a twitter addiction, a break-up, and the completion of a chapbook manuscript.

yeah. that last thing comes as a total surprise to me, too. i thought poetry and i had parted ways for the very last time, circa 2003. then, this april, during the web’s 30/30 poetry month challenge, i started fooling around with free verse.

then i actually wrote a poem with a bit of promise. and things got a bit more serious.

i challenged myself to write 30 poems and bind them into a small, self-published collection called T h i r t y.

i turn 30 later this year.

i’m kind of looking forward to it, though if my 16-year-old self could see me now, she’d be more than a little disappointed. “this is as far as i got?” she’d say, stealing up and down glances when she thinks i’m not looking, attempting not to be rude when she can’t help but be.

yeah, that’s right, brooding adolescent version of stacia. this is where we are. no home. no car. no fam of my own. a seasonal gig w/o medical. one short story publication. a few magazine clippings. a master’s degree from a storied, artsy new york institution. good friends. a random affinity for wine. first trip abroad. and, finally, as of this year, a driver’s license. reading glasses. a seriously twisted history with a guy that’ll provide years and years of source material. and now, poems.

it’s actually a pretty decent place to be. i think we should be proud of ourselves.

but still. our 30s have got to be a lot awesomer than this, right?

i’m really looking forward to them.

When I was three, I had an imaginary friend named Silas. He was tall. I can’t remember his ethnicity. He didn’t talk much. He wasn’t the kind of imaginary friend you pinned your indiscretions on. He was just your run-of-the-mill road dog, the very necessary playmate of an only child in a house full of women.

My mother still chuckles recalling how I’d walk away from her in a huff, lifting my tiny hand to reach up and grasp his, saying, “Come on, Silas….”

I miss him.

During my eighth grade school year, I fancied myself a militant. This was my third year as a student at Deer Park Middle School, which I (perhaps inaccurately) remember as about 40% Jewish, 50% Black, and 10% White and “Other” (shout-out to Jason Chang!).

These were my first years dealing with significant racial difference. Until sixth grade, my schools were predominantly Black (all three of them). In retrospect, I took racial acceptance as a matter of fact. Before Deer Park, I didn’t know anything about people scooting away from me on a picnic style lunch bench so as not to be mistaken for sitting with the Black kid(s) or watching girls practically draw straws to see which unlucky one of them would have to share a double bed with the Black chick on the overnight student council conference field trip.

These days, I know I was fortunate. Deer Park was evenly mixed. I could’ve been like my friend, Tab, who grew up in upstate New York and was one of about 10-15 kids classified as Other throughout her entire pre-college tenure.

But at the time, I could recognize no such good fortune.

I commandeered the backs of school buses, in my quiet way, spouting off conspiracy theories about how The Man “didn’t like to see Black folks succeed” and ticking off the names of Black inventors, all, “Know your history, fam.”

Then, Spike Lee’s X opened in November of that year and our school rented a local theatre to screen it for the entire 8th grade class. My friend Earl’s mom chaperoned and at the end, when many of the girls were weeping and sniffling as Denzel dropped in a blaze of glory, she handed out tissue to us all. I wasn’t crying, though. I was scowling.

Was I angry at the white kids who’d squirmed uncomfortably, as the Black kids applauded when Malcolm told the enthusiastic blonde there was nothing she could do to further his cause? Nah. I hadn’t even joined in the applause. I think I was angry I’d just watched a reenactment of a man’s assassination at the hands of his own people. I was angry he’d shut Betty down with a, “Don’t raise your voice in my house!” I was angry at how little I knew, how little we all knew, about our very complicated past. There were no easy fixes, and I was beginning to suspect that anger, in the long-run, would be pretty ineffective. And that made me angry, too.

When my run at Deer Park ended, so did my armchair activism. The following year, I landed at Milford Mill Academy, a 90% Black high school if ever I saw one. All was right with the world again. My college was about 60% Black and it was in DC. After that? Four years in predominantly Black Baltimore and two tripping through the deliciously eclectic boroughs of New York***.

It wasn’t until I moved to Grand Rapids in the August of 2007 that I had to contend with that angry, defensive, silently militant part of myself again. I’d forgotten how tiresome she was and how exasperating it is to be perpetually reminded of your race, through the callow stares of gaping-mouthed five-year-olds unaccustomed to the sight of Blacks outside of Fresh Prince on Nick at Nite.

Before I moved here, I didn’t have to think about the pervasiveness of White flight in 2009. (Moving to the deliberately homogeneous suburb of Rockford because you *want* your kid to be so ignorant of difference that she can’t hide her shock when I announce myself as her professor on her first day as a college freshman? Not. Cool.)

I don’t like being side-eyed. I don’t like small children ducking behind their mothers’ skirts when my six-foot-seven uncle walks by. I don’t like when their parents shush them when they say things like, “He’s so BLACK!” (as though they can’t imagine where the kid learned to use intensifiers when discussing race). I don’t like feeling defensive or wondering if I should attribute seemingly run-of-the-mill rudeness to racism. (Fortunately, though, I’m slightly better equipped to handle these things now, than I was as an eighth-grader.)

Hyper-vigilance is so wearying. I’m growing sicker of myself and race and offense with every sentence I type—but as long as I live in a city where Blackness makes me not only a minority, but noticeably unwelcome, these kinds of musings will make their way to print.

Be glad I’m not thirteen anymore, or else I’d be subjecting you to a comprehensive biographical sketch on Jan Ernst Matzeliger.

*** I should note that my years at SLC were actually the precursor to Militant Stacia’s reemergence. Bronxvillean white folks are a real trip….

I don’t drive.

This admission used to cause me a great deal of chagrin, especially during my early 20s, when everyone was zipping up and down freeways in their toy cars, visiting high school and college buddies at their varied new locations and seeing parts of the country to which I might never be privy. “Driving is freedom,” no fewer than fifteen folks have assured me during the course of my life, and I’m inclined to believe them.

Nonetheless, I am not in possession of a driver’s license. I’ve had five learner’s permits, but no license, and frankly, I’m not certain that this reality will change soon. I’ve come to terms with my life as a passenger-pedestrian. It is not without its advantages. Of course, it’s not without its massive setbacks, either.

Aside from the obvious inconveniences (like the zigzagging, counterproductive slalom of bus routes or having to wake up two hours earlier to make an appointment than would be necessary with a car), there are subtler and more embarrassing non-driver side effects (though admittedly, my case is probably more severe than most).

For starters, I rarely know where I am, at any given moment. One of the joys of being the perpetual passenger is that you don’t have to pay attention to things like street names and traffic patterns. You can observe the clandestine transactions belying complicated street corner handshakes. And you can stare sadly at the toddler riding his Big Wheel down the sidewalk at 1 am. You can marvel at the gopher-sized rat tipping through an alley. And you’re the one who sees the girls jump off the bus, throw down their backpacks, and yank each other’s weave away from their scalps.

For the storyteller, riding is a cinematic experience. When I’m in a car or bus or train, I’m more concerned with landmarks–the Popeyes with the half-lit marquee, advertising “imp dinners,” for instance–than with cross-streets. I can tell you about the Latino little person cursing out his five-foot-five Black girlfriend, but I can’t tell you whether I saw that on Fulton or Freemont.

In Baltimore, I know that there’s a Billie Holiday statue in the courtyards of some subsidized housing. I can’t tell you the name of the housing or the name of the street on which it sits. But I can tell you that, at the height of Baltimore’s “Believe” campaign, someone stuck a “BELIEVE” bumper sticker on Billie’s waist, like a belt-buckle.

All my memories are this way. The incidents hover above their locations and I’m at a loss as to how I should realistically ground them.

In my writing, there’s little solution for the displaced incident. If I wanted to set a story in Baltimore, where I grew up, I’d feel tremendous pressure to authenticate the experiences, to couch them within a very real, very well-described location. I would be preoccupied with an accuracy that wouldn’t be organic. I’d have to catch a bus or a ride to the site of my narrative to get the streets right, to get the store locations square, to describe the rowhome faces in a way that proves to the reader that they’re the exact and actual homes situated at Auchenteroly Terrace.

Were I that devoted to accuracy, I’d write more nonfiction. I’d also pay more attention to where I am, even if it meant missing the imagery. And, maybe, I’d make a bigger deal of learning to drive.

Instead, I write stories that occur in fictional or unnamed cities, where I can be the authority of place and, hopefully, the reader will find me a reliable navigator.

This wouldn’t be a problem if the worlds were vivid, fleshed out, and believable–or if I were a fantasy/sci-fi writer. But often, my story locations are as vague as the ones in my real-life memories. And, because good writing is a sublime fusion of plot, character, setting and countless other elements, there’s a delicate balance to be achieved and too much focus on convincing an audience of place will distract the reader from the larger story.

I still favor the unnamed location. I trust the settings I sculpt so much more than my cloudy perceptions of real places.

Maybe I just need a very, very good book on setting, with writing prompts and technique suggestions. If you know of any, comment below.

I try not to use this blog for “craft complaints,” but today I can’t help it.

First-person narrative is kicking my butt.

I hate it. I have hated it since undergrad when I wrote that bad novella and forced it upon three profs at Trinity, all of whom told me that each of my four first-person voices was too similar.

“You need to vary the voices.”

“They can’t all talk like that.”

“Men don’t say the same things women say.”

Sigh.

Until recently, I’d been writing in third person since I was 21. I can’t deal with I’s. I’s are what make people call your story’s narrator “you” when they critique your work.

For instance, before my aunt went out of town on Sunday, I gave her a copy of the story I wrote last week to read while she was away. When she returned last night, she said, “I don’t get it. He raped you?”

This was problematic for a few reasons:

a. There’s no rape in the story.

b. I, Stacia the writer, am not the narrator of that story. A character named Avery is.

I couldn’t even finish discussing the narrative with her, because I was too wigged out by her use of the second-person “you.”

“But you kneed him in the groin for real… after you reflect on your ex-boyfriend’s relationship with Colette?”

Sigh.

a. There is no “for real.” It’s a fictional story.

b. I didn’t do anything, because I’m not the character in this story. It’s Avery.

First-person is tricky. Especially if, as in the case of the story I gave my aunt, a reader knows that a story borrows elements from the writer’s reality. It’s easiest for me to write in first-person when I see a bit (or a great deal) of myself reflected in the personality or experiences of the narrator. But I hate writing in first-person because then people think I’m writing about myself. Then, the character is me, without question, and no one will be convinced otherwise.

I’m paranoid about people speculating what “actually” happened and what “I” made up.

Third-person suits me more because there’s a clearer, firmer demarcation between the characters and the writer. I get to distance myself from the experiences I’m writing about—and more importantly, the reader distances me from the experiences I’m writing about.

I gave this same story to another friend who’s familiar with my older work (all of which had been third-person) and she had a hard time connecting with it, because “it just seemed like you were telling a story aloud, just relaying some events that happened.” Absent, she said, was the flowery language she’d grown to associate with my writing. She also said it felt rushed.

I thought this was an interesting critique. I opened the file and re-read the story. I found some of my typical imagery there, but nothing as meandering and mellifluous as the stuff I usually write.

It dawned on me that first-person was the culprit. Because the I doesn’t linger on small details the way the She does. The I is preoccupied with moving forward in time, as well it should be. Third-person seems designed for observation and musing, whereas the I (and, the second-person You especially) prioritize pacing and action.

I could be wrong, of course. I’ve read first-person stories that didn’t seem too preoccupied with moving the narrator from beginning to end very rapidly. And I’ve read third-person stories that didn’t tarry on the description of setting.

But right now, as I work simultaneously on two shorts—one, another first-person loosely based on my own experience and another, a second-person/first-person with from the perspective of two characters (who already sound far, far too much alike), I feel like i’m in Perspective Purgatory. And it’s brutal.

Anyone have any suggestions for how to effectively wield first-, second-, and third-person voices? Please weigh in below.