A Holiday Tale

On the Sunday night before Christmas and all through the long highway from my hometown Bamberg, SC, to my home in Columbia, SC, not a creature was stirring, not even my black SUV that had suffered many repairs in 2012 already. As I drove down the lonely highway, the headlights suddenly grew dim along with the interior lights. I attempted to adjust the lights while the car began to slow down involuntarily. Entering Orangeburg, SC, I pulled into a nearby parking lot and turned off the engine, but it would not restart. Thinking it was the battery, I called my stepfather to help me give the battery a boost.

After a few moments and against his judgment that it may be the alternator, I got back on the road to make the near one hour trip I had left to make it home. I felt confident that the battery would hold. When I had reached I-77, the car began to stall again--in the middle of nowhere! However, as it turned two hours to midnight, I made up my mind that I would not be stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Sheer determination powered the vehicle back into the Columbia town limits. As I extended my gratitude toward the heavens, the hapless car began stalling again, but this time no prayer could save her. The lights dimmed, and the engine slowed down. The car stopped on the shoulder of a bridge headed north on the interstate.  The temperature was 35 degrees. It was one hour until midnight, and this time there was no one to call because my cell had died.

If anyone is looking for a happy ending here, then they won't find it here. Over two bridges and with a herd of oncoming traffic behind me, I walked two miles to the nearest exit. I didn't expect anyone to stop and offer me assistance at that hour. My emergency lights could not come on, and days after the Newtown tragedy, everyone's conscience was surely on high alert, especially during the holiday season. After I charged my phone at a nearby convenience store, I called my wife to give me a ride home.

Thinking back to the long walk on the interstate, I was not angry. Incredibly, I have suffered worse things in my life. Many thoughts carried me along during the endless trek. I'm grateful to still be alive and not have suffered a worse fate. At any point during that ordeal, I could have been taken out of this world, yet I remain here today for an awesome, unbelievable purpose. The "fun" in the situation is understanding why did it happen--not just logistically but spiritually. I do not believe in fate; I believe in destiny and purpose through God.

Somewhere and someday that experience will be used to help both myself and someone else. Stay tuned for that update (it may even be in years to come...)

Zora & Me

I had the great privilege to visit a national landmark this past week while on our honeymoon. We were in Kissimmee, FL, and traveled twenty minutes north to the small town of Eatonville (just north of Orlando) to visit the Zora Neal Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts.

I have been a fan of Hurston since high school when in English class we read her most famous novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. It may sound cliche, but this novel might have just changed my life. Aside from seeing black characters not simply as props, her writing depicts authentic characters and African American dialect that I grew up around my entire life living in South Carolina.

It was not until my wife and I visited the museum that I realized how much of an influence Hurston has on my writing. Honestly, I had not read the Their Eyes for 15 years, but apparently some part of me retained Hurston's allegorical writing style and her use of Southern vernacular. I did not pattern my writing after Hurston, but the dialogue and use of symbols and rural imagery clearly suggests her as one of my writing influences.


More intensely, I can see that Hurston's themes and motifs abide comfortably in the bosom of my writing. Once I became enlightened by the rest of her works at the museum, I realized that both she and I use allegory in our writing. Her novel Moses, Man of the Mountain is based on the Biblical story of Moses. Speaking of which, Hurston also used Biblical motifs unsparingly in her characters and her themes. In her first novel Jonah's Gourd Vine, the main character John Pearson becomes a preacher who struggles with the lusts of the flesh. In my upcoming novel City of David (which allegorically can be related to the Biblical giant slayer and king of Israel) the main character David Johns reaps the consequences from similar temptations as John Pearson.



Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston's autobiography

Finally, Hurston is a master at infusing her novels with autobiographical text. She illustrates the town of Eatonville, where she lived as a young girl, in several of her works, including Their Eyes Were Watching God in which she draws from a past relationship to manifest the compelling love affair of Janie and Tea Cake. She also depicts the relationship between her father and mother in Jonah's Gourd Vine. Similarly, my novel City of David exhibits elements of my experiences in college and marriage.

I was completely floored and humbly inspired when I realized these similarities existed between my writing and that of Zora Neale Hurston. She has influenced the great writers of our time such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Ralph Ellison. Countless other authors will testify to Hurston influencing their works. I could be discouraged that someone else has already written in the style that I am attempting to now. Nonetheless, I remain encouraged that someone has already gone before me and has successfully laid a marvelous blueprint for the literary fiction I am trying to write. I can now learn from her victories and her setbacks in order to make my career as a writer a fulfilling one. I am grateful and eager to learn all I can from Hurston's life and writing. It is a wonderful thing to belong to a family tree whose branches somewhere from the roots connect Zora to me.

Update for 2013

I'm uploading this web video as an update on the publications I have in the works for the new year! Just click either of the links below to view it. Enjoy this season of giving, and anticipate a glorious 2013.

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Are You a Worrier or a WARRIOR?

This question was dropped in my spirit last night as I lay in bed. As a writer, there are tons of things to worry about and consider on the road to publication and eventual "success" (a relative term at best). The myriad of questions for writers leads down a treacherous path of worry, stress, and even depression which all lead to apathy, inactivity, and the destruction of our dreams. The ultimate goal of worry is to destroy our faith--not just spiritual faith, but faith in ourselves or our own visions and goals. Some of those dream-killing questions include:

• How do I know if my work is any good?
• Why am I not seeing results in my writing like others?
• How can I market my writing when no one is interested in it or me?
• When is it time to quit on my dreams?

Any worrier can attest to the fact that worry leads to more worry. It doesn't stop unless we draw the line and make it stop! The solution is just moving forward. We can reach a destination if we are always stopping at rest spots along the way. We have to keep moving!

I submit to you these bullet points from motivational speaker Craig Harper about worriers and warriors.

Worriers:

• Find things to stress about
• Are generally reactive (not proactive)
• Over-think the shit out of everything
• Are people-pleasers (and not in a good way)
• Avoid the things they should address
• Allow fear to run their lives
• Don’t stand up for themselves
• Hope things will (magically) work out
• Love routine, predictability and familiarity
• Beat themselves up often
• Procrastinate
• Apologize unnecessarily
• Waste emotional energy on stuff they can’t change
• Waste time, talent and opportunities
• Are exhausting to be around

Warriors:

• Take chances
• Are prepared to get uncomfortable
• Make the tough decisions
• Persevere when most would give up
• Ask the hard questions
• Don’t look for permission, sympathy or approval
• Explore and exploit their potential
• Finish what they start
• Talk less and do more
• Are solution-focused not problem-obsessed
• Acknowledge their flaws without any hint of self-loathing
• Don’t shirk responsibility
• Are inspiring to be around
• Are adaptable and cope well with change
• Fight for what they believe in

(craigharper.com)

The only way to overcome the plague of worry is to cut it off, to slice it out of our minds, to burn it up from our psyche, to kill it--like a warrior would do. Whatever your worries are (and mine), let's agree to fight them today until the bitter end.

Whenever I think of warriors, I think of these two men: the iconic wrestler the Ultimate Warrior and the epic King Leonidas from the movie 300. These men personify the warrior spirit although they are fictional. Whoever is a warrior to you, I challenge you to get their picture in your mind when worry creeps upon you. What would they do? They would fight!

Therefore, I give a war cry to all my writers. Despite the many tough questions, obstacles, and shortcomings in this industry, don't throw in the towel. Embrace the warrior spirit and WRITE, WRITE, WRITE!

Why I Love the Classics

I had the opportunity to write a guest blog entitled "Why I Love the Classics" for the Cola chapter of the South Carolina Writers' Workshop.

http://columbiawritersworkshop.blogspot.com/

DVR Dilemma

A revelation that I have too much TV experience.

DVR Dilemma

Fast forward
Now rewind
Ok fast forward
No now rewind again
Ok forward
NO YOU PASSED IT
Now back again
Wait forward some more
Now back a little bit
Right there!

They Want My Manuscript...Now What???

My mother taught my sister and me when we were growing up to always keep our rooms and our house clean so that if we ever had an unexpected visitor, then we would not appear slovenly.

I recently "tested the waters" of the publishing market to garner interest in my novel about the rise and fall of a college campus ministry. After sending a query to a publisher about my novel, they have asked to view the manuscript. There is definitely a certain excitement and satisfaction that comes with this news. It validates the endless hours of imagination poured on pages. It manifests the goal writers have initially before they set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. It breeds confidence in our abilities, talents, and gifts to expresses in writing the issues of life in stunning detail. One dilemma exists with this new development in my progress: the novel remains unfinished! With that aforementioned excitement, validation, and satisfaction, an anxiety is now present. There is an "Oops!" in my conscience that exists because I never truly thought there would be much buzz when I sent the query.

I instantly flashed back to my mother's cleaning method. When I began the novel, I was writing some each day which became every few days...which became once a week--you get the idea. Now that I have a "visitor"--better yet a suitor--to see my work, it is incomplete and not what I desire it to be.

Therefore, the best advice for any writer--as I now have learned--is to keep writing! Away with the insecurities about who wants our work or what entity will reject us next. We must keep writing! Away with excuses for not getting to a place where we can devote our time to our passion instead of explaining why we are writers with no evidence of our work. Away with the fear that people will not "get us" or will not understand who we are and why we write. We must keep writing! Whatever is preventing us from achieving our goals and seeing our dreams manifested, we must escort those things out of our path, out of our minds, and into the same pile where our rejection letters lie. We must reject the rejections! We must make the insecurities insecure!

In essence, the manuscript request was a wake-up call. Who knows if it will be accepted, but being caught with my house not in order has again set my passion for writing ablaze. We never know when the moment we have been waiting our whole careers for will be laid before us, so we must be ready.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some "cleaning" to do...