"If you're always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be"
-Maya Angelou- |
My name is Quiana Tilghman I decided to take a road trip one Saturday morning because I was having writer’s block with a assignment that I was ask to do for my English composition course. I was unaware that I was about to discover myself from three complete strangers I meet in my travels. I left my home in Philadelphia around five in the morning, I didn’t have a clear direction where I was going I just wanted drive until I no longer wanted to drive or until I got inspired to write. I started down I-95 south I have now been driving for two hours and nothing blasting my music and singing all my favorite tunes and still nothing so I kept on driving for another hour and half I finally stop in Washington D.C. Once I was there I went to a coffee shop in George Town, called Make Something Happen Or Nothing At All. I walk in it was your typical coffee shop I order a Latte with extra cream knowing my stomach could not take all that cream but I brought it anyway. I sat down pulled my Laptop and some paper and a pen out from my bag to write down anything. I sat there for a twenty minutes with nothing on my paper it was just blank I probably had more expression on my face then I could have put into words. I was now completely discouraged at this point just wanted to drop the class because I said to myself this is not for me, I have “Quality without a damn Recipe” who I am I kidding. As my hands layed in my face with my head down I heard a voice say you having trouble when I looked up their was two women and one man sitting across from me . Come join us the man said and I did just that I begin to tell them I was having writer’s block they ask me my name and I told them and I ask them their names the man said his name was Don Murray and the two women their names were Anne Lamont and Mary Karr. Don and Mary asked was I here for the writer’s convention I said yeah right they all laughed. Anne said “Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible,to be heard,our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong.” I said you hit that right out the water I sit in silence to take what she said and then Mary replied “Every writer I know who’s worth a damn spends way more time “losing” than “winning”, My response to Mary was how about when the lost becomes too much where you can no longer see the win. Don response was “Writing is the act of producing a first draft. It is the fastest part of the process, and the most frightening, for it is a commitment” Ann said “idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them” I ask them what can they tell me so I can get the “shitty first draft, Ann looked me dead in my eyes and said “What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head”. That is my biggest problem letting go the voices often times they are so loud that I usually go to sleep to try to make them stop, that is why I decide to try a different approach and drive. Don said sweet girl “we must listen carefully for those words that may reveal a truth, that may reveal a voice”. As I was about to speak Mary said “before you can work consciously, though,you go through a phase of developing a critical self”. I just thought I was a bad writer not that I was afraid to dig deep. Mary said “reading through history cultivates in a writer a standard of quality higher than the marketplace”. “You can be a slave to current magazines or a slave to history”. I replied so it is best to pick a lane that your comfortable in that will exposed your uncomfortability tap in and dig deep. Don said “first by shutting up”. “And you don’t learn a process by talking about it, but by doing it”. I told them thank you that they allowed me to be comfortable with having terrible drafts and that it will not always make sense the first time as long as I am willing to go through the process and not worry so much about the assignment that I will be just fine. Because it is perfectly fine to have “shitty first drafts” as Anne will say.
0 Comments
|
AuthorQuiana Tilghman I am writing to express my inner self from question from a questionnaire. Archives
May 2019
Categories |