Richard Wright. I need to read more Richard Wright. Black Boy is amazing. I need more Baldwin in my life. I need Kafka, Fanon, Foucault, Cesaire. I need Alaine Locke, John Lock, and David Hume. I need the humanists. And many others that I’ve only heard of in passing, like Kierkegaard, but have yet to see in person. Well, it’s difficult to see dead people, but you get the drift. My goal in life is to step to this keyboard like a punching bag and tear apart the closets in my skeleton. I mean, the webs in my cob. I mean, the cob on my corn. Wait — I don’t know what I mean anymore. I just hope that it doesn’t sound too corny as I clitter-clatter and clickity-clack at this little machine of mine. This thing which allows me to bare my soul in so many minutiae. Every minute spent sitting here is one closer to my destiny.
Pause.
I’d like to walk back that statement. My real destiny is right here, sitting down to write. This is what success means to me: engaging in the process. All the literary awards, accolades, praises and achievements may or may not come. It won’t matter. I’ll still have to come back to this position when the day is done, or before it’s begun. Another thing: I like to rhyme when I write because that’s [part] of my style. Some people tell me not to. People have a lot of opinions – they can shove them all off a cliff face. I might not have the courage, or maybe I was raised better than that, to tell people off in person, but I can certainly do so after the fact, right here in this space. Writing is my thing.
And when people ask me how I manage to write well, I give thanks to God. I try to write well; what I end up with is another matter entirely. People don’t like open-ended answers. They want a math equation. They want a one-size-fits-all answer. They want a ladder placed before them so they can crawl across it and get to where I’m standing. How can I tell them that there’s only room for one person on a ladder rung? I don’t have the heart to say that so much of writing is beyond a writer’s control – talent, life experiences, serendipity, all of it. All of these things are unpredictable, out of my hands, but ultimately allow me to be a better writer, which, to me, is analogous to becoming a better person. Break. Look out the window and what do I see? State Patrol cruising this college campus, flanked by University Police, City Police, Hospital Police, County Sheriffs, Lynch Mobs, all of them. White men in khaki shorts, all of them. All our dreams are shattered by the recoil of their service pistols. We can’t breathe, but that never mattered anyway.
So, people ask me how to become a better writer and I tell them to first become a better reader, and then to write every day. This usually gets them to stop asking questions. Few people read, and if they do, even fewer engage with text critically. Let’s say that they manage to do all that with consistency. What then? They must write and write and write until the blood drains from their fingertips. They have no choice. To be a writer means to write. If you remove WRITE from WRITER, all that remains is a solitary ER — Emergency Room. What kind of a writer is cooped up on a hospital bed, not writing, and expecting the world to come to them? The world won’t know what you have to say, Writer, or if your words have literary merit unless you write. Furthermore, you must submit. I am Muslim, so I know what it means to Submit (at least, I’d like to think so). It’s still hard for me to put my work out into the universe. It’s too vulnerable a feeling.
I picture my naked body of work flying quietly through the ethernet, the data streams, and making its way to some tired editor’s Macbook Pro. I imagine this editor to be up late with a cup of coffee, or going to bed early with a cup of tea. Maybe they’re going through a messy divorce, or are facing an unstable work environment, or an untenable living situation. Maybe they’re about to drop out of college and my paper is the last they see before they hit “withdraw” on their classes. I could come up with a million reasons why my work would be rejected by random editors. The problem is, I do, and it leaves me crippled by anxiety. An anxious body can hardly submit. When I am at ease, writing comes easily to me. Re-writing is becoming easier with practice, though it takes discipline. Reading is something which I was too lazy to do for many years, but I’m back on that wagon.
The only thing that continues to hinder me is the Literary Magazine submission racket. If I submit, I will get published. It’s just a matter of when; it’s a numbers game. I don’t know. I like keeping my words to myself. I like staring into the reflection of my eye on the laptop as I write. As I do, I peel back bits and pieces of the fake Said and reveal that Real Me. I feel as if I’m in the zone today, though I could be wrong. This is what we call flow. Alhamdulillah. At this moment, nothing matters but the Quran in my ears and the words flowing onto this page like molten lava from Mt. Vesuvius. Let it flow.