Celebrating 12 Years in Print:

For Marita Golden, Marie Brown, Judy Sapp, Matthew Miller and Christine Wilkinson, who all believed even when I didn't.

It has been a long time habit of mine to wake up at 4 a.m. to write.

This morning I woke up to play "catch up" with my classes at the university.

In the shower, I bemoaned the fact that since the beginning of the semester I had spent little to no time dedicated to the final edit passes on  a book that I have been working on for several years. These spells of nonwriting always spiral me into the  Am-I-A-Real-Writer? place. It's a dark place that makes me fatter and dreary and mean.

The water was spraying, I was trying desperately to at least write a poem in my head so that my writerly lust had been satisfied for the day.

Nothing.

Then I thought about my first book Blackberries, Blackberries.

Twelve years? Really?

Yes! I have been in print for 12 years so that is something to celebrate.

What made me think of it in the first place?

Today is the final day that you can get this first work of mine for $1.99 through Amazon's Top 100 Kindle Books for $3.99 or less chosen by the editors of AmazonEncore for January. I meant to do a bit of self promotion earlier in the month but life got in the way. So there! Twelve years (whoo-hoo). Buy the Kindle version for $1.99 (whoo-hoo). I feel slightly better like a teeny tiny baby step toward feeling better. But I will embrace it before that witch on my other shoulder throws back her head, laughs and says "So what heifer it's been ten years...." Blah. Blah. Blah.She's queen of the dark Am-I-A-Real-Writer place (cave).

Now off to campus and maybe I can squeeze in some time to get these edits done and keep the woman who lives in the cave who rears her head to mock me in the shadows

 

Brick. Mortar. Ink. Paper: Why We Bought a Book Store

The Wild Fig Books--1439 Leestown Road--Lexington, KY

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.  One does not love breathing.  ~Harper Lee


I have owned a house in the Meadowthorpe Neighborhood in Lexington, KY for more than 17 years. My son turned 13 when we moved into our house. The twins were five. One of the mainstays of the neighborhood was Morgan Adams Books, an eclectic used bookstore less than five minutes from my house. I bought books there for my children, for myself. I thought I had died and gone to heaven to trade a pile of books in for another pile. I was a single parent and sold books there when bills were tight. When I was writing my early books, I went to the bookstore to find inspiration, often leaving a pot on the stove or the kids playing in the yard since it was right around the corner to rush down for that book that would lead me to gently into the next phase of writing my own.

Years later, when Ron and I became a couple, he decided to work part time at Morgan Adams so that  he could supplement his artist's income. How perfect! It was right in the neighborhood. Truth be told, we bought more books than his salary provided over two years and he knew the perfect way to charm me more (If that is possible. He's a very charming man :) ) was to bring me a book he knew I'd adore.

So when he came home and said "Well I won't have a job at the end of the month," we began to at first play with the idea and then to be more serious about it until we simply bit the bullet, bought the inventory and got the ball rolling.

Photo from the Lexington Herald-Leader June 9, 2011

Since we opened The Wild Fig Books on June 20, so many people have thanked us for opening, for keeping a bookstore at this location. "You're so brave to open...in this day and time, " they say.

Of course we've all heard to the stories about the large book chains closing and I have mourned the closing of every single independent across the country, many of which I visited last time I was on a book tour. But brave? I've never thought of myself in those exact terms. Unrestrained, maybe? Careless? No. Mostly it's simply that I don't believe the hype. A day and a time when ink and paper books don't exist. Pshaw!

We thought it would work because: 

1) The previous owners (Mary Morgan and David Adams) spent more than 20 years building the foundation of a book store at this location, so obviously it had worked on some level. This neighborhood needs a bookstore. Lexington needs a quality bookstore on this side of town.

2) We have great business neighbors in Goodwill, Steepleton's, Pop's Resale, The Dollar Store and The Meadowthorpe Cafe.

3) We thought we could make it affordable. Of course this part is a little scary but in addition to gushing over the books we are trying to be business savvy.  But frankly we probably gush more (Especially me).

4) Most importantly, everyone I know, whether they have a Kindle or not, still buys ink and paper books. Ron and I still buy ink and paper books. I still write ink and paper books. Ron was recently commissioned to design a real ink and paper book cover for a poet-friend. We want our children and grandchildren to continue to read  ink and paper books. As book lovers and writers and being an artistic couple of course we jumped at the chance to be brick and mortar bookstore owners.

We hope that you will pass the word along to those you know. We plan on a variety of readings and musical guests in the future and have an art performance/installment in the works.

Join us for our official grand opening on Sunday, September 18 beginning at 1 p.m. and meanwhile come in, buy some books, taste our coffee, enjoy our comfy chairs. We are open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. We have lots of books to choose from.

Call 859-381-8133 for more information. Or catch us on Facebook or Twitter.

We are located in the Meadowthorpe Shopping Center between Goodwill and Steepleton's near Pops Resale.

From Downtown Lexington, KY

1. 1Depart US-27 / US-60 / US-68 / S Broadway toward US-25 North / US-60 North / US-421 West / W Main St158 ft
2. 2Turn left onto US-25 North / US-421 North / W Main St0.5 mi
3. 3Keep straight onto US-421 / W Main St1.0 mi
4. 4Turn right onto N Forbes Rd, and then immediately turn left onto Leestown Rd0.1 miMarathon on the corner
5. 5Arrive at The Wild Fig BookstoreThe last intersection is W Main StIf you reach Burke Rd, you've gone too far

For the 6,500,656, 493th time: I Write Because...

 Ron made this for me years ago. I like the POKEWEED PRINCESS part of it most!

Sometimes it's an interview, usually with an undergraduate or high school student writing a paper. Sometimes it is just a conversation that I have fallen into with someone who knows I write.

Why do you write?


This is when I take a deep sigh. Not just because this is the worse question that you can ask a writer but because I really don't know the answer. Oh I'll come up with an answer but the secret is that I don't know. I'll look toward the sky or ceiling put my serious writer face on and say something borrowed, something cliche, something corny like:

because I can't do anything else...

If I could I wouldn't write but I have to. (this is when I ball my fist up and look my most fierce emphasis on the HAVE. Writers are so dramatic).

because I can't sing... (classic corny that I am sure I heard someone else say. this one gets a laugh especially if the other person involved is at least as corny as I am)

because writing is like a meditation for me, a prayer... (beautiful and sometimes true but...)

because there are so many stories inside my head and I need to get them out (This usually gets me the side eye or at least a wrinkled forehead while the person asking tries to decide whether they should just nod their head in agreement or get me some help.)

because when I was in my Mama's womb (watch out I'm going to take you through my entire childhood--an only child living on my grandparents farm wandering the woods...true but super sappy...Google if you want to be tortured by more of this. I've said it many times.)

I come from a family of artists...(this one too will lead you down a winding path of childhood, the first book I wrote at 12..yada, yada)

Writing is like breathing...(this is true..it's in my blood, my muscle, my bone but saying it aloud makes it sound disingenuous)

to right the wrongs of the world (no not me. My stories are just my stories. I process those things that haunt me, things that haunt my characters and hope in turn that they touch something familiar in a reader. There's no agenda for the world in my writing. I'm not wired that way.)

so that my people are remembered (this is true but there's more that I just can't get at here)

for my grandparents and all of my ancestors (yes but...)

Sometimes I will depend on the novelist Edward P. Jones or some other writer who I admire to say what I can not:

Edward P. Jones says:

There are those who write because they believe they have something so marvelous that it will make them famous and wealthy, a lauded commodity who will be invited to a lifetime of cocktail parties. But there are those, like that radio woman's father, who write because of some bizarre and ancient compulsion. I think that I am one of those.

I love his quote sometimes I carry it around for just this purpose and pull it out like a weapon when I need it. (This one is always good for the contemplative head nodding and I do love the quote so much

There is another list of things I pull out to try and explain myself from the angle of a sort of negative space:

I don't write just to be published.(There are many things that I've written poems, stories, novel starts, complete novels that may never see the light of day but I was compelled to write them).

I don't write to try and become famous.

I don't write for money. (Though I'd like to have a bunch of it.)

Writing is solitary if not lonely at times. It's thankless (at least mostly). It's hard (harder than the other things that may come to me more easily)

So why do I do it?


Of course this is when there is this expectation of something...something that will make your head nod in agreement or your jaw drop...some secret kept by writers for a million years that's never been revealed. Maybe I should say something beautiful or something smart or something poignant or...or...or.


For all the reasons listed above? For none of them? For some other reason that I can't quite get at?  I've answered the question many times in many ways.

Why do you write?

I don't know why I write. I just do. And I just will. And I always will.

Gathering Magic: How to Read Like a Writer

A few days ago, I was frantically looking for this little post so that I could pass it along to a student after we had a very involved conversation about what it means to read like a writer. I also suggested that she read Francine Prose's book Reading Like a Writer.

 I wrote this post back in the old MYSPACE days and I posted it rather hurriedly when I cam back from teaching a "How to Read Like a Writer" workshop at the Indiana University Writers' Conference.

The conference will be held June 5-10 (in case you are interested) and this year you can study with Patrick Rosal, Dan Choan, Lynda Barry, Tony Ardizzone and others. The (still unedited) post appears below:



Lynda Barry self portrait

 Gathering Magic: How to Read Like a Writer
by Crystal Wilkinson

If you are a would-be writer and are looking for the magic, something to propel you forward like nothing else, the answer is simple. Pssst--come closer. Here it goes: “Write and read. Then read and write.”

I make my living as a professor and creative writing workshops and creative writing courses produce great embryonic writers but I content that those writers who develop their own sense of the worlds they invent and pull the reader so deftly in are able to do so because they have spent time studying writing. Not in a classroom but in the comfort of their own spaces—carrying copies of Their Eyes Were Watching God (or whatever the source of their muse is) around like the bible; cuddling and coveting words and the worlds they admire in every way possible.



I must admit that my lust lies in the world of books. I return to the books that I love the most time and time again—sometimes searching for a passage for hours and hours.



Every time I teach, I learn.

Every time I read, I become a better writer.

I have just returned from teaching a class entitled “How to Read Like a Writer” at Indiana University’s Writers Conference. During these four days, I walked the participants through some of my favorite stories which included:



Snow Angel by Stephanie Vaughn

Bones of the Inner Ear by Kiana Davenport

Big Me by Dan Choan

Kudzu by William Henry Lewis

Pet Fly by Walter Mosley

Between the Pool and the Gardenias by Edwidge Danticat

The 5:22 by George Harrar

Shiloh by Bobbie Ann Mason

Weight by John Edgar Wideman

Live Life King-Sized by Hester Kaplan



The pulse for the class, a heart for the love and power of words, began each afternoon with the question “How did reading this story make me a better writer?” While, I told the participants what I most admired regarding craft, scaffolding (structure), and or language, diction/syntax and why I thought these decisions made by the writer made the story not only just good but left a haunting in your soul—they responded equally about what they most revered (most often honing in on the element that they had the most problems with as writers—too much description/dialogue that doesn’t move/scenes where nothing happens, etc.).



Each story we read was a banquet to be devoured and once the participants looked for the “lesson” in each story, they found a myriad of them. Each writer, honing in on their own strengths, weaknesses, shortcomings or haunts and through the eyes of these published writers becoming better writers. A.J. Verdelle (author of The Good Negress) describes learning to write as an autodidactic process and she’s right. You may be nurtured along by a good workshop or a good creative writing class but when it boils down to it. Learning to write well is as insular a process as writing itself. And speaking of A.J. Verdelle, not only is she a genius when it comes to being a writer but she’s also a hellified teacher of writing. When a craft book written by her pops up or if you have a chance to work with her in a workshop DO IT, don’t walk run



For our class, I compiled a list of 10 ways to Read Like a Writer. But the ways to read a book and learn from it are many. So think about it and come up with your own.



10 Ways to Read Like a Writer



1. Ask yourself “How did reading this novel/story/chapter contribute to my education as a writer”?

2. Look for the construction of tension (Where’s the rub?)

3. Identify the MAP of the story/novel.

4. Type up passages or entire stories of those you admire.

5. Examine the seams—read a writer’s first works. Or read them in the order in which they were written.

6. Circle the verbs. (follow the movement of the story).

7. Dissect the writer’s attention to SCENE.

8. Does the ending loft the READER up to the next level of understanding? How does the beginning get at the pulsing heart of the work?

9. Don’t just enjoy the ride! Climb into the head of the writer.

10. What do you see if you actually copy the passage and dissect it with scissors? (We did this paying attention to how scene and transitions work in George Harrar’s The 5:22. but you can do it with anything that you wish.



And below are writers that I’ve learned a lot from. Who would you put on your list?

Toni Morrison

Gayl Jones

James Baldwin

Michael Ondaatje

Ha Jin

John Edgar Wideman




Of course my list is much longer but these are the writers I return to again and again.

Happy reading!

Happy writing.

Write me and let me know what your 10 ways to read like a writer are.

Monday Motivation

My new novel is set in the 70s so it's throwback time for motivation this morning.
Big Afro
cornrows
bell bottoms
cut off shirt
ruffles & cuffs
wooden platform shoes with fish on them
sky blue eye shadow
Sweet Honesty perfume
Mood rings

Paying Attention: Heroes, Al Green, Coconut & Kisses

I’m a strange bird.

I once watched WTBDWK (part documentary, part mind-bender on quantum physics, metaphysics, spirituality hosted by Marlee Matlin) four times in a row. I was riveted by the possibilities and capabilities of being human presented in the film.

When I was thirteen and on a school trip to Cincinnati, I walked on a twelve-inch balcony on the top floor of a hotel and climbed into the window of a room of friends down the hallway who waited for me. It was an attempt to curb my fear of heights. I still enjoy reading articles about jumps and falls and flying. Those things are forever connected.

I’ve been to truck pulls, to chicken fights, moldy cellars, redneck cafes, new wave religious ceremonies, and many places that I won’t name here.

I touch everything when a sign says DO NOT TOUCH. (Ron always smacks my hands at art exhibits) I’ve done lots and lots of things solely for the sake of satiating my curiosities. You wouldn’t believe me if I listed them all here.

I gather buttons, bottle tops, grocery lists, scribbles of paper, photographs, anything really—looking for any fragment that gives me a glimpse of the person who —minutes before, years before, lifetimes ago--shared this space.

Robert Olen Butler (Hell, Grove Press) speaks quite informatively and eloquently on human yearning in regard to fiction. (I teach from it often) His philosophy much of which borrows from Buddhist thinking can be found in From Where You Dream.

All artists pay attention.

We are the keepers of the stories both real and imagined.

It’s our overwhelming desire to KNOW, to DISCOVER.

Sometimes, my own efforts are overt.

Sometimes, I think I try too hard, finding a sign in everything I see or hear or touch.

Once in awhile, I go to bed thinking I wasted my opportunity to pay attention and that I’ve missed something important that I will never be able to touch, smell, hear, see, taste or imagine again.


Here some things that caught my attention this past week:

Television
 (there is always too much television…major time suck! But I have been addicted to TV since I was a girl and would come home from school while my grandparents were still at work. This began when I was nine.):

• Heroes (Season Three)
• Dr. 90210
• V
• Real Time with Bill Maher
• Big Love
• Housewives of ATL
• Young and the Restless
• Days of Our Lives.

I won’t admit to my other junk TV but there is lots of it. I don’t watch it straight through though. I tape it all and then watch it at my own convenience. In defense of TV, when the writing is good it always takes me somewhere with my writing.

Music

• Hey Love Compilation Volume I
• Al Green Still In Love With You
• Smokey Robinson Greatest Hits

Radio: Always NPR coming from and going to work.


Film of the Week:

Viva Cuba (childhood innocence and imagination fractured by adult notions--beautifully done)

Books:

• Head Off & Split by Nikky Finney (I have been clapping and jumping up and down about Nikky’s new book for weeks now. It’s out. Read it!) She had a release reading at AWP and from I hear it was grand!

• Serena: A Novel (P.S.) by Ron Rash (I have been carrying this book around for a month now. Ron is such a gifted writer. I love still seeing the poet in him come through the fiction. I’m a little obsessed right now.)

• Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones (It’s not out yet but you should follow Tayari to see what’s going on with it. One of the most generous writers I know, not just what is on the page but she shares her publishing experience with her readers and other writer friends weekly.)

• The paperbacks of both Dolen Perkins (Wench) and Heidi Durrow (The Girl Who Fell From the Sky) debuted on The New York Times Bestseller’s List!

• Honorée Fanonne Jeffers serves as guest editor on Connotation Press which features wonderful poets including RON, Randall Horton, Tara Betts & others.

The Simple Things:
• Coconut flakes. (grainy, sweet texture, i had forgotten how much i love this taste and how i used to pretend i was chewing tobacco with it when i was a child)

• Pencils &; blackboards (courtesy of Nikky Finney--two Youtube videos from her this week. Click here to see them.)

photo by gotreadgo.com Larry Treadway

• Rain (love the rain and its smell)
• Nag Champa (candles, sticks..the smell of my altar)

• My daughter's dirty white dog, Honey, which reminded me of Harry the Dirty Dog (this was one of my favorite Weekly Reader books)
• The smell of wood burning in a fireplace (envious of neighbors time to call the chimney sweep. smoke reminds me of childhood and winters on the creek)

(L-R Dee Dee, Janel, Elainia Kisses best friends since 6th grade)

•Simple kisses (daughters on the lips, my son's grown kiss which is the same as his little boy kiss, kisses from and to babies, my mama's kisses and the loud 'muah' she makes like a girl, morning kisses from ron that makes the world feel safe)
• Walking sticks (i have a grand one sitting in my writing corner reminding me of the woods)
• Sweet ache of exercised muscles (i need more of this)

What have you paid attention to this week?

A Poet Sings: Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split

Photo by Rachael Eliza Griffiths

My dear friend Nikky Finney's new book Head Off &Split will be released February 1. I've announced the arrival of friends' books here in the past but I am so very thrilled about this one. Anyone who knows Nikky knows she works hard, she thinks about the world hard. She holds the world up to our eyes and makes us see it for all its dirt and guts and beauty. Flinch if you want to but it's coming anyhow. If you've read her work, she's done it to you before in On Wings Made of Gauze, Rice and The World is Round. But this book, her fourth volume, takes the sacred personal, the regional and the universal to a new Finney level. Heart, gristle, blood, guts, bone. It's all there between these pages. Go see for your self and pre-order a copy.

I announced it in a previous blog but again : These are the best poems that Nikky has ever written. This is the best book that Nikky has ever written. All I can say is GET READY!

The poems in Nikky Finney's breathtaking new collection Head Off & Split sustain a sensitive and intense dialogue with emblematic figures and events in African American life: from civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, from a brazen girl strung out on lightning to a terrified woman abandoned on a rooftop during Hurricane Katrina. Finney's poetic voice is defined by an intimacy that holds a soft yet exacting eye on the erotic, on uncanny political and family events, like her mother's wedding waltz with South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, and then again on the heartbreaking hilarity of an American president's final State of the Union address.

Artful and intense, Finney's poems ask us to be mindful of what we fraction, fragment, cut off, dice, dishonor, or throw away, powerfully evoking both the lawless and the sublime.

Those of you who will attend AWP will see her at "The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity and the Natural World" panel with Lauret Savoy, Elmaz Abinader, Faith Adiele, Fred Arroyo & Debra Kang Dean.

Each week (or so up until the Feb. 1 HO&S drop deadline) a new video will be released for our viewing pleasure where you will see several of the poems from the collection come alive. Watch for them on YOUTUBE or look for them here.

Her new website is also very beautiful check it out here.