Monthly Archives: April 2017
Writing Deep
Effective writing means going deep.
I attended an informal writing workshop, and found this nugget of wisdom. Imagine you’re on a beach (or some other land mass) and two people are looking for treasure. One person is looking using a metal detector, maneuvering it back and forth, covering great distances. That person is most likely to stumble across small nuggets of treasures (such as coins), only. Another person, takes an archeological approach, and digs deep. Instead of covering a wide surface, this person expends their energy digging further down into the land. This person is more likely to come across large, impactful treasures (such as fossils).
The one treasure hunter, using the metal detector, would use moments or stories to tell a tale. The other, using the archeological approach, would use ideas, concepts, or issues to tale their tale.
I’m not sure who authored this metaphor but it spoke to me! As a writer, the idea is to go deep — explore an idea, concept, or issue further than you ever have. Give it the full complement of your time, attention, and energies. That is what makes for impactful writing. Write like an archeologist. Write deep.
Happy Birthday, Tashi
I logged into my Facebook account recently, and saw a notification that it was your birthday, Tashi Nicole King. I still remember saying Hi to you on graduation day – beaming that cheery smile, wearing that natural hair, as only Eryka Badu can, radiating with the lively, yet warm spirit for which you were known.
Sadly, the birthday reminder also let me know that you’re no longer with us. That you will never get to read the birthday messages posted on your wall or hear the constant dings on your computer. That you will not be able to attend the next QU reunion in the physical sense and watch Jen dance on the bar, or Euric crack yet another sexual joke. That you will never be able to read the countless letters of love from friends and family members, pouring out their hearts to you, hanging on their last memories.
Like the time we shoved a couch in the back of your old school Range Rover, bungee corded the door closed, with Jim and Stacey laying on the couch, laughing all the way down Mt. Carmel Ave. Or like the time you broke up a party my friends and I had, and I offered a wiseass remark at the sight of seeing the RAs, and your expression was priceless. It just said really, and that was one of my first lessons on accountability that year. Or like our graduation day…
Alas, I will never get to tell you that I looked to you as a role model during our college years. Not just because you were older than us traditional-aged students, but because you were comfortable in your own skin, being who you were and not who everyone may have wanted you to be – the smile, the hair, the spirit. I found that comfort, maybe 5 or 6 days out of the never ending week…but, I was mesmerized that you were Tashi all the time.
Much like our national or cultural icons, your name has come to have a particular meaning for me. Tashi. A frees spirit, like the bird Maya Angelou writes about, if it had been uncaged. A beautiful treasure, forget the Mona Lisa, you embodied a Bob Ross painting with its breathtaking baby blue skies and happy accidents.
And I won’t pretend to have been the best of your friends, but seeing your birthday moved me. How could you be gone so soon?
And though our paths crossed for but a brief period in time, I sit here wondering what you would have been doing at this very moment, had you still been with us…and I am reminded that maybe this world was not fit for your, that maybe, just maybe, you were meant to be in another world or another universe or another lifetime. There’s no other explanation for how or why you, of all people, could be gone so soon. But maybe that’s the point. To those who knew you, there were no words to adequately or accurately describe you…similarly there is no explanation for why you left us.
What is it about life that it would take the young? Those that had barely cemented their places in the world, and, by my account anyway, have more living to do. What is it about life that it would take the kind? Those who would offer the shirt off their backs (or whatever your cliché), those that were happy and gentle and kind even in spite of adversity. What is it about life that it would take Tashi? The smile, the hair, the spirited.
As graceful as your entrance, so too was your exit. So thank you for blessing us with your presence, for making our worlds better and brighter. Thank you, Tashi, for being you, and helping us be better versions of ourselves.