A friend emailed me Alice Walker’s process of writing “The Color Purple.” It read: “However, in order for the characters to blossom, Alice decides to take a year of silence to write the novel. This meant she would not take on any new jobs or engagements. She would just think, enjoy life and write her novel. She believed that it would take five years to write her novel, it took less than a year to complete.” Chris Danielle, Living By Grace: Alice Walker Biography.
It took me about two seconds to reply back: “Good Stuff!” But I was MAD at Alice! She had married, had the luxury of choosing not to take on any jobs or engagements.
I on the other hand had to steal, rob and cheat time away from my children, family, employer, and God.
I steal time away perfecting a query letter at 2pm at my employers’ desk, steal time on Sunday mornings writing conversations that invade my mind, take over any rational thought of motherhood. I write and there are no pancakes for breakfast for the second time this month. I have no Mother, therefore my children have no grandmother who I wish was here to help me with this beast, this addiction: writing. Help me to help them have a good meal because the artist in me, the writer that wants to be left alone and write, re-write and finish what she’s started in peace. So I place bowls of cereal on the dining room table and get back to writing. I have cheated! Robbed my children of the fondest memories I have of my mother making pancakes for me on Sunday mornings.
I can only think now when I am dead and gone what will they remember on Sunday mornings?
A cold blue plastic bowl with brown sugar squares dancing around and their mother hovered in a corner of the kitchen writing and re-writing in a self-induced addiction of characters, conversations, sounds, smells and dialogues from buses, cars, trains and corners. I vow to myself to do better and make a promise I will make a Sunday Breakfast they will never forget!
I rob God quite often. I do not go to church on a regular basis but I have church in my writings, at home, and on Facebook. I do not have a husband, no academia fellowships, I have no mentor.
The one thing I don’t have is TIME; to muddle, cry, laugh and talk back to my characters in my head and then transfer them to paper. So yes, I’m MAD at Alice.
Mad that she made the choice not to take on another job or engagement and just write and Mad that she had support.
I am MADLY in love with her writings, “MADLY” in love with her writing process.
MAD that it takes 10 years or maybe never for an artist in poverty to make it. No I’m not MAD at Alice, maybe slightly jealous. But grateful that I can pull “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” off my shelf and know I can triumph too and remember “Saving The Life That Is Your Own: The Importance Of Models In The Artist’s Life.”
As we begin the second week into the New Year, ask yourself,
when was the last time you saved another writer’s life?