So now, I want to make a video. I really really really do. But, uh, maybe I need to go finish the book? So on that note, I am signing off.

I would like everyone to google your state arts council and see when your deadline is. If you can, leave the info in comments for others folks' benefit.

If you know of other opportunities, let me know. I am so BUMMED that I missed the NEA deadline. Now I have to wait two more years!

So Mr. Tyree is calling it quits. Apparently, the market has gotten to raunchy for even him. Although he believes himself to be the founder of the genre, he says that the readership has failed to evolve. Apparently he tried to write a wee bit more seriously and the readers gave him no love. He says women readers wrote to him having tantrums because he is not as exciting a writer as Zane. (Entire article here.)

Here's a snippet:

That replacement of significant voice had nothing to do with the publishers preferring "street lit" over "responsible lit." It had all to do with an urban audience who preferred grit over polish. And that love for grit, crime, sex, broken hearts, drama, and other bullshit, reinforced the sales that I enjoyed for Diary of a Groupie in 2003, and What They Want in 2006. These were both books where I wrote about the subjects of sex, idolization, blackmail, and black women getting their fantasy freaks on, that urban readers had begun to love from my good friend Zane, and her various Sex Chronicles. Again, I can't knock a sister for expressing her inner freak. I would want a woman confident enough to show me what she got as well, just not on every other page.

As you all know, I am chillaxing in the Adirondacks, so I can't spend too much time thinking about this drama. But check it out. Tell me what you think in comments.

For Colored Girls.... back on broadway!

]]> Travels & Rambles TayariJones 2008-06-26T09:29:31-06:00 http://www.tayarijones.com/blog/archives/2008/06/love_is_a_tiger.html As I am plugging away at this book, I have been thinking a lot about love. Not the romance novel kind, but the solid kind. I wanted to write about love between a father and daughter. So I was writing corny scene after scene when the father makes all these loving gestures toward his daughter. I was writing stupid daddy’s girl crap. I am ashamed to admit it, but I even wrote a made-for-Hallmark scene when she learns to dance standing on his feet. Please forgive me.

So, I then decided to mine my autobiography. I’ve always felt close to my daddy, but when did I know that he loved me? I thought and thought and thought and I came up with this while taking a hike.

I know that what makes a scene work, what makes an emotional real is to tie it to hard experience. So here's mine:

When I was about four years old, I wanted a Tony The Tiger ink pen. (See, a writer even as a tot.) The deal was that I had to send in about four box tops and fill out a little cupon. Let me tell you, that was a lot of cereal. Finally, my packet was ready to go and we mailed it to the cereal people.

For weeks I stalked the mailman and my daddy was getting into the act, too. It was all Tony all the time. One day, daddy came into my room looking so sad. The mail had come and there was a postcard from the cereal people. There were no more Tony The Tiger ink pens. He explained to me what “while supplies last” meant. I can remember how distressed he was and to this day I can call up my distress and his distress. Then I thought, “this is what it means when he says he loves me.”

This story has a happy ending, one too convenient to go in my book, but the next day, there was an envelope in the mail. There must have been one ink pen left! I kept that pen with me for a long time.

Well, I couldn’t even get myself started, even with such great material such as the boyfriend who snorted my diet pills when I was at work. (After years of on-and-off again, that was the last straw. Forget the pun.) I even had garden variety drama like the One Who Wouldn’t Commit. Or the one who was committed, but to somebody else. (That’s a heartbreaker. Funny. Tragic. And it involves AWP, a fake chinchilla coat, Rita Dove, a historic Baltimore blizzard, a boy named Sue, and a drink called a “Green Sneaker.” There’s even a coda. Yesterday, he had the nerve to try and add me as a friend on Facebook!) So there was no shortage of inspiration.

But I couldn’t write it. Not one of the stories. It seems I have a block against writing about people I know. Maybe this is why I am a fiction writer, rather than a memoirist. I felt like I was narc-ing on these men, although they are a loutish bunch and by and large deserve to be shamed in a public forum. But I just couldn’t do it. I can’t explain it even to myself. It’s not like I am too high-minded to explore the revenge angle. I sat at my computer and had no idea where to start. I don’t know how to write first person when it’s me. My mind was racing, full of ideas, and I couldn’t cough up a word past “I”.

So sorry, Michael. Cross my heart, I really wanted to participate. I guess I am just not cut out to tell the truth. Sigh.

P.O. Box 109, Blue Mountain Lake, NY 12812

Today, I went back out thinking that I just needed to try harder and build up some endurance. Well, after about ten minutes I realized what I was doing wrong. I was sticking the oar in the water and pulling it with my arms. Looking at arms you can see they are teeny weeny muscles. What I should have done was used my arms to place the oar in the water and used my torso to pull. (I don’t know if I am doing a good job of explaining, but I could show you if we ever end up in a canoe together.) The point is that I was using bad form. I was trying as hard as I could, but I just wasn’t doing it right and wasn’t getting anywhere.

Now, let’s switch to my writing situation. I have this bright idea for my novel and I have been trying so hard to make it happen. I was letting my mind guide me. I was also getting myself all dialed up about the fact that I have come here to write and every second I am not writing is a second wasted. I got more focused. I cracked the whip on myself.

It was a bad idea. Just like the canoeing, it was bad form. I was trying to use the part of myself that reasons. I was also motivating myself with pressure and sprinkling in some guilt. I wasn’t tapping into my instincts. I wasn’t listening to myself. And I was getting nowhere. The reason I ended up in the canoe in the first place is that I wasn’t accomplishing anything with my writing and I was getting sort of bummed out about it.

And then, like that, on the water, it came to me.

I know this sounds sort of corny. But that’s exactly how it happened.