I’ve Failed At EVERYTHING!

Map or Model day. In all three arenas, unless you are that rare beast who spontaneously zen’s their way through a happy, productive life, you need a specific map of how to accomplish your goals. If my son asks me what the limits of accomplishment might be, I’d say that if ANYONE has ever accomplished that goal starting from where he is, he can do it too. And what if there is no one? Well, if you can separate out the component elements, and model people who have accomplished THOSE, its worth a shot.

With me, there was no model for a black SF writer that I could find. Then I finally found one, and she was female. Didn’t know about Chip Delany for quite a while, in fact until he left the field for academia. Couldn’t model THAT directly…

But I could model successful black artists, and writers.

I could model SF writers, and writers in general

And between those, I could look for the things they had in common: research, daily writing, resistance to rejection, ability to tolerate injustice while working to subvert it, “thick face, black heart” in the sense that they could follow their hearts and wish to communicate while simultaneously keeping the mind tightly closed to nay-sayers.

These things suggested plans of action that lead, eventually, to the six-step LIFEWRITING program for writers:

1. Write a sentence a day
2. Finish 1–4 short stories a month
3. Polish and submit them.