Writing is a form of research

I write to root out the ideas in my brain, to cultivate knowledge, to think in movement. I write to think. I learn from myself when I write. I will write freely. I am writing this to remind myself to liberate my mind through writing.  The only way to do it is to do it!!

 

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Wole Soyinka

In his ongoing video interview series, “The Vine with Henry Louis Gates Jr.” The Root Editor-in-Chief talks with Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka about Sudan, Mugabe, slavery and, of course, Obama…

I have known Wole Soyinka for 35 years. We met at the University of Cambridge in 1973, when I was a first-year student in the English Department, and Soyinka became my professor. He was living in exile, having just published “The Man Died,” the memoir of his 27 months in prison during the Nigerian civil war and a searing indictment of the Nigerian government. In one-on-one tutorials, he introduced me to African literature and myth and, as editor of Transition magazine, published my first essay in literary criticism. He encouraged me to pursue a Ph.D. in English literature and became the first director of my dissertation. Over the years, we have become friends and colleagues. We trade stories on everything from Euripides and Shakespeare to which red wines go best with spicy food to which laptop is lightest and fastest (Soyinka is a techie, like his patron god, Ogun).

Read the rest and watch the video interview here.

X-Posted at African Diaspora, Ph.D.

 

I Need to Write

“First forget inspiration.  Habit is more dependable.  Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not.  Habit will help you finish and polish your stories.  Inspiration won’t.  Habit is persistence in practice.”

Octavia E. Butler. “Furor Scribendi.” In Bloodchild and Other Stories, 137-144. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press, 2005.  (emphasis mine)

 

Discipline

“And one soon learned that the wild, transcendent moments which occurred at dances or “battles of music,” moments in which memorable improvisations were ignited, depended upon a dedication to a discipline which was observed even when rehearsals had to take place in the crowded quarters of Halley Richardson’s shoeshine parlor.  It was not the place which counted, although a large hall with good acoustics was preferred, but what one did to perfect one’s performance.”

Ralph Ellison, “Hidden Name and Complex Fate” (1964)

 

TechnoAfroCats Read Wild Seed

Hear ye, Hear ye:

A message to all members of Quirky Black Girls

Hey all,
 Just a quick note to let everyone know that the fabulous long-distance sci-fi reading group at Quirky Black Girls will be reading Octavia Butler’s Wildseed and discussing it in a forum right here on qbg!

  So go get the book from your public library or independent bookseller or half.com or whatever and look for details on the main site.

Also If you haven’t copped the new Muhsinah or The Foreign Exchange you are missing out! To check out her sound, see qbg Jah’s video post of “construction” in the videos section.

Also shouts out to our growing international qbg contingent!

love,
QBG

Visit Quirky Black Girls at: http://quirkyblackgirls.ning.com

 

Black Woman Wrote the Matrix

My brother just told me about this and I thought it might inspire all my fellow black women writers. It was originally posted on a blog called Guerilla Arts Link written by Malik Seneferu. I’ll do my own original post soon.

BLACK WOMAN WROTE THE MATRIX AND TERMINATOR AND WINS LAW SUIT!

Black Author wins The Matrix Copyright Infringement Case.

This little known story has met a just conclusion, as Sophia Stewart, African American author of The Matrix will finally receive her just due from the copyright infringement of her original work!!!

Monday, October 4th 2004 ended a six-year dispute involving Sophia Stewart, the Wachowski Brothers, Joel Silver and Warner Brothers. Stewart’s allegations, involving copyright infringement and racketeering, were received and acknowledged by the Central District of California, Judge Margaret Morrow residing. Stewart, a New Yorker who has resided in Salt Lake City for the past five years, will recover damages from the films, The Matrix I, II and III, as well as The Terminator and its sequels. She will soon receive one of the biggest payoffs in the history of Hollywood, as the gross receipts of both films and their sequels total over 2.5 billion dollars. Stewart filed her case in 1999, after viewing the Matrix, which she felt had been based on her manuscript , “The Third Eye,” copyrighted in 1981.

In the mid-eighties Stewart had submitted her manuscript to an ad placed by the Wachowski Brothers, requesting new sci-fi works. According to court documentation, an FBI investigation discovered that more than thirty minutes had been edited from the original film, in an attempt to avoid penalties for copyright infringement. The investigation also stated that “credible witnesses employed at Warner Brothers came forward, claiming that the executives and lawyers had full knowledge that the work in question did not belong to the Wachowski Brothers.”

These witnesses claimed to have seen Stewart’s original work and that it had been “often used during pre preparation of the motion pictures.” The defendants tried, on several occasions, to have Stewart’s case dismissed, without success. Stewart has confronted skepticism on all sides, much of which comes from Matrix fans, who are strangely loyal to the Wachowski Brothers. One on-line forum, entitled Matrix Explained has an entire section devoted to Stewart. Some who have researched her history and writings are open to her story. Others are suspicious and mocking. “It doesn’t bother me,” said Stewart in a phone interview last week, “I always knew what was true.”

Some fans, are unaware of the case or they question its legitimacy, due to the fact that it has received little to no media coverage. Though the case was not made public until October of 2003, Stewart has her own explanation, as quoted at www.daghettotymz.com/matrix/matrix.html :

“The reason you have not seen any of this in the media is because Warner Brothers parent company is AOL-Time Warner… this GIANT owns 95 percent of the media… let me give you a clue as to what they own in the media business… Ne w York Times papers/magazines, LA Times papers/magazines, People Magazine, CNN news, Extra, Celebrity Justice, EntertainmentTonight, HBO, New Line Cinema, Dreamworks, Newsweek, Village Roadshow..many, many more!…

They are not going to report on themselves. They have been suppressing my case for years…” Fans who have taken Stewart’s allegations seriously, have found eerie mythological parallels, which seem significant in a case that revolves around the highly metaphorical and symbolic Matrix series. Sophia, the Greekgoddess of wisdom has been referenced many times in speculation about Stewart.

In one book about the Goddess Sophia, it reads, “The black goddess is the mistress of web creation spun in her divine matrix” Although there have been outside implications as to racial injustice ! ( Stewart is African American), she does not feel that this is the case. “This is al about the Benjamins,” said Stewart. “It’s not about money with me. It’s about justice.” Stewart’s future plans involve a record label, entitled Popsilk Records, and a motion picture production company, All Eyez On Me, in reference to God. ”

I wrote The Third Eye to wake people up, to remind them why God put them here. There’s more to life than money,” said Stewart. “My whole to the world is about God and good and about choice, about spirituality over ‘technocracy’.” If Stewart represents spirituality, then she truly has prevailed over the “technocracy” represented in both the Terminator and the Matrix, and now, ironically, by their supposed creators.

Stewart is currently having discussions with CBS about a possible exclusive story and has several media engagements in the near future to nationally publicize her victory. June 13th 2004. Sophia Stewart’s press release read: “The Matrix & Terminator movie franchises have made world history and have ultimately changed the way people view movies and how Hollywood does business, yet the real truth about the creator and creation of these films continue to elude the masses because the hidden secret of the matter is that these films were created and written by a Black woman… a Black woman named Sophia Stewart.

But Hollywood does not want you to know this fact simply because it would change history. Also it would encourage our Black children to realize a dream and that is… nothing is impossible for them to achieve!”

Artist malik seneferu

 

Organizing the Dissertation

So, since this is the first and probably the last dissertation I will ever write, I’m absolutely overwhelmed as to how to proceed organizing the sucker.  That includes organizing research and research notes, organizing my writing and my writing process.  And what to do with all these citations.

I’ve been playing with some different tools, electronic and otherwise.  So I invite you on a WOC’s journey through the intricacies of the “tweens”–between research and writing.

Write now the list of resources includes:

del.icio.us

At the moment I am using del.icio.us to track my online sources, guides to archives, guides to collections, etc.  It is as useful as any other bookmarking I would do on my home computer but with the bonus that I can access these bookmarks from everywhere.

Problem: I can’t–or don’t know how to–export these to a hard copy document, which means I am stuck searching for what I want.  This is generally okay for me because I’m web saavy enough to remember keywords.  But if I do ever get stuck, or if I ever want to just touch a list of sources I’ve compiled, I’m a little stuck.  Worries me a bit.  Plus, if I don’t print things out, there is always the very real danger that urls I saved will go poof and be lost to the ever gargantuan WWW.  Not a good thing.

Solution:  I am going to primarily save webpages and sites that I think are pretty stable.  Library of Congress resources, PBS pages, online exhibits–things that would not only disrupt me but a large chunk of the public sphere to get moved around.  PDFs are going HC (hard copy) or into Scrivener.  Other things that look shaky I’m going to web archive into Scrivener.  I think this is the safest route, that also saves space and takes as much advantage of the electronic search power of the modern computer–which is the main reason I’m all about technology in research anyway.

Scrivener

Pretty much the reason my dissertation prospectus gotten written without completely overwhelming me.  It is like having a mini-computer in my computer that is completely devoted to the research.  I love it.

Problem:  I love it for the writing and the writing process but I’m having trouble wrapping my head around how to use it for research.  It has index cards but they are more for show than for function.  It’s real power is in outlining the paper, outlining the research (once its done).

Solution:  Right now, I am using it to outline/organize where the primary sources are.  But this is shaky.  I am still trying to figure out if the best solution is to have it tell me where the sources are on my computer/online or where they are in the real world.  Real world is probably better….

Hard Copy Binders

Love to touch paper, even though I’m a netero.  So this can’t be beat.

Problem:  Environmentally unfriendly, economically unfeasible (both in $$ and space).  So its not gonna happen.

Solution:  I’m making it my last resort.  Sorry paper, but until I have a beyond-stipend job, you and I are not going to be friends.

CD-Rom

The above is why CDs are my new best friend.  They pretty much can’t be beat.

Problem:  Nothing but cost.

Solution:  Choose my PDFs wisely.

(As you can guess, HC and CD are pretty indispensible.  If only I had a real life search function for the binders, papers and books in my room, my life would be a lot eaiser)

Evernote

The newest cool kids toy.  Online and desktop note program.  I love it because it has online and desktop functions, because it has an iSight picture capture for my handwritten notes, because it uses tags (which gives me a lot more freedom than “keywords” or “categories” especially when I haven’t full formulated my arguments), and because it has unlimited space and a monthly upload limit of about 20,000 notes.  If I get to 20,000 notes a month, I will be graduating in no time.  So I’m happy to try to meet that goal.

Problems:  I’d like it if it had Mac’s Smart Folder capability, allowing me to scoop notes with certain tags or keywords into a different notebook without creating a new one.  It doesn’t.  But that is minor.  Otherwise, I am worried that I am actually spreading myself in too many directions with too many different programs in play at once.

Solution:  None yet.  It is just so nifty!

Scribe

This right here is the real cool kids toy.  Free from the Center of New Media at George Mason University, it is specifically geared towards historians and their splendiferous bibliographies.  It uses Chicago Manual Style automatically (although it may have MLA capabilities).  It searches Amazon.com and local libraries (I’ve had trouble with this feature actually, so I can’t attest to its power).  It lets you organize source cards, notecards, biography cards, timelines, outlines, add images, add PDFs, etc.  This little sucker really does it all.

Problem:  It can be a touch buggy.  But it saves in a jiffy and I have yet to lose any of my books.  I have 250+ saved already.  It also goes by the same Mac tag-to-organize methodology which for me is a frustrating.  I actually wouldn’t mind a separate folder for certain lists.  It doesn’t do that.

Solution:  Print a damn bibliography or two!  For all Scribe does, I’m not even going to bother complaining.

So that is the starting lineup.  How does it look?  Suggestions?  Am I doing too much?  I didn’t even mention the secondary source organizing, which I feel like I do different every time I open a book.  But that’s not what is really important.  My main issues are:

• How to save notes as index cards while using technology that lets me type, search, and play with fonts?
• How to manipulate Scribe (or printed bibliographies) so that I am keeping track not only of books I’ve read but also books that I’ve found on searches, want to read, are tangentially related, are very related, are more for my profession, are more for my research, and are for pleasure/other things?
• Is there a way to do some consolidating on all of these things?!?!?

Comments and thoughts are welcome!

[Sidenote:  From henceforth, posts like these are going to be tagged: “tweens”]

 

WVRG Success Stories

To Johonna McCants!  Who is now ABD!  And about to start a cushy job as a professor in the African American Studies Department at UMCP.  Woohoo!!!!

And to Tanji Gilliam who presented her dissertation project, “That Crack in the Concrete” at the Digital Diasporas Conference 2008 (UMCP).  She was definitely the popular kid at the poster presentation!

And to Imani Cheers who is off in New York City doing an internship with Newsweek which involves mucho publishing.  Woootie-wooo!!!!!

More WVRG successes!

 

May 2008

I want to take a moment to congratulate Jessica on her recent defense of her dissertation proposal. We will all be Dr. ___________________________s in no time. – Tanji 

 

Quote Inspiration from Meeting on 4/6/08

“Guilt is not a feeling.  It is an intellectual mask to a feeling.  Fear is a feeling–fear of losing one’s power, fear of being accused, fear of a loss of status, control, knowledge.  Fear is real.  Possibly this is the emotional, nontheoretical place from which serious anti-racist work among white feminists can begin.” –Cherríe Moraga, This Bridge Called Our Backs:  Writings by Radical Women of Color