VONA Reportback and the Real Work

I was offline much of last week because I was at VONA, short for the Voices of our Nations writing workshop, at the University of San Francisco. I had the privilege and pleasure of being in an advanced fiction workshop with author and all-around-cool dude Mat Johnson, who wrote Hunting in Harlem and the graphic novel Incognegro, among several other books.

Despite the tough-looking photo on the home page of his web site, Mat was a generous and encouraging teacher. He gave lots of critical feedback too, don’t get me wrong, but what’s a writing workshop if someone doesn’t slice and dice your work? His case-study lectures on structure were especially helpful to me, and I made a note to myself that when I get stuck on a story, when it’s basically at the stage where I feel like I can’t do anything with it anymore, I should do what Mat did with our stories / novels-in-progress in class and figure out two things: 1) What’s this story about? and 2) What’s actually happening? We made scene ‘maps’ to identify what’s actually on the page (versus what we are ‘trying’ to write), which was extremely useful to all of us. It was also good to work with a writer (and especially a father) who has children and realize that it is possible to have a career and a family at the same time.

And Mat left me with a healthy dose of much-needed inspiration when he said to me a few times, “I can’t wait to see your short story collection. That’s a book I want to read.” (I recently found out that I didn’t make the cut for the Hyphen short story contest, although a friend and fellow VONA alum won the grand prize, Sunil Yapa. So while I’m happy for Sunil, I was a bit bummed.) But there’s no better anecdote for rejection blues than having an accomplished writer I admire telling me they expect more from me. Makes me want to get my butt in the chair and start writing! The same thing happened when I met Bino Realuyo for breakfast a few years ago in New York City and he told me, somewhat gravely, at the end of our conversation, “The next time I see you, I want to see your book.”

The Student and the Teacher: Me and Mat Johnson at VONA

And of course, the other magic at VONA is being around 60+ other writers of color from all over the country who are all dedicated to crafting their work and making it as good as it can be. I made new friends, as always, and got to reconnect with old writing buddies, and got terrific feedback on the short story I’m working on.

Me and Emily Yamauchi, a super-talented writer and new buddy

The view from the campus is pretty gorgeous, too.

View from Lone Mountain Campus, where VONA workshops take place

Been feeling a bit of post-VONA withdrawal these last couple days, which since this is my fourth time doing the workshop, I know is normal. And now the real work begins. I’ve set aside most of this week to write, and to hopefully put into practice all the brilliant advice Mat and my fellow writers gave me this week. Butt in chair. Write. Read. Write. Read. Write. Avoid Facebook and Twitter as much as possible. That’s my goal for this week. Wish me luck.

The Karate Kid Remake: More than Just a Kid Flick

So I saw the new Karate Kid movie tonight, per my partner’s request, although I would’ve gone to see it eventually anyway—albeit probably at a matinee, to pay some respect to the boycott of the film called by Aly Morita, the daughter of the late, great Noriyuki ‘Pat’ Morita (who played the iconic and inimitable Mr. Miyagi in the original version of the film). But I didn’t really agree with the boycott anyway, which I’ll get to in a minute, and I’m glad I went to see it on a Saturday night, since there were tons of little kids of color (mostly African-American but some Asian-American too) in the theater who were super-excited to see the movie.

That in and of itself says something about the importance of this film, and made me glad that I didn’t buy into Aly Morita’s call for people to boycott the film in theaters (she says it’s OK to watch it later on Netflix, I guess to decrease its box office impact). Tonight at the theater, I was especially moved by two young Black girls—probably between the ages of eight and ten—who waited with big grins on their faces in line, practicing ‘karate’ kicks high into the air, emulating the image of Jaden Smith doing his split-kick in the movie’s promotional materials.

As a woman of color and a sometime martial artist, this made me happy. Even though I was well into womanhood when I saw the amazing women-only fight scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, they affirmed my desire to practice martial arts, and more than that, to define myself however I wanted to as a woman. And that women could be damned good martial artists, too.

Of course, there had been many other movies (mostly Chinese) that showed women kicking ass before, but this was the first that had such huge commercial success in this country, and that makes a cultural difference, if only because of the sheer number of people that then see these images. In many ways, that’s the real power of this ‘Karate Kid’ remake, which has been the top-grossing movie in the US since its release last week.

Gearing up

Sorry I’ve been so absent, but work has been super-busy lately, and I anticipated that my writing life on all levels would fall off during this hectic time. But I was okay with that because I have two writing workshops coming up: next week at VONA in San Francisco, and next month in San Antonio when I head to Sandra Cisneros’ Macondo Workshop to study with one of my old professors from Cal, Carla Trujillo. I’m really excited about both workshops and looking forward to talking about writing, being around my writing buddies and meeting new ones, and just immersing myself in my literary world and leaving my everyday work-world behind for a few weeks.

Of course, my ultimate goal is to merge these two worlds more fully, and I’ve taken a few steps in that direction, but still have a ways to go. I did get one of my short stories placed in a publication recently—and, even more exciting, will be getting paid for it too!—but I’m hesitant to say where just yet since things in the literary world can be a bit unsure at times. Like the fact that I never got any copies of one of the anthologies in which one of my non-fiction pieces was recently published.

In any case, I’ve got a lot of reading to do in the coming few weeks, and will be doing a fair amount of writing too, I’m sure. Will try to blog during the workshops and fill you in on what’s going on.