“You win some. You lose some. But you live, you live to fight another day.”
The famous quote from the movie Friday is true to life. As I was reflecting yesterday, I thought about the inevitable failures we encounter on our journeys to success. When I say success I do not necessarily mean the house on the hill. I mean success as defined by whatever we choose to define it by. For some success may be getting out of bed today, for others it may be writing a blog post. However you define success in your life is a personal decision and reaching that goal is your gift. The good thing about failure is that it strengthens us and teaches us what we should not do. It is kind of like conviction, that beast that always let’s us know when we’re wrong. I also thought, however, about ways we can help decrease our chances of walking into failures when it comes to our businesses and even our blogs. As I thought about this, I thought about Louisiana’s triple digit heat and, consequently, how we should keep our ideas nurtured just as we keep our flower beds so that they may grow to produce the kind of fruit (success) we’re looking for.
I’m really bad at this because I happen to have lots of ideas floating around in my head and I get so excited about them that I do not always take my time and it is to my detriment. My creative mind is always on the go, slipping and sliding around and trying to force its way into existence. Sometimes it’s a really bad idea and sometimes its a valuable idea. Either way, if I’ve learned anything about making mistakes and avoiding stumbling blocks its the power of patience and nurturing ideas before promoting them. Sometimes we have something really good and promising but because we have not taken the time to get to know that thing it does not grow into the full manifestation of it’s potential.
Promoting these ideas when they have not been completely nurtured can lead to great mistakes that could have otherwise been avoided. The same can be true of blogs. Be patient with yourself. Some blog posts have really great potential, but the idea for the post had not been nurtured or groomed in any way before pressing the publish button and that really good blog post idea never could reach its full potential. How much time have you spent drafting the post? Did you proofread it? How relevant is the topic in relation to your blogs purpose? All of these questions can be asked prior to publishing to prepare us to reach the readers that we intend to reach. In short, it is always best to wait and to water these seeds (ideas) so that they can bring forward the right kind of food. Otherwise, being impatient with our ideas will only leverage it’s chances of failing.
So last week, in a post called 3 Reasons I am Not a Professional Author, I spoke about how I started using a Family Tree to build my characters. I do this using Microsoft Word which I am learning more and more about each day. Family Trees can also be done in Microsoft Power Point.
What this method helps me to achieve is a greater depth in character development. It helps me to create a background, a foundation if you will, for my characters so that they evolve into real living people and are not just stick men and women with names. By creating a background, I can better design the main character out of the genetics of the people that came before them. In this way, I am not just making people up, but they are coming from an ancestral bloodline of sorts. Your primary characters can actually have a lineage and a family to which they belong to go with the personality your writing gives them.
Over the course of this week, I have put together a sample Family Tree and a few steps to help you to get started. I thought I would be able to accomplish this over the weekend but quickly discovered it was a lot more work than I remembered. To make this as simple as possible I will give you the steps as to do this the easiest way possible (which is not exactly how I put mine together but it works). Please understand that this is just a sample and that you can go much deeper than what is presented. To save time, I only scratched the surface here:
Step #1: WRITE
So if you read the previous post to which I mentioned this method, you know that I don’t use a timeline when I write. I start by writing the story as it comes to me. You can use this method either way. It is however, a good idea to start writing first because the juices start to flow and you have an idea of the characters you can start adding to the chart. Once I’ve written a few pages and I have an idea of the characters, I can then proceed to build on their lives by way of the timeline. All of this is simultaneously done as I’m writing so the timeline is not completely finished in one sitting. I may get to a point in the book where I want to switch some things around or change some names. In simplest form, I’m writing the story and using the family tree to organize my characters as I move along the process. The chart also helps me to sit back and take a full view of everyone even after the book is finished, to study the characters, and to recall names quickly. It’s easier for me to look at my chart instead of rely on memory or scan the document, to recall an important feature so as not to create inconsistencies when I’m writing. I know it seems like a lot and some of you are probably asking yourself, “Shouldn’t I just write so that the emotion and descriptive language makes the characters realistic?” Of course. The chart does not replace writing in personality and all of that good stuff, it just helps with names and family history.
Step #2: OPEN MICROSOFT WORD
Step #3: GO TO THE INSERT TAB
Step #4: CLICK ON SMART ART (it is between Shapes and Chart in Microsoft 2007 & 2010)
Step #5: When you get into Smart Art, CLICK ON THE HIERARCHY CHART and choose a chart
Step #6: Start building, adding names and traits or whatever it is you want to add
Remember that this is not a normal family tree. You don’t have to just add names but in this chart you will also add other important things about the character, such as height, weight, hair and eye color, etc.
My Chart
OK so I hope that you can see this well. This is my chart which I created using a slightly different design than the Smart Art. I customized it and created my own boxes. I saved it as an image file and then used Microsoft Publisher to crop out the white spaces that come from Word.
In my chart, we see that Stella is named after her great grandmother Stella Mae.
When Blacks stepped off the slave ships and into the shoes of their new lives, their ancestral names were stripped away. After chattel slavery ended, one of the first signs of freedom was for slaves to change their names. Having started with just a first name, they wore the last names of their masters, in which the majority of them continued to wear after emancipation. Others altered their last names slightly after freedom to disassociate from their masters. Another percentage went far as to just make up a last name, as in Booker T Washington’s case. According to his Autobiography, “Up From Slavery”, Booker noticed while in class that many of the students had two names. So when the teacher called for his name he calmly announced “Booker Washington” so as to fit in. Later, he found out that his mother had named him “Booker Taliaferro”. And just like that he became Booker T. Washington:
“By the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an idea occurred to me which I thought would make me equal to the situation; and so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I calmly told him “Booker Washington”, as if I had been called by that name all my life; and by that name I have since been called.”- Up From Slavery, Page 17, Boyhood Days
Instead of take on the last name Saddler, the first Stella decides to take the last part of her first name, Mae, and change it into May. Her family would then go on to be known as the May’s.
Interpretation of Chart:
Deborah was a slave on Paul Saddlers Plantation. They produce a daughter who Deborah names Stella Mae.
Stella Mae and John produce a son who Stella names Solomon Curtis. According to the chart, he inherits his father’s green eyes and black hair but this is an error on my part. His eyes are actually Brown like his mothers, but he inherits his father’s jet black hair.
Solomon goes on to have four girls: Deborah, Rebecca, Judith, and Sara.
Judith, the middle daughter, goes on to give birth to a daughter who she names Stella, after her grandmother.
We see that Judith inherits her green eyes from her father Solomon and her grandfather John. For the sake of space I did not include Judith’s mother in the sample chart; she is white.
Stella inherits her eye and hair color from her great great grandfather Paul. Stella’s father is also not included in the chart; he is black.
As genetics would have it, Stella is easily capable of easing on pass the color line by inheriting more external European features than African American.
For today’s segment of Writer’s Quote Wednesday, hosted by Colleen of Silver Threading, I draw inspiration from Brooke Griffin:
Sometimes we try to get everything done in one sitting when it was never meant to be that way. My Writer’s Quote Wednesday this week is to encourage every writer to take it one day at a time. I don’t know anything about the author of this quote (when I goggled the name it was about fitness or something idk) but I used it anyway because when I read it I knew Brooke’s words were meant for this week, as it is on one accord with my thoughts. Each day presents its own opportunity for improvement. It can be something as simple as getting out of bed or writing a journal entry. It can be something as great as finishing a book or as simple as cleaning the house today. Every day is a learning experience and because the days change so dramatically from day to day there’s always room to improve or to learn more about a particular thing or skill. This is not to say to chase after fruitless knowledge, but personal growth is always continuous. So this is to encourage each writer to invest in his or her best. When you invest in your best you can’t go wrong, you’ve done all that you can do. Today your best may be writing for 15 minutes, and tomorrow it may be 20 minutes. Whatever the case, give it your all. And always seek more.
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That’s it this week. Don’t forget to check out all of the other awesome quotes from other bloggers. For some reason I can’t link to the picture today so Follow This Link instead to join the fun. 🙂
I remember being given the permission to date at a certain age. Even if not literal (I don’t remember being told), by the age of 15, 16, and 17 it was understood I have at some point begun dating, and as such there was a silent acceptance of this change. As I’m running errands and trying to escape the triple digit scorch that’s got it’s body spread all over Louisiana, I thought about womanhood. What is womanhood? The question hangs over the heads of our daughters with anxious anticipation. The youthful mind dividing itself into sections of experience: puberty, first date, first love, marriage, and children. We split ourselves into portions and gamble off pieces that do not fit. We grow old and still we find this question lingering against the frontal lobe of our minds, and occupying the mental space of our thoughts, “What is Womanhood?” It is a question we believe can be answered just by purchasing cigarettes, buying liquor, engaging in sexual intercourse or the entering of the club scene. As my thoughts spread out and I take these snap shots of my own past, I thought about this generation and how disappointed I am in a lot of today’s youth. Their minds seem to be so far gone from basic fundamental teachings that drive adulthood. My thoughts grew to include preparation and how little of it is present in many of our communities. That is the preparation of our young people and most especially, of our young women. Instead of encouraging our daughters to get boyfriends, it is time we start to prepare them for womanhood. In this way, when they begin to engage in relationships, when they do find a man, they’re not little girls. Because we have not prepared our daughters, a generation of children occupy grown-up bodies and little girls have over run our households and are producing babies they don’t have the tools to teach. What happened to the womanhood training our grandmothers instilled in our mothers fifty years ago?
I know, I said I was resting. I also said I was a workaholic. I am resting but before I dig in deep and disconnect from the internet, I thought I’d give you something to ponder over the weekend.
What kind of woman was Sandra Bland? Can anyone tell me? Did she pray often? Did she love those around her? Who was she? Personally, I don’t know.
I’m always saddened by the deaths of anyone and the things I see taking place within the black community. However, what annoys me is when black people allow themselves to be driven by emotion and disregard common sense. It has been said that she was dead in her mugshot, for instance. Have any of you ever seen a dead body or a rotting corpse? Have you examined lifeless bodies or studied the difference between someone living or dead? How then do you know what kind of state the woman was in when she was photographed? Must we ignore the marijuana they found in her system or is she automatically granted immunity for being black? We have turned Sandra Bland into a hero, even though no one can tell me what kind of woman she was.
How do we know for certain that she didn’t kill herself? Is this conclusion a result of a personal study or are we making decisions off pure emotion? Maybe she was murdered or maybe she committed suicide but what does it mean?
It’s sad, of course. How can it not be? But the question black people should be asking themselves is why? Why do these things continue to happen to you of all people?
Why is there a greater outcry against the killing of Cecil the lion than the death of one of yours? We are killed in the streets every day. Why are you continually treated like less than a human being?
These are the kinds of questions we should be asking ourselves, not whether or not Sandra Bland killed herself. The question is not if she did it or not, the question is….why?
I am not without compassion, but I cannot allow my emotions to surpass the truth. It’s hard to sit back and watch your people die but this woman did nothing to be considered a heroine of mine. I don’t know what her life was like to be granted that title or to make that kind of a decision.
You see the truth of the matter is that a lot of people are unconscious, especially within the black community. We have no idea of what’s going on around us or in front of us. We have no understanding of who we are, who we are not, and why as a result it has led to our position or lack thereof in this land. We continue to be slaughtered in the streets under the rule of a black skinned president but you’ll hear nothing about that. Funny how dark skin can deceive dark skinned people. Blinded by the hypocrisy we cannot see the truth for what it is. Many of you, because you wear the title of African American, completely disregard any wickedness that comes from your blood line and the consequences that happens as a result of that disobedience. This woman is filled to the brim with weed but this is your Queen. I am not Sandra Bland’s judge and her death is sad, but she has done nothing for me to admire. Oppression is real but many of you are blind to the part that you play in that same oppression. This too is futility and it is hypocrisy.
Deu 28:20 “YAH sends on you the curse, the confusion, and the rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the evil of your doings by which you have forsaken Me.
I know yall were hoping I forgot about Movie Night Friday, nope! lol. So, today’s pick is Harlem Nights.
Whenever I am in the mood for some real laughter I have to put this in, by far one of Eddie Murphy’s best to date, which is kind of ironic sense I think it won the worst directors award or something. I want to watch it just thinking about it.
Harlem Nights (’89) was written, executive produced, and directed by Eddie Murphy, who also starred in the movie alongside Richard Pryor. After a young Quick (Murphy) shoots a man trying to play Sugar Ray (Pryor) in a dice game, Ray decides to raise Quick as his own son when he discovers both his parents are dead.
Having discovered just how much money the men are bringing in, Ray comes home to find a stranger in his home looking for the owner of the club. Calhoun has sent a corrupt detective, Phil Cantone, to threaten Ray with shutting the club down unless Calhoun gets a cut. Ray uses the wisdom of his old age to decide it may be best to shut down and move to a different location. But the young and fiery Quick on the other hand is not to be ran away by anyone. Nonetheless, Father and Son must make a decision and time is running out.
The film also features Michael Lerner, Danny Aiello, Redd Foxx, Della Reese, and Murphy’s brother Charlie Murphy.
Movie Trailer:
Funny Movie Mistakes:
In the opening scene when the guys are shooting craps, Little Quick shoots the large man squarely between the eyes. The man wasn’t looking downward and it would have been impossible for a 4 foot tall kid to shoot a 6 foot tall man at that angle squarely in the forehead.
LOL!
Pop Quiz:
In what other movie did this kid act in that I featured in another Movie Night Friday post? Comment below if you know!
I strive to implement levels of professionalism in everything that I do whether it includes monetary compensation or not. In which case people who know me are already familiar with my level of organization and from that end, professionalism. However, I do not consider myself a professional author in the traditional sense of the word. Here’s why:
I’ve heard my share of advice from author blogs, books, tweets, Facebook, Twitter, articles, the list goes on and on (and on). I’ve taken valuable advice under my wing and even incorporated some into my day to day schedule and strategic writing techniques since it is, after all, wise to consider the advice of others. But the truth is that I will never be a professional author because my writing process is not the same as what is perpetuated in the mainstream.
The professional says:
Use the same business name across all accounts. This is the easiest way to brand yourself and to get people used to associating you with that name.
Makes sense, but I totally transgressed this rule! My blog, author website, and social media sites, for the most part, all have different names which I heard is bad. To balance this, I have taken to using one picture to represent every account. This photo you see associated with this blog will probably never change because it’s attached to all of my accounts: My personal Facebook Page, Twitter, Blog, IG, You Tube, LinkedIn, etc. I believe images are a strong form of communication and that many people have already become used to seeing this picture and associating it with Yecheilyah Ysrayl. I have also taken to using the same email address to represent these accounts across the board (with a few exceptions).
The professional says:
Plan out your book before you write it. Create an outline for your new masterpiece.
Umm, I think I’ll just go ahead and skip this step. I do not write outlines before each book. I just write and organize as I go along. Once I start to build on a story idea and start to write and develop some kind of form to the story, then I know what it is I need to research or the books I need to read for better clarity of this particular genre. It only makes sense to me that you write something down first and get an idea of how the story will develop, only then will you be able to clearly see what kind of information you will need for this story and can thus move on from there. For instance, its not until I start writing the story that I am able to create a Family Tree of my characters.
I know, I just said something else different didn’t I? Yes, a family tree. I found it easiest to organize my characters (after I’ve written about them) using a Family Tree. I’ll speak more about this in a separate post, but after I’ve written the characters into the story to some extent, I sit back and think about how to better develop them as real people. Not just by way of physical attributes (ethnicity, hair, eyes, relationships, persona, etc.), but also lineage. Where did this person come from? I do this by using a Family Tree, which can be created easily using Microsoft Word. The reason I choose this method is because the one rotating around blogs and professional websites is boring to me. (You know, that long list of questions you ask yourself about the people in your story: Hair:__________ Eyes:_________ Nose Shape________ …just kill me now). Not to mention I’m a visual learner. I have to see it to better understand it and laying out the family in this way helps me to accomplish this. Far as outlines go for the entire story, the first draft is the outline.
The professional says:
Stick to one specific genre.
I write in whatever genre the story that just popped into my head falls in. I heard this is a no no. According to the rules, in order to brand yourself it’s important to stay within a certain genre because it’s easy to become known for it. But in my opinion, brains don’t work like that. Well, at least mine doesn’t. What am I gonna say, “Sorry totally awesome story idea, I can’t use you right now because your Sci-Fi and I only write Romance”. That’s like telling me to write one kind of poem. Yea, that’s probably never going to happen. I mean sure, every idea is not meant to be built on. Some of them should just stay ideas until it is time for that idea to be brought forward. However, because the creative mind is not one dimensional, I find it hard to believe that I can force my thoughts to only create stories that appeal to one category.
The truth is that I will probably never do exactly as the professionals say do. If the world says this is how it is to be done, you can rest assured that chances are Yecheilyah’s over here doing something completely different…and maybe even a little weird. 🙂
The PBS Blog 