Lecture: "I Write to Stay Sane" by Frank A. Thomas

my name is frank a thomas and i am thankful to brian elaine for making this conference and this lecture so possible those of us that write and make it through the maze of the publishing endeavor do so as i used to say when i was growing up by the chin of chine chin chin it is just barely most of us make it step by step figuring it out on our own some of us rise to the level of agents who help us to navigate the stormy seas but for the most part most of us paid dearly for our progress through the school of hard knocks and a myriad of mistakes and headaches and i was thankful to discover that there was such a thing as writing conferences where it was available to be able to network and to hear from those who had been successful at writing and successful at publishing and when i attended uh several of those i even though i had already published i learned so much and i was absolutely excited and enthralled to be in a network of writers so i am honored that i will be asked again to contribute to the community and to listen to talk to connect to dialogue and to support to give feedback to receive feedback and most of all to not be afraid of the publishing process there are hard places and there are rejection letters and there are rewrites and edits but it's all good because if you will believe in your project and if you will believe in what you write i believe that doors will open for you if you continue to persevere i've learned this about life um if you never ask the answer will always be no if you do not seek then you will never find i believe that those of us in this conference and leadership offer ourselves as guides chaperones midwives and fellow travelers maybe a few steps ahead of you on the journey but still fellow travelers just the same thank you for investing and coming to this place and investing in this conference i think it's going to bear rich fruit and to that end let me turn to my presentation which is entitled i right to stay sane i write to stay sane i must tell you that i did not start with an intention to write and publish books i never really had in my mind that i wanted to be a writer i discovered in high school somewhere close around my graduation that there was something that i wanted to say something that i wanted to communicate it was a faint spark an almost quiet and still voice inside me that wanted to speak i could not form the concepts to say that i wanted to speak my truth you know or speak the truth i hadn't gotten to that point yet but still there was inside of me an urge to say something that mattered maybe that is the beginning of writing there is a faint voice that wants to speak about something that matters something in me wanted to be present and accounted for as a member of the human family based upon the fact that i said something that mattered many things matter and it is important to say what matters individually for me to feel fully human a full citizen a full person based upon i have an opinion and i have the confidence to speak my opinion that this time bound this microscopic piece of divine human dust has something to say that matters i am a communicator and one of the ways that i communicate is writing i write and communicate things that matter we have people in my profession i i was in my life a pastor and also a professor who looked down upon young people who are in various kinds of ways attempting to communicate their truth i am sensitive to their yearning because i was like that i i was young deeply sensitive and extremely reflective with both many thoughts and questions as one of my mentors say in my youth i knew everything and i didn't know anything i am sensitive to these young old people who by poetry spoken word rap music dance art drama fashion marching protesting whatever the medium want to communicate want to say something that matters i discovered later on that i speak and write to say something that matters so that i might stay sane i write to stay sane what i mean by sanity operates on several levels the first level is my personal level the human experience can be very hard and confusing the human experience is beautiful and difficult i live with doubt and fear and insecurity and weakness faithlessness aging fear of death as well as joy laughter love beauty healing hope peace and faith plato once said this we should be kind to one another because each of us carries a silent and an unseen struggle i have a silent and unseen struggle that sometimes challenges me and sometimes makes it hard for me to get through the day i want to speak about that i want to write about that and help people maybe to figure out how to make it another day i'm not alone i know that i'm not alone many of us struggle to get through another day our right to stay sane and if you at this conference you might right to stay sane secondly there is an absurdity and the downright evil of human existence at the macro level our ability to harm to hurt to kill to rape to maim to legislate people out of the human race and commit the most vicious and heinous acts on one another there is a disappointment in me that though we claim to be above the animals you know that's in the biblical tradition we were given dominion over the animals when in fact we're not above the animals at all the fact is we are animals we're animals trying to be moral animals trying to be moral war violence hate poverty rape racism sexual violence discrimination ignorance molestation human trafficking addiction voter suppression police violence deceit big lies the big lie institutional lies and i could go on and on and on i once read in a book on einstein that this is what they said do you know that we're dumb enough to drop nuclear warheads on ourselves do you realize that we're done we're dumb enough to do that and somebody asked einstein with what weapons will the third world war be fought he said this i don't know but i can tell you what the fourth one will be fought with it will be fought with rocks i write about my disappointment over the absurdity of human violence in the face of human cruelty greed and delusion i write to stay sane at the macro level of the absurdity of the human of human violence i live as a minority in a racist society that is often hostile to black presence that is often hostile to black people speaking their truth i will say this till the day that i die the number one challenge for black people in america is white supremacy we have dealt with it with generations and we will be dealing with it because it is the original and now the unrecognized sin of america there are far too many who believe the fundamental notion that black and brown people are inferior and it gets expressed and shows social structures and systems like criminal justice the immigration policy james baldwin once said it like this to be a negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be enraged most of the time i write to stay sane because i write to make sense and be constructive with my rage angst is a great inspiration for writing i write from the underside i write in the tradition of african-american four mothers and forefathers who did so many constructive and wonderful things with their rage sometimes because of my rage it is hard to make it through another day it is hard to stay sane i write to stay sane such that my rage not overtake me i write to be constructive with my rage with all of this as a backdrop i would like to offer three major lessons in this lecture from the writing that has become a significant part of my life and sanity i want to talk about writing as an imaginative act first of all secondly writing as a discipline act and thirdly writing as a spiritual act let's begin with writing as an imaginative act in one of my previous books uh i i was working on um the lack of moral imagination in america i wrote a book called how to preach a dangerous sermon and i was talking about the lack of moral imagination and i unfolded the concept of moral imagination and how important it was to be able to imagine equality to treat people as equals you have to be able to imagine people as equals my sense is that we have people representing a significant amount of the american populace either who do not have the moral capacity or do not have the moral desire to imagine minorities as equal when you refuse to see people as equal you project a dominance hierarchy onto the moral domain domain and you create a hierarchy of legitimate moral authority assuming of course that you as being the most moral should rule what we have in this country is a hierarchy typically and i hope not to offend you but it's the truth of rich white men at the top who consider it as just that power should and by right rests with them they are able to generate tons of wealth and hence are supposed to be the job creators or have an ability by based upon their riches to significantly influence government to bend to their desires george lakoff in his book moral politics how liberals and conservative thinks articulates what he calls the moral order metaphor he argues that in the strict father morality it's god over human beings human beings over nature adults over children the rich over the poor and hence employers over employees western culture over non-western culture our country over other countries men over women whites over non-whites straight over gays christians over non-christians in each case the hierarchy limits the freedom of those lower on the hierarchy by legitimating the power of those higher on the hierarchy and a large portion of conservative political policies flow from the conservative moral order you will understand policies if you understand the hierarchy dominance behind the policies so if i am an african-american person why would i agree to this moral order that asserts my own subservience or as jay-z says why would i participate in my own invisibility i cannot support any party ideology religion moral order that delegitimizes my full humanity in regards to other human beings i write to stay sane i write to be human i write to resist i write to say that i matter and my opinion matters and my voice matters and my person matters in my writing i imagine myself as equal and in some sense imagination rules the world writing is an imaginative act imagination rules the world well i didn't give you a definition of moral imagination so let me simply suggest that it is uh apprehending of right order in the soul and right order in the commonwealth that's russell kirk who wrote that he argues that imagination rules the world because imagination molds the clay of our sentiments and understandings while it is often assumed that human beings understand the world through calculations formulas and logical syllogisms the reality is that we understand the world through images myths and stories and thereby comprehend our relationship to one another and also to nature to god and ourselves kirk suggests not pure reason but imagination the high dream or the low dream is the moving force in private and public life kirk explained it this way all great systems ethical or political attain their ascendancy over the minds of people by virtue of the imagination and when they cease to touch the courts of wonder mystery and hope their power is lost and people look elsewhere for some set of principles by which they may be guided you see people can find wonder mystery and hope in the low dream or people can find wonder mystery and hope in the high drain people found wonder mystery and hope in the dream of adolf hitler and his vision to exterminate jewish people or you can find wonder mystery and hope in martin luther king jr standing on the steps of the lincoln memorial having a dream that all people black and white and red and yellow no matter we would be judged by the content of our character not the color of our skin that's that i call that the high dream i want to give you a sense of why writing is such an imaginative fact by you may or may not be familiar with walter bruggeman those of us who operate in theological circles in one way or another he talks about the prophetic imagination and he clarifies this by alluding to a novel entitled imagining argentina the character carlos ruida has the miraculous gift of creating futures by acts of anticipatory imagination brugaman quotes imagining argentina confronted it with confronted with evidence of the miraculous carlos's friends nevertheless remained skeptical skeptical convinced that carlos cannot confront tanks with stories helicopters with mere imagination they can only see the conflict in terms of fantasy versus reality carlos on the other hand rightly grasped that the contest is not between imagination and the real but between two types of imagination that of the generals and that of their opponents the nightmare world of torture and disappearance of bodies is inseparable from the general's imagination of what argentina and argentines are carlos envisioned that his imagination was stronger than the imagination of the state these words are exactly my sentiment the moral imagination of a world of peace and justice for all people is stronger than white supremacy's imagination of who and what we are our right to stay sane i write about this high dream to stay sane writing is an imaginative act let me get number two writing is a disciplined act let me quickly suggest to you that i quote jay-z again to add hard-code discipline to whatever level of talent and gifting that you have will help you reach your full potential notice he's not comparing giftings but to add hard code discipline to whatever level of talent and gifting you have allows you to reach the full potential of your gift and your talent this second major lesson of this lecture there are some practical reflections that i want to offer you so let me give you 2a you know i'm on the second writing is a discipline act let me give you 2a right because you're willing to work at what you have to say i tell people jay-z may be one take but for most of my work it has been developed across time based in research and experience ideas have to incubate in me and sometimes it takes years to put together what i'm trying to say not always years but for however long there is write and rewrite edit and re-edit then i try my writing out in a lecture or a teaching format and get feedback from a live audience and then i go back again and i write and rewrite and edit and re-edit i might deliver another version in another teaching or lecture and i write and rewrite take the feedback write and rewrite and when i get to the point based upon my thinking that my writing is clear i submit it to my editor then the editor gives me feedback and it probably may mean write and rewrite again i believe that publishing is a process and there are no shortcuts you must do the work writing requires clarity of thought and expression in writing you have to take responsibility for every word because you you may live in new jersey and you don't know that four o'clock in the morning somebody in california is up reading your work they will not have your charming presence to assist with their reading all they have is what you wrote i write to work myself to think to a level of clarity i write over and over again to think my way to a level of insight and relevance clarity this means that you don't go from zero to a book or zero to an article you have to perfect your craft my first book was rejected six times before i got it published i almost gave up a matter of fact i did give up the editor called me and told me that the manuscript was rejected i said i'm done i mean like how many of you reject these rejection letters can you take before it you know i'm done she asked me do you believe in this book i said yeah if i didn't believe in it i wouldn't have turned it into six different publishers and she said well if you believe in it why are you giving up now i didn't have an answer for that so what i did is what i said to her i'll write one chapter and if you think that's publishable i'll write the next one and i'm gonna go bait take the baby steps but subsequently we got it done as publisher and i was on my way i found an editor who believed in my work even though she said no she found it to be valuable and sparked in me the insistence to continue and uh subsequently it was published i wish i did not have to tell you that rejections are part of the writing process it is really big to find an editor who is interested in your work i want to suggest you that a good editor is your friend i have two books based upon the quality of editor that understood the market i understood what i was trying to say but i did not understand the market i have found that market wisdom really helps several books ago i wrote and i had this wonderful idea and it was great idea except when she broke it down to ask me what was what is marketable to average people versus versus professors i had to come up with some answers and therefore produce a wonderful book yes what i'm trying to say it's really important to listen to an editor who's interested in your work now let me get 2b remember i'm talking about writing as a discipline act i gave you 2a now let me give you 2b 2b is i write on the run i wish i could tell you that i dedicate three hours a day to writing i write on the run on the bus on the plane on the airplane as a matter of fact the first draft of this lecture was written as i was flying on an airplane what i do is lock in on something and i write i write in the midst of a busy life i don't make enough for my writing to write full time so i write part time i hope one day to get to the point that all i do is write i could write full time but it has not happened yet i've made peace with it and i right in the midst of a busy life sometimes i just don't have time i've got another book in me right now that's waiting on the time but i will get to it because i write to stay sane it's a part of my soul's work i can tell you that most of the writing that i do is in the house early in the morning you know maybe three or four in the morning is my best writing time i can tell you that the family gives me time to write i have to go to bed pretty early to get up at three or four in the morning to write there are trips to the library time's along the read to think it through chase this chase that just get plain frustrated don't want to talk for it even because i'm mad because the manuscript that is not working out the family writes too i'm not the only writer they're allowing me to write and some spouses and friends have given tremendous insight and insight let me get 2c i gave you two a to b writing is a discipline act let me give you 2c convene your own audience there is an audience for your work you will have to convene your audience publishers will publish you if you already have an audience publishers will not construct an audience for you you have to convene your own audience social media makes this possible what about a facebook live broadcast around some subject matter why not build a brand around something you love publishers are not going to build an audience they tend to like to publish people who already have an audience which leads down to this if you need a publisher it's hard to get one if you don't need one then they're plentiful which means you already got an audience so build your own how many facebook followers instagram i mean twitter i mean what what's yours what social media is a vehicle where you can build an audience uh in these days of publishing i wish i could tell you different but the truth is in some sense you have to build your own audience well let me get now the time is fleeting so let me get to this now third remember writing is a imaginative act writing is a discipline act i gave you 2a2b2c and now thirdly now writing as a spiritual act i do not have the time to provide a deep and profound explanation of the spiritual or what spirituality is what i can say is things that matter most things that are of ultimate significance like god like ancestors like family like love and truth and beauty and healing and hope these are spiritual things and i concentrate on writing spiritual things sometimes when i am writing i channel a reality that is of greater significance than the reality that we see sometimes though i write i am being written let me explain it to you this way in 2004 i went to see an august wilson play i think it was fences and i fell in love with the work of august wilson august wilson wrote a play for each decade of the 20th century in his african-american century series i read all 10 plays handed them out as gifts and soaked up materials on august wilson in the process i met aunt esther and sister that's intentional by wilson he calls her aunt esther she's really ancestor on esther is the almost 400-year spiritual healer who has a crucial crucial role in the entire century series on esther dies at the age of 366 in wilson's eighth play of the series wilson said on esther emerged for him as the most significant persona of the cycle the characters are her children and it is her the legacy she embodies that defines the century-long centuries-long story he had to tell in the ninth play he tracked on esther back to 1904 and put her on stage as the head as the lead character in the play entitled gem of the ocean where she on esther is a washer of souls she takes a young man named mr citizen symbolic of black folks struggling with citizenship after reconstruction the sell out of reconstruction and the onset of jim crow on a pilgrimage through the middle passage to visit the city of bones that the two million african ancestors who died in the middle passage they built a beautiful city a city of bones that could wash mr citizen's soul of guilt and sorrow on esther says this to mr citizen take a look at this map mr citizen see that right there that's a city it's only a half mile by a half mile but that's a city it's made of bones pearly white bones all the buildings and everything is made of bones i seen it i've been there mr citizen my mother lived there i got an aunt and three uncles lived down there in that city made of bones you want to go there mr citizen i can take you there if you want to go that's the center of the world in time it will all come to light the people made a kingdom out of nothing they were people that didn't make it across the water they sat right down there and they say let's make a kingdom let's make a city of bones mr citizen i came across that ocean mr citizen i cried i had lost everything everything i had ever known in this life i lost that i cried an ocean of tears did you ever lose anything like that mr citizen were you so lost the only thing that can guide you is the stars that's all i had left everything i had ever known was gone to me the only thing i had was the stars i say well i got something i wanted to hold on to them so i started naming them i named them after my children i say there goes cephas and that's jasper and that's cecilia and that big one over there that's junebug you ever look at the stars mr citizen i bet you've seen my june bug and didn't even know it in another in another amazing moment of the play amongst so many amazing moments honestly tells mr citizen that she has been on an adventure since she was nine years old her mother sent her to live with miss tyler and miss tyler named her esther tyler she says i stayed right on there with her miss tyler until she died miss tyler passed it on to me if you ever make up your mind i'm going to pass it on to you mr citizen people say it's too much to carry but i told myself somebody got to carry it miss esther carried it carried it right up until the day she died i didn't run from it i picked it up and i walked with it i got strong memory i got a long memory people say you crazy to remember mr citizen i try to remember out loud i keep my memories out loud i keep my memories alive i got memories go way back i'm carrying them for a lot of folk all the old-timey folk i'm carrying their memories and i'm carrying my own if you don't want it i got to find somebody else i'm getting old going on 300 years that's what miss tyler told me i told myself maybe black mary may want to carry it i don't know how much time i got left on esther was looking for someone to carry the memory of the ancestors i write because i have a strong memory i write because i'm not afraid to remember i try to remember out loud i carry the memory and the wisdom of my ancestors on esther said the ancestors were looking for people who carry the wisdom i carry the wisdom of the ancestors i have volunteered among many others for the task for the rest of my life i like august wilson want to speak the thoughts the feelings the wisdom the reflections and the memories of the ancestors i write to stay sane i write the memories of the ancestors to stay sane i hope that the ancestors will find me a worthy vessel somebody who to the best of their ability related their beauty and their wisdom it is a call that i am honored to answer well thanks so much i'm appreciative of your time and attention i hope you write to stay sane i hope you realize that writing is an imaginative act writing is a disciplined act and writing is a spiritual act i hope to read what you write soon thanks for the time and the attention i've got to write and re-edit this lecture so i can publish it thanks have a great day

Channel: Frank Thomas

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Length: 36min 19sec (2179 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021