A darling friend accused me of being intense this summer—bc writing—and of course, what other way is there to write (a novel)? A novel is an exercise in repeated failures. Until you reach what feels like an acceptable failure, a glorious failure, a failure you can live with.

Until you craft what seems like ‘a book’ that sounds like it is ‘saying something.’ What it is saying,no one knows exactly,least of all the author. Those times when the author is asked to come and speak authoritatively about their work,are a glorious performance in improvisation.

Promised myself I would write a straightforward book, but it keeps getting wild, it keeps getting out of control. It is a literal psychological wrestling. The book is refusing to stay within its proper confines. But, I shall not be conquered.

When I say the book keeps getting wild, I mean things keep happening in it that scare me.Been talking to a friend for comfort. But then decided, fuck it.The book is wild,the world is wild. I am writing in English,the language of civility,& civility is the language of obfuscation.

If I am writing black characters and they are sounding civil in the universal ie “white” sense, I must be worried. Be free, black characters!Speak and move as though you are not being surveilled. You are make believe,after all. The author must write as though they shan’t be read.

And because language is so difficult—it’s not a matter of whether or not a black character should/can be civil. It’s that the opposite of being civil,in the current world,is not being uncivil.The opposite of being civil,is being black.There-in lies the difficulty,the obfuscation!