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Welcome To The Future
By Hannibal Tabu, Editor-in-Chief
Every once in a while, I get emails or entreaties from people, telling me they want to be a writer. Like me, from a certain point of view, or at least working in ways that I worked. Making money for dancing fingers across glyph-covered buttons and converting ideas into currency -- both that which is channeled out to the world, and that which brings money cavorting back into bank accounts.
Most of the time I just gave them the stock answer, which I wrote in a blog some time ago. The whole thing's a bit long, but here's the highlights ...
First of all, there is no hope. If you see yourself on book tours and cashing huge royalty checks, forget about it. The life of a writer on average is one of bare subsistence, of constant hustling and of relentless shmoozing with people you don't like, and who probably don't like you. If you get that idea planted firmly in your head -- that your career as a writer will at best feed you and at worst get you killed -- then you're on your way to at least surviving.
Having no expectations means that everything good that happens to you is a pleasant surprise, and you can't really get disappointed by anything that happens to you. It's also a good philosophy to have if you're married.
Now, admittedly, I was just a year out of a failed marriage, but the central theme remained.
If you took all the people who wanna write in the world, statistically, so small a percentage would be making a living wage that it might make your pancreas cry. The ones who actually get things done -- books and what not -- is also not encouraging. The desire to express is strong, but the manifestation? Not so much, if we're looking at the big picture.
Over the years, I've stumbled across a few voices that led me to believe things could be -- at least in small packets of hyperreality -- different. In blog comments and emails, in fiction fragments and conversations, I could see the spark of Pulitzers in their eyes. Their possibility calls for third and fourth printings. So in addition to the normal spiel, I started chatting them up. Discussing their path. Asking questions about legacy. I got the idea, slowly, that I might have something to offer some of them.
It should be noted that I have had an aversion to teaching ever since my scuffed off-brand sneakers graced the hallways of Raineshaven Elementary in Memphis. Teaching, in my mind, meant dealing with people who were essentially morons (at best). It required a saint-like degree of patience in adapting to the legacies of poor nutrition, poor parenting, poor socialization, poor genetics or any combination therein, plus myriad other variables. Madness. Who needs it? From toddlers to doctoral candidates, it all seemed about the same.
On the other hand, I have been the beneficiary of some of the finest instruction humanity could manifest. Gloria Newhart, Peter J. Harris, Mike Coe, Jenoyne Adams, David St. John, Marsha Mitchell-Bray, Allen Gordon, Vanessa A. Williams (Melrose Place not Ugly Betty), the late Dennis Schatzman, Tchikonsase Aje, James Bolden, Sheena Lester, Jaha Zainabu ... as contemporaries and instructors, for reasons of friendship or as employment, these names and many, many more gave me critical elements of craft, above and beyond their mandates, and earned my eternal gratitude.
Wo when I started trading emails with Chinedum Richard Ofoegbu, a mind of such singular and alarming greatness that its brilliance could swallow suns, it continued to spur my thinking in this direction. More than a decade my junior, he was smarter than I had been at his age by a factor of ten. At least. Somehow, he found my work engrossing. He was also writing himself, and his ideas -- scary, whirling mad tempests of creativity focused on the far end of the science fiction envelope -- were amazing ... but undisciplined. He declared himself my biggest fan, and I came to call him "apprentice." After so many had helped pull me up to what I consider an at least passable degree of skill, I was honor bound to at least try to do the same.
No mean feat when you're an antisocial misanthropic jackass. How could I give something to someone else -- and make sure it could survive me, as it is a familiar foible for modern people of African descent to build amazing things that essentially die with them? Moreover, how could I dig into the frozen, battle-scarred core of myself to find something concrete to offer other writers when I barely noticed receiving it myself?
Fast forward to the future. Processing power that could have run nations now hangs on my hip. Genetic manipulation is accepted scientific canon, not the fantastic dreamings of theorists. You'll never get your flying car or your shiny space suit (Sean Combs and Al Davis notwithstanding), but you can live longer than your father did, much longer than his father did, and so on. With the same tap-ta-tap-tap I used to proclaim that Heavy D should retire, a skinny kid with a big head and glasses could now create virtual worlds, coded collections of concepts, comments and colloquies that could be seen on handheld screens in Conakry or CRT screens in Wagga Wagga (go on, look it up, we'll wait). With smart usage of web technologies, every word could be aggregated into a central location. I started to think, "this could work ..."
In addition to Chinedum, within a year or so, I'd met Rumond online (who remembered my work from my time in the late 90s writing at the original Rap Pages) and found his ability to twist ideas and use humor as a bludgeon to be startling in its effectiveness. Ritch -- whose innate skill in creating ambiance is all-encompassing -- was a surprise, appearing from virtually nowhere on MySpace and winning me over with his determination and work ethic. All three -- Ritch, Chinedum and Rumond -- had the desire but didn't understand the mechanisms of a writer's life. It's hard (not impossible) to get where you want to go without a map. With this carefully chosen core, I decided to try to chart one for them ... and maybe people after them as well.
We're still trying. This bold experiment has hit its snags -- one of the three has suffered the loss of a parent, others have been waylaid by work, school and other hassles, and I went from a freelancer working at home to a full time web content coordinator for an HMO (ironic in that I don't have health coverage, but whatever) -- but it chugs on. The talent is there, if raw. The teaching is there -- I've invited friends and advisers, skilled and successful writers in a variety of fields, who've answered the call.
Why launch on Bastille Day? Well, despite having no particular affection for the French (who'd have been just as bad as the British, given a shot a global hegemony, as the riots of a year or two ago show), this was a day when common people stormed the gates of power and made decisions for themselves. Health care workers and cubicle drones, raising their pens (or keyboards) in defiance, accomplishing whereas there was no mechanism for them to do so before. Nothing wrong with that.
Why should you care? Well, first of all, you won't be able to find writing like this anywhere else on the web. Smart, focused writing that's dedicated to improving the craft and making better wordplay. Fiction that you'd love to pick up in Barnes and Nobles but that hasn't found its way there. Yet. Craziness that Diamond Distributors hasn't seen fit to ship to comics retailers. All that and more.
This won't be populist pap focused on titillating you with sexual exploits or the hackneyed ranting of "activists" as ineffectual today as they were forty years ago. The Hundred and Four is not a "blog" in the sense of someone ranting and carrying on in an idiosyncratic and largely craftless format. If you see reviews (and you will), there won't be any "I think" or "I feel" kind of blather, but critical analysis focused on the merits and concerns in the work. Essays will attack alternate arguments and expound logically on where they stand.
In short, we're building professional writing here, one letter at a time.
These "apprentices" may not get where I think they should be, but they're surely going somewhere interesting, and I'm going along too.
Here, in the future, we appreciate you riding with us.
"It's been a long, a long time coming
but I know
a change gon' come
oh yes it will"
-- Sam Cooke
July 2008
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