Day Three of Together We Will Attempt to Write A Book About Tuscaloosa


The idea was that there would be two groups. And each group would take the material we had generated in the first two classes and then together make a long piece. The groups were to ask themselves this as they did this...

What could this book about Tuscaloosa say?
How could it say it?
What are its alliances? Who is it written for?

And also think about the balance between systemic critique (as distinct from complaint) and celebration/uplift.

And also at some point the long piece should admit somehow who the writers are (we were a room full of people who had spent no more than 5 years in Tuscaloosa and that felt very important to all of us).

I thought this would take an hour. But it took two.
And then we heard the pieces. And that took another 45 minutes. They were great to hear and I really liked hearing them.

And then we discussed what we might be able to do next. But it felt as if time was running out. Actually, time was running out. So we discussed what we might do if we had time. What discussions we might have.

I should also note that the first day of the workshop no one talked. We all just grabbed prompts and wrote.

And then the second day of the workshop, we all wrote on the same prompt together and then heard what the others had written before we went on to the next prompt.