Mixed Race at the Crossroads
Revision requires a sharp delete key. Like sculpting, the act of removing is the creative act. However, I’m not ready to put my main characters on death-row for my own capital crimes. Cutting Otis’s narrative has meant cutting 20,000 words of my best writing and a Black male protagonist’s voice. Here I explore my processes of decision making involving craft, history, and my place in current discourses on race. Then I explicate a scene in which Otis is also at a crossroads.