Beginning right away in 2015, I am going to turn over a new leaf for a new year. This newness will be manifested in the form of a New Year’s Resolution. I recognize that many of you will chuckle and think that it will last, maybe, through the month of January and like most other resolutions be forgotten. And I must admit that is usually what has happened in the past. In previous years when I pledged to lose a few pounds I never did, or when I swore off ice cream or some other tempting delicacy, that always failed. But this resolution is much different; it is a commitment to dedicate more of my time and effort to teaching young Black boys, girls, and sometimes adults, the craft for writing good stories. This might be in the form of fiction or creative non-fiction.

My commitment begins in earnest on January 30, 2015 at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities, in Eatonville, Florida. I, along with New York writer Petra Lewis and Chicago author Tony Lindsay, with assistance from D. L. Grant and kYmberly Keeton, will conduct a two-day writing workshop for boys and girls in grades 8 through 11. We have young writers coming from Brooklyn, Chicago, Silver Spring, Maryland, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston and San Antonio who will participate in this first of its kind workshop. Not only will these young folks get some of the best training in creative writing from some real professionals, they will also have the opportunity to visit the Zora Neale Hurston Museum, walk down the main street of the oldest Black incorporated city in the country, and visit with the artists who will be displaying their art work along a four block corridor of booths. The stories that they write will be edited and published in an anthology by Prosperity Publications at the end of the year.

My commitment will continue in earnest in April, when I do a brief two-hour writing seminar at the Dr. Rosie Milligan’s Black Writers on Tour in Los Angeles, California. Instead of children, however, I will be working with adults who have the creative ability, but lack the skills that come from studying the craft. Obviously in two hours I cannot conduct a comprehensive study, but can only stimulate their interest to learn the craft before they publish a book.

Throughout the summer of 2015, I will conduct a number of writing workshops with the young people here in San Antonio, Texas at the Carver Public Library.  D. L. Grant, Branch Manager at the Carver, and I are dedicated to the proposition that states: “Reach One and Teach One.” However, we plan to extend that one to twenty.

With my New Year’s Resolution still intact, it is my goal to work closely with the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and conduct a writing workshop for the young in the St. Louis, Missouri area, during the organizations national convention in August.

I make these commitments because I firmly believe that our youth must begin to master the art of writing, because with writing comes reading, and with reading comes a better understanding one’s heritage; and with a better understanding of one’s heritage comes a more productive person, who will ultimately become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, teacher and numerous other professions, instead of a victim of this system, which this past year has proven it can be very dangerous and destructive to our young.