LONGWOOD WRITERS WORKSHOP

— By Denise Nicholas

At the Dining Room Table

My pursuit of the writing life began when I was a working actor on the ABC-TV series ROOM 222. There were a number of Black characters on the show, but no Black writers. I began pitching story ideas to our producer, the late Gene Reynolds during my second season on the series. I wasn’t able to get in that door.

At that time, I don’t know if I was able to articulate my passion, my belief in the necessity of there being Black writers at the writing table. I was a young actress with dreams of writing. It seemed so natural to me that we be there. Women have struggled for years in Hollywood to get momentum behind the camera – as writers, directors, techs. I was one of many.

When I joined the cast of the TV drama, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT some years later, once again there were many Black characters in the show’s story lines but no Black writers on staff. I decided to push. I stormed into Producer-Actor-Writer Carroll O’Connor’s office nearly screaming that I’d had about enough of this no Black writers nonsense. Carroll and his wife Nancy were pals of mine before I joined the cast so I felt comfortable being very honest with him.

I pitched a story idea, and Carroll bought it on the spot. I was stunned. That’s power! He’d chuckled at my fury, but he stepped up. My first writing success came that day, and the idea I pitched was the story of the first Black woman who’d tried to register to vote in Sparta, MS, the fictional town where the show takes place. The door I’d been pushing against finally budged. I wrote six scripts for that show, but my dream was to write a novel.

Back in Los Angeles at the show’s end, I was more determined than ever to write a novel of the Civil Rights Movement. The idea of writing a fictionalized account of that time had implanted itself in my brain and hadn’t budged no matter what else I did. I’d written about 20 pages of notes and had a nebulous idea of a story. The gods smiled when my PR lady, Beverly Magid told me about author/teacher Janet Fitch’s writing workshop. Janet was high flying on the success of her novel, White Oleander. I presented my pages to Janet, and she accepted me. My novel, Freshwater Road was born in Janet’s workshop. I’d finally maneuvered myself into the space I’d dreamed of being in – a published writer with some fabulous reviews.

When you carry a dream around as long as I carried the Freshwater dream and it finally comes true, you may suffer with a bout of the big head. The long hours, the sweat and pain of doing the work disappears. You forget what it took to get you there because it’s so sweet when you cross that finish line. I rested on my laurels perhaps a bit too long.

Finally, I settled down and began putting fingers to keys and pens to paper. I decided to set up a writing workshop, to meet at my dining room table every other Saturday. Janet Fitch had been a brilliant teacher/writing coach, drumming the craft of writing into our heads in her workshop. I’d taken notes like crazy. I wanted to spread that knowledge to those who wanted to write or were flirting seriously with that thought. I went about assembling a group of folks including creatives I’d known since my days in the Negro Ensemble Company in NYC and one or two who seemed to be gyrating in the same way I was with the same questions: to write or not to write? To write a script, a novel, a memoir? What will it mean in the whole scheme of things? The questions never stop. The group stayed the course and so here we are, The Longwood Writers Workshop.

We went to work on craft – writing the senses, finding verbs that push the action forward, varying sentence lengths, every single sentence, every paragraph, every page has a beginning, middle and ending. We began to practice my favorite Janet note: keep all the balls in the air at the same time! It definitely takes practice.

We gathered at my dining room table on a late Saturday morning in Spring 2018. We made it through the lock downs via ZOOM then regathered when things opened again. We have carried on and the fruits of the work are here.

Denise Nicholas
July 2024