Working in 3D environments allows me to have a lot more latitude in how I create my projects, but it actually creates a much harder editing process. Since entire scenes are scripted and key-framed you can endlessly revisit and modify everything. In a sort of post-photographic sense, it’s like having a perpetual decisive moment. I’m working with virtual cameras and lighting quite often, and it is a major challenge to pare down the process to best fit the goals of the project.

I revise the book, and then a few other people read it, and then there is a master document listing all of the things that have to be revised. And then those are broken out, and the book is printed out in various ways. I don’t know if you’ve ever used that function on the printer, where you can do four pages to a sheet or six pages to a sheet. I’ll often read things I write in very small font, to get an overview of them. And then I’ll print them out in really big font, and look at them that way.

I actually really love editing poetry. It’s my favorite part. I love how you can change just one word and it suddenly elevates the line or even the whole poem. When I’m writing poetry, I’m looking and reading through and I’m really interrogating each word and trying to figure out: Is this the best word? Is this exactly what I’m trying to say at this moment? And I do a lot of reading aloud because cadence and rhythm are really important to me. I try to feel where the lines are sitting or where the stresses are, where the hits and the rhythm are. I also like to use those read-aloud functions on the computer because I feel like if it can still sound somewhat bearable with this monotone voice reading it, then that’s probably going to be alright—it’s the final test.

Sometimes I like things I’ve written, but usually, when I’m revising it, I’m appalled by incoherence, wordiness, lack of specificity, boredom, like many other stylistic and material sins. It can get very dreary. I have revision techniques that can usually work to combat those errors.

This process has also involved slowing down and refusing a certain amount of labor that has been imposed upon me as a Black woman in this country.

It’s really a kind of roadmap or a record. It’s breadcrumbs in the forest. It’s like the hieroglyphic on the wall. It’s me attempting to code some sort of roadmap that helps us think and act our way out of these conditions.

Visibility doesn’t equal power.

So I’m listening, I’m watching, and I’m also reading while I’m making.

One of my biggest disappointments: I used to take piano lessons as a young girl, and then I stopped, because I was having a really difficult year as a kid. My step father had died, and I didn't want to do anything -- so I just stopped taking lessons. And then I think back and I'm like, “Damn, I could have been Nina Simone!” Haha

I work on other things. There's usually more than one project brewing. I also write. I also listen to talks; I love listening to black feminist thinkers or listening to people read their poetry. What I try to do is fill my arsenal. I'll put this shit down or I'll pick something else up. Like some days, I just take whole days where I "play," and that's where I'll only do production stuff.