kwani? kommentary: presentation on craft: singing your own song

hello world

this is the presentation im making this morning

got some kwani kommentary to make but im
going to find a internet cafe to do it cause

this hotel business center is expensive
will do that later today

be well:

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thankyou for inviting me

i was here 2002 and my fondest memories was meeting binyavanga and the kwani? folk

so im tickled to be back and seeing kwani and meeting more of kenyas literary folk

being asked to speak on advanced perspectives on craft
is kinda intimidating cause i man struggling with craft everyday

by the time you become what im calling a mature writer your concept of craft has become very individualized. mostly id say that the advanced perspective on craft boils down to the attitude you bring to the work

of craft itself all i can speak on is the lifelong attempt to master it.

you cant just assume you will figure it out as you go along, you must go out there and master it. there is no greater struggle for the would be writer, for the aspiring scribe tin the house of life than the lifelong struggle to master craft

been doing this 30 odd years now and its still a daily struggle to become a better craftsperson.

you don’t get there unless you have gone through a lot of deadends, a lot of bad pages

a friend of mine once told me one of the most useful things anybody ever told me

aisha rahman, playwright,

i once said to her that i wanted to be the greatest novelist that ever lived

she said that’s not what you want art, she said you want to sing your song

the best you can sing it, then you can appreciate other folk singing theirs

that’s been one of the most helpful things ive ever heard as a young writer,

not only did it keep me from being jealous of my friends when they made it or

when they wrote good stuff, or getting lost trying to get other folks styles
but its gotten me in the habit of listening to my own song

thats the key struggle of any writer, developing their own voice,

being attuned to your own literary song.. trusting your own literary instinct
.

which basically means that you comfortable breaking the rules,

this is how you gain your own distinctive voice
when you learn to trust your own rules of the literary road

you grow by trying to master the licks of writers that impress you
there was a time when everything i did sounded like bad marquez

but you dont want to stay there and become derivative
you just want to add their licks to your own repetoire

also you want to learn to listen to your projects cause every book demands its own voice,

it’s the story you telling that tells you what kind of narrative licks a piece will demand

another friend of mine, george saunders, once said that its in following your mistakes

that you find new ground,

ive heard jazz musicians say some of their best licks came from some mistake they made

that they heard something new in and they tried that mistake over and over again on purpose

until they made in it something new and wonderful, until it lead them into new and higher ground

novel, the name of the form, novel new and seminal, covering new cultural ground
adding something new to the literary line - to human understanding 
trusting your own literary instinct only comes from years of crunching it

often without the outside world valuing it

but you cant let the outside worlds valuation of you as a writer influence your own

specially if you forging new ground, the world will tell you you cant do that

but you write whats inside you to write, say whats inside you to say and

you write it so good it cannot be denied

and it would be nice to get published and get paid

but that aint whats driving you, whats driving you is the need to see this work happen

when you young you have to get trained, you cant go but so far on heart

there is a trajectory for serious writers, you start off with heart, then you learn craft and for a minute you just a technician and then you move back into heart but with all these new skilz

but you cant get lost and stay a technician, once you learn the rules you abandon them

young writers generally don’t have the control.

you have to master the rules before you break them with the control that identifies mature work.. another friend of mine once told me anything you can control, control it.

for instance african american writers like wideman or gayle jones

will have multiple voices and povs in the same sentence much less the same paragraph

and have done it so well that the critics gave it a name - the speakerly text. 

for instance when im writing raw manuscript my tenses sprawl all over the place,

and folk say you got to fix that - but i like my tenses sprawling, give me more room to play

so what i have to do is go in there and make sure that its controlled, that there is a pattern,

that its doing something disciplined and controlled in the text.

i make sure it works for me, that’s controlling it.

but when your tenses sprawl because you don’t know they shouldn’t that’s lack of craft. 

young writers follow the rules, but the mature writer who follows the rules is a weak writer

but now when you wandering around on literary ground nobody else has ever covered

you have to believe in yourself, you have to believe in your godgiven talent, you got to keep the faith, not matter what the world says

most of you will end up slaving in the vineyards,
and the vineyards will winnow out the weak hearted

you want to be a writer you got to be hardheaded and obsessive about it,
you just cant take a no.

was recently reading this book called 13 ways of looking at the novel

said the primary determinate of who was successful at being a writer

was the absolute determination to be one. 

you got to show that determination in life if you want to be a writer,

you got to bust the move, if you need to move to nairobi, do it,

if you need to move to newyork, do it

but most of all you can never give up, giving up is the only fatal move

also you have to be attuned to the times.

fiction has been transformed by the advent of media

and if we want to retain our cultural primacy we to to deal with that.

this media saturated generation processes information differently from my own

and future generations will even more so

doctorow did a piece in the nytimes series on writers

where he said that contemporary fiction devalues exposition and transitions

cause contemporary readers an mtv generation, used to following MTV cuts and multitasking

you can write those longwinded plodding narrations if you want,
the critics might love it but future generations wont read it,
they will start multitasking on you.

better get to some hypernarration if you want to be competitive in the media saturated future

im a stylist and i often dont trust my work

cause it so often doesn’t look like a novel supposed to look,

but ive come to trust my literary instinct,

and i have learned it does my literary heart good to take chances

when you a mature writer craft is subsumed to vision and literary sensibility

that intimate connection to the human condition that understands the significant
that instinct for whats true and important, whats truly significant.

here is where we, the writers of the black world, have the advantage.

mainstream writers they have to search for things to write about

and often end up literary techinicians without heart

you want desperately to be competent and even masterful literary technicians

but if that’s all your work is about you’ve lost the way.

you want to write work that means something, work that counts,

work that speaks from your heart to the readers.heart

i tell young writers all the time, a novel that dont cost you emotionally

is probably not worth writing. 

you want to be a writer whose passionate about his or her work,

you want to be a writer with a mission.

african american writers are fortunate in this regard, we were born with a mission.

same thing i assume with kenyan writers,

this is not some abstract endeavor where you can write any old thing,

it is too important to our lives, the lives our of people

the future of our generations and the culture that has nurtured you.

your works mean something,

along the lines joyce refers to in portrait when he says he goes to meet life to

‘forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscious of my race.”

my mentor, john o killens, used to say the more important that you have to say

the more obligated you are to say it well.

for all its cost me over the years i love being a writer,
and choosing to give it all i had to give is one of the best decisions i ever made in my life. 
if you feel like you got it in you to writer, go for it with everything you got

master craft and go beyond

i am not comfortable that i can give you something about the advanced perspectives on craft,

depends on how im feeling that day, sometimes i feel like a master, sometimes i feel like i fool

but i have never given the word anything less than my very best.

and in return the word has been good to me.

i like feeling like im making a contribution to the human condition,

to human destiny.

i consider literature a sacred calling,
writers are creators, gods assistants on the planet,
and if you would be a god you must be a worthy god.

advanced craft moves beyond craft into vision

work that matters, work that means something

may the god of literature be good to you.

may the gods be good to us all.

thankyou.

that is all

Comments

[DORIS]

REALLY LIKE TO TALK WITH YOU ONLY IF YOU WOULD PLEASE E-MAIL ME BACK AS SOON AS YOU CAN . I READ YOUR PROFILE LAST NIGHT AN WAS VERY GLAD , I CAME ACROSS IT.