![]() It’s within writing that you are forced to unlock doors that you have closed, to unveil yourself to yourself, to examine things you skim through and gloss over because, as you put them down, they ring a false note. And then I say to myself, ‘Ah, Lewis, you too must try and avoid those pitfalls’. How I learn from criticism and how I apply it to my work is when I read about the kinds of writing that I am interested in, the people who are impressive to me, and then their weaknesses are sometimes pinpointed. I don’t learn very much from critics writing about my work. The tension between inside and outside – it is out of that that the work comes. To create art you need to put your imagination together so that it does not run wild when shaping your work. Source: Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970-1995 You have to remove all the problems that prevent people from sitting down, reading the books, appreciating them and developing their own writing. Miriam Tlali on the difficulties of writing in South Africa: Listen if you are in a taxi listen to the way people speak, not just to what they say. I always tell writers who want advice to listen. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |