Back to Blogging
It is going to be a long weekend, so what better way to begin it than by blogging. I have been itching to blog again without announcing anything happening in the book world. Just to blog (like I used to do before I knew I had an audience), to pour myself out without necessarily being too autobiographical...without being too personal.
I was never trained to associate my writing with the personal. My writing in the Zimbabwean education system was always associated with something serious, academic, and anything personal seemed and sounded informal, non-academic. I had to learn to begin to share personal experience in graduate school in the USA, because everyone was talking about what a wife, a husband, an uncle....a dog...had done, and for the first time I was sitting there feeling bad for those spouses who were being dissected in the classroom; then it dawned on me that such material could be useful, and I started going a little personal, and personal became, slowly, anything to do with Zimbabwe, with Africa...as if by making a reference to something uniquely Zimbabwean, I was taking personal responsibility for such a reference...then I read the post-colonialists (who I was expected to know somehow), and I began to speak for the subaltern...got serious about the issue of representation, met (in New York City), a couple of the leading post-colonial theorists, felt validated (in one case), discouraged (in another). But things had become personally and culturally personalized...almost beyond redemption, which is to say, in a few cases I would even mention my mother in the classroom, an elder brother in an essay, and I could even say what village I grew up in!
It is going to be a long weekend. Labor Day weekend, which means no school on Monday. That's an extra day to assign more hours to editing, writing, reading (reviewing). A Munyori issue seems overdue (to the writers, at least; and that matters). It feels overdue sometimes, but I never like the idea of putting out an issue just because it's due. Rephrasing...: I only publish if I think I have enough interesting works in as many categories as possible. Munyori used to be a poetry journal,so I receive, it receives, truckloads of poetry. Short stories are picking up, but I also need reviews, essays, personal things like memoirs, or memoirish essays. But I think we'll go to press on September 20 without covering all the categories. Most editors tell me they are flooded with submissions; at Munyori we are not flooded, and it fits the way we work; we do a lot of other things, so if we don't publish an issue it will only be due to inadequate high-quality submissions in some key categories, not because we are swamped. Knock on wood...right?
It's going to be a long weekend. I could see the excitement in my students; and that's a good thing, because when they come back things will get busier. I have some grading to do already, but of mostly of diagnostic, and early mini essays. I will have time then to do other things: family things, then some reading, editing, writing, reviewing. I need to review Together and Where to Now? by amabooks; Far from Home by Na'ima B. Robert, the Butterfily Heart by Paula Leyden. There are more titles too....
I just received Making Shapely Fiction, a guide to fiction writing I will use for my UC Davis fiction workshop starting on September 29. It looks like a great guide. Writers need great guides...they do. Well, that felt like a blog. Have a nice weekend, everybody.
I was never trained to associate my writing with the personal. My writing in the Zimbabwean education system was always associated with something serious, academic, and anything personal seemed and sounded informal, non-academic. I had to learn to begin to share personal experience in graduate school in the USA, because everyone was talking about what a wife, a husband, an uncle....a dog...had done, and for the first time I was sitting there feeling bad for those spouses who were being dissected in the classroom; then it dawned on me that such material could be useful, and I started going a little personal, and personal became, slowly, anything to do with Zimbabwe, with Africa...as if by making a reference to something uniquely Zimbabwean, I was taking personal responsibility for such a reference...then I read the post-colonialists (who I was expected to know somehow), and I began to speak for the subaltern...got serious about the issue of representation, met (in New York City), a couple of the leading post-colonial theorists, felt validated (in one case), discouraged (in another). But things had become personally and culturally personalized...almost beyond redemption, which is to say, in a few cases I would even mention my mother in the classroom, an elder brother in an essay, and I could even say what village I grew up in!
It is going to be a long weekend. Labor Day weekend, which means no school on Monday. That's an extra day to assign more hours to editing, writing, reading (reviewing). A Munyori issue seems overdue (to the writers, at least; and that matters). It feels overdue sometimes, but I never like the idea of putting out an issue just because it's due. Rephrasing...: I only publish if I think I have enough interesting works in as many categories as possible. Munyori used to be a poetry journal,so I receive, it receives, truckloads of poetry. Short stories are picking up, but I also need reviews, essays, personal things like memoirs, or memoirish essays. But I think we'll go to press on September 20 without covering all the categories. Most editors tell me they are flooded with submissions; at Munyori we are not flooded, and it fits the way we work; we do a lot of other things, so if we don't publish an issue it will only be due to inadequate high-quality submissions in some key categories, not because we are swamped. Knock on wood...right?
It's going to be a long weekend. I could see the excitement in my students; and that's a good thing, because when they come back things will get busier. I have some grading to do already, but of mostly of diagnostic, and early mini essays. I will have time then to do other things: family things, then some reading, editing, writing, reviewing. I need to review Together and Where to Now? by amabooks; Far from Home by Na'ima B. Robert, the Butterfily Heart by Paula Leyden. There are more titles too....
I just received Making Shapely Fiction, a guide to fiction writing I will use for my UC Davis fiction workshop starting on September 29. It looks like a great guide. Writers need great guides...they do. Well, that felt like a blog. Have a nice weekend, everybody.
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