The Art of Holding on to Your Stories
A view from Chisiya Hill; photo by Ken Wilson. The home surrounded by the brush fence belongs to my sister-in-law, my Maiguru. The road passing by connects many places, but its span here, from that little hill to Mototi Primary school several kilometers down is our piece of road. We walked on it on our way to school; it knows us, and we know it . The advice we often get is that writers should learn to let go of their work, to reach a point when we consider the draft done, when any additional changes we make would affect the art. This is good advice, but I am just not able to follow it. As long as I still have my draft, even after working on it for ten years, I will always find words to replace, sentences to tinker with, ideas to add. It is an opportunity to determine the work's future through further editing and revision, to make it say what it wants to say in the best way possible, and often, even after numerous revisions, the work may stil...