A story about writing
Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Nov 15/00) - They came to hear about the art of writing.
The setting: Sunday, a little past 4 p.m. in the Yellowknife Library's meeting room. There, tables formed some unknown geometric shape, a striking contrast to the cakes sliced up in perfect squares on the counter. Off to one side was a coffee maker, half full.
The quest: To find the secret to the perfect sentence.
The protagonist: Rukhsana Khan, award winning Canadian children's writer and a motley crew of Yellowknife writers.
The antagonist: The elusive muse, inspiration.
And so began the search for inspiration in a bare meeting room with no windows.
Someone set a tape recorder on the table just before Khan began recounting how she hunts for inspiration. So how does it happen? Where does one go to find it?
For Khan it's in her right ear. Inspiration whispers to her, tells her the words.
Born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1962, Khan came to Canada when she was three and she's always wanted to be a writer. She's written five books and is working on a sixth.
Her prose writing often falls into poetry.
Before she speaks the table falls silent except for the hum of the tape player. She opens her mouth.
Digression: Perhaps a little background is needed. Writers love to make sweeping statements, and this is one. Inspiration is a writer's best friend and worst enemy if they can't find it. Some, especially at the start, look for it everywhere. Whenever an establish writer appears others clamour around to touch a piece of the cloak (metaphorically).
Khan is in mid delivery, she's talking about characters and how they materialize. "I don't know how characters come out," she says. A collective disappointed sigh floats up like a cartoon bubble over everyone's heads.
But then the money sentence comes from Khan: "Let go of your conscious thoughts and allow yourself to create," she says.
A slow gasp flows up but is quickly lost in sudden talk of agents and marketing. It becomes clear at the end when Khan -- who just spent the last four days reading to school kids in Inuvik and Yellowknife on a book tour - finally reveals the secret to writing, the new antagonist: marketing.
