I consume interviews, podcasts, and articles of my beloved authors to reside in their mind for a little while. The itch to understand their process germinates from a place of curiosity, a need to talk to the authors as people more than creators of their work. To look at them as a friend, stranger, sister, mother or the myriad of other roles they occupy.
This pull towards writing and literature in particular is influenced by my undergraduate degree and my habitual tendency to scribble in my notebooks. This medium has always come easy to me, a method I often opted throughout the years instead of vocalising my thoughts. As years passed by I realised that the worth of either of the mediums does not trump the other. What I intended to communicate is what matters. Having ingested this slow burn realisation, I began to write more freely and read more wider.
In the second year of my degree, I came across the writings of Ocean Vuong. I stumbled upon his interview with Krista Tipett. Ocean’s words in his readings and talks haunted my mind. His novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous fundamentally breaks the conventions of novel writing. Conflict, what is an essential driver of a novel, hailed as the most important crescendo of the writing structure was omitted from his book. Utilising the Kishōtenketsu method, his book broke certain accepted “rules” employed to curate a successful novel. This experiment was a conscious one.
Coming across Vuong’s work inspired me to unlearn the learned and break conventional ways of executing work. Now, I tend to see experimenting as a crucial part of life and not just of cultural production.