When I'm working, I'm so narrowly focused on sound, language, rhythm, flow, that I rarely feel the emotion of the text. It's only after - long after - I've finished a piece that I can experience in any way its emotional charge.
Interpretation
The creative process can sometimes obscure the emotional depth of one's work until it is completed.
In this quote, Taiye Selasi reflects on the nature of her artistic process, emphasizing how her intense focus on the technical aspects of writing—like sound and rhythm—can detach her from the emotional resonance of her work. It is only once she steps away from the piece that she can truly appreciate the feelings and emotions embedded within it, highlighting a common experience among artists where the act of creation can lead to temporary disconnection from its emotional impact.
In practice
An author might use this quote during a workshop about the writing process to encourage others about the journey of creating art.
I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they're incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate, it's that it's incomplete.
I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.
Cooking is just a vehicle to express yourself, like painting and acting... The reason why we're cooking is not because we want to put something on the plate. It's so much more complex than that.
O why do I ever let anyone read what I write! Every time I have to go through a breakfast with a letter of criticism I swear I will write for my own praise or blame in future. It is a misery.
Dancing is the poetry of the foot.
I believe that good television should be challenging and frustrating and maddening and thrilling. If you just want to see people who look like you and think like you and do what you would do in any given situation, you'd have to stop looking at TV and start looking in a mirror. But would that be as much fun?
I don't want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation, you use the colors you feel, and sometimes they are fake colors. But always it's to show one emotion.
I try to tell the best story, and the story that has some heart and some genuine terror and some social commentary and some comedy and some romance and some sex and some violence.
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