Karin Schimke (photo: Izak de Vries)
Karin Schimke chats to Naomi Meyer about a writing workshop in Stanford.
Karin, you won the Ingrid Jonker prize for poetry. Please tell our readers a bit more about yourself?
Once upon a time I was a political journalist, but I’ve been working for myself since 2000. I write. I translate. I edit fiction. I work as a Plain English editor on big projects where the writers have lots of knowledge, but struggle to write in a way that conveys information in a straightforward way. I help people to begin writing. I help them to find direction. I teach. My work is very varied.
You’ll be presenting a writing course in Stanford soon. Who will present the course with you?
The writer Rahla Xenopolous. She started presenting workshops for writers in the old barn behind the little house she and her husband own in Stanford. She is an excellent hostess and course leader. She makes everyone feel comfortable and safe.
I met Rahla about fifteen years ago on a writing course. After years of journalism I wanted to start writing more creatively again. She was there because a friend of hers didn’t want to go alone. Since then she has written three books: A Memoir of Love and Madness (which has just been reprinted), Bubbles and TRIBE. Rahla never thought she would become a writer and didn’t do well at school as a result of undiagnosed bipolar disorder. I think her amazement at how writing was one of the things that saved her life makes her a wonderful writing coach – completely ego-free when it comes to other people’s writing. “Ego-free” is a key element to writing coaching. The writer’s ego can be a bit rough for new writers to deal with sometimes.
Is this course for poets or writers of fiction?
The course is for anyone who wants to write anything. On this particular course I am focusing on metaphor: how you see it, make it and don’t overdo it. But while people will hopefully learn something new about how to make their writing sharper and more image-laden – and also how to observe in such a way that you realise that metaphor-making is second nature to most people – you also write an enormous amount.
Some people will be writing for the first time in their lives. Others want to begin or finish a short story. Some write songs or poems “by accident”. Others work on characters in books they’re busy with. At the end of the weekend – at the end of any course I present – participants have something they didn’t have before: many, many, many pages full of words. Sometimes it’s just raw material, which we all need, and sometimes it’s something that just needs an edit before it is ready for submission.
If you look at the people who were on the course where I met Rahla all those years ago – Rahla herself, Kiki Theo, who has become successful as a writer of personal finance books, Margie Orford, Tracey Farren, whose book Whiplash has just been made into a movie, Christine Muller Coates – then you realise how important such workshops are. Not one of those writers was well-known before that course.
Do you think most people want to write? Can most people in fact write?
“To write” means different things for every adult – and I am speaking specifically about adults now; children are a different story – who ever wanted to, or has, written. If you’ve had a reasonable education and can write words, then you can write. It may not be something people want to read and it won’t necessarily be published, but to assume that every person who wants to write wants to be read or published is a mistake. On that level: yes, just about anyone can write, often must write – it’s an urge, a need. Anyone can put words on paper to give expression to something.
The question of whether many people “can write” means something else: Can many people write things that communicate effectively, that convey something new to the reader? Can many people become successful writers like Zukiswa Wanner, Chanette Paul or Lauren Beukes?
It depends on other things: Are you prepared to listen to criticism, to be rejected, to carry on, to try to write better and better sentences or lines or stanzas? It takes a certain kind of doggedness and there are people who like writing, but would prefer to channel that kind of doggedness into other parts of their lives.
To answer more directly: when people decide they want to write, the “can” comes from the “doing”. And doing and doing and doing again and redoing and carrying on doing.
The jackpot question: Does everybody simply have it? In other words: will it benefit everybody to attend this writing weekend?
Over the years I have read and heard work by writers that starts off boring, unoriginal and cliché-ridden; work that does little to breach the abyss between what’s going on in the writer’s mind and how the reader experiences it in a meaningful way. But they have been determined to communicate something and they keep trying until they achieve something worthwhile.
So I don’t know whether “talent” is the right word. An attunement, a sensitivity for the written word, yes, surely. But writing success – success in the sense of getting positive feedback by being published – is often about tenacity, determination, "hair on your teeth".
But, as I said earlier, “success” is not the only reason people write. You usually get what you need from a writing workshop or course. And often you don’t know beforehand what you need.
In my work I have never explicitly focused on writing workshops, but there is such a demand for them that I’ve decided to present private writing workshops from next year. Until now each of my courses has been designed around a need – for school children, students, administrative staff at companies who need guidance on writing better reports and e-mails, for people busy with manuscripts, people who want to write poetry. I adapt. But from next year I’ll be working in a more focused way and begin presenting privately too. My first workshop – for a tiny group – happens in January.
Incidentally, language is not an issue on these workshops. I speak English because it’s what most people understand, but people on my courses have written in Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Swedish, French, German and Afrikaans.
When is a poem a good poem? How would you know?
This specific course in Stanford is not about value judgments on the writing at all.
One of my other courses – the one I am presenting in January – is specifically aimed at establishing what a good poem is and to try and write one. I begin with “What is a bad poem?”. You have to write lots of bad poems to get to the good ones and you can’t spot a good poem unless you know what a bad one is.
But that course – which is called “What if a poem were a house?” – is not what the Stanford weekend is about. This weekend is about spotting metaphor and exploiting it to give your writing brio and life. And it’s also just about writing.
Is it a good idea to write with other people? Is writing not something you should do on your own?
To write with others is a treat. I’m suddenly thinking of that Garfield joke, something along the lines of “Eating is social, but when you diet, you diet alone.” People who take writing seriously spend most of their writing time alone. And you can’t edit well surrounded by other people. But it’s an absolute pleasure now and again to sit quietly and write with other writers.
The course leader gives you ideas or prompts that you’re not expecting and sometimes don’t like, but in the silence you’re forced to try something because everyone else is quietly sitting and writing.
What everyone says after a course like this is how they were forced to do writing they would not have done on their own, and how surprised they are – and sometimes also overwhelmed and emotional – by what emerged on the page.
Writing is a lonely endeavour, but every so often one has an opportunity to write with others and it is simply an enormous pleasure. On top of which, you get to know new people – and writers’ networks are as important as talent and determination.
What should people expect from this particular weekend?
Writing. Writing, writing, writing. You’re going to write a lot.
Rahla’s garden is beautiful, her coffee is good, lunches are really something special and the food we eat at La Trattoria on Saturday night is some of the best Italian food I’ve ever eaten in South Africa. Those are the fun social aspects.
But the weekend is about writing and you will write pages full. There are people who go regularly to try to finish a book, and others who go to try writing for the first time and often end up writing more in one weekend than they did during their entire teenage writing phase.
Why do you write? Why do you read?
I read because it pulls me off my own comfortable thought circuits. It simultaneously makes the world larger than I would ever be able to experience on my own in my limited lifetime, and smaller in the sense that it connects me to others’ thoughts and dreams and experiences and therefore makes me more human and maybe also, hopefully, keeps me humble.
I write because I don’t know how else to comprehend the world, how else to experience it, to try to understand, to make meaning of it, than to write.
Please discuss practicalities of the weekend?
The writing weekend in Stanford on 19 and 20 November costs R2 000, which includes the workshop, tea, coffee and cake, and lunch. You can book by e-mailing Rahla at stanfordwriters@gmail.com. She’ll be able to send you accommodation ideas. Stanford is a lovely little town which offers all kinds of affordable accommodation. Supper at La Trattoria is not included. All you need for the workshop is a pen and paper.
You can mail me too at karinschimke@gmail.com for information about this workshop or any of my private workshops.
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