left

NEWS

3.13.2008

excerpt from an interview published in Textfield V

Stuart Bailey
...I might argue that an aspect of the modernism your publishing circumscribes is the very lack of any agenda or expectations, only a set of moral working principles, and that it's precisely this lack of presumption that breathes life into the work. Is it important to maintain a sense of unknowing, of making it up as you go along? Have you ever felt your work was becoming too predictable or out of breath?

Robin Kinross
Yes and more often recently. To do fresh work, as we're saying, you need to step back and pause. Then something different can happen. It's perhaps what distinguishes mere journalism or "journeyman work" from more substantial writing or production. As a writer, eventually you reach some point where the words just pour out without difficult, as fast as you can type them. To write for a living, which usually means writing journalism you need to reach this state. But this is dangerous, because of the risk that you start to 'run on empty'-repeat ideas, phrases, formulatons. Or you just become a machine for rehashing given material: putting pieces together out of quotes from people that you phone or meet.

Labels: Robin Kinross, Stuart Bailey, Textfield