I recently finished Ancient, Ancient, Kiini Ibura Salaam’s award-winning short story collection. She was kind enough to take the time for a chat with me. Influence, writing teachers, and self-promotion–enjoy!

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The first thing I’m interested in asking about after reading Ancient, Ancient is music. Your work strikes me as having a real musicality about it–stories like “Desire” and “Of Wings, Nectar, & Ancestors” read like voices singing to each other. Can you say something about the relationship between your written words and sound?

I don’t feel like I “got” a piece I’m writing if I can’t get the rhythm of it. I’m not sure if the rhythm is always musical, but each story has it’s own rise and fall, rhythm and tone of sentence. Sometimes the rhythm is what gets me into the story, like “Desire”—I heard the rhythm of the story, well actually the rhythm of “Faru, Faru running through the bush” first, then I built the story from there. But in many cases, it takes multiple drafts to get to the rhythm. Sometimes it feels like I’m digging and digging trying to get down to the heart/bones of the thing. Any word will do, but only the right words will sing–will make the story slip like silk so that you’re not aware that words are carrying you though, you’re just aware of the rhythm and flow of the story and the tales it tells. It’s a very intuitive process because each story differs in the rhythm and tone it calls out for.

I do love music and I love lyrics. I post random song lyrics on Facebook a lot because I’m listening to music as I work and loving the feel of the words as they’re nestled inside the music. Something about that interplay is intriguing to me. You know what I think, I think I enjoy conveying more than the logic of the sentence. I enjoy conveying the feeling of the moment through word choice, of course, but also through the play of words, how they fit together and run on or stop short. When I haven’t achieved that, reading through my work is like hitting snag after snag. When I have, I just roll through the story feeling that, yes, I’ve conveyed this moment well.

I’m also wondering about influences–what you read, what you like, which writers you feel are good at “conveying the moment.” Such a boring typical-interview-question but I really do want to know. 🙂

I avoid this question like the plague. Partly because my memory is so bad and I don’t want to leave anyone out. It’s so embarrassing to draw a blank when asked a completely reasonable question, but I have the memory of a child–a thing is only on my mind as long as I’ve recently engaged with it, other than that, details, facts, even the value of things fade from memory. This includes books. I read mostly whatever I can get my hands on and whatever my book club is reading. I also collect books that I want to read or should read but usually don’t read because my free time is my novel writing time and my train commute time (when I would be reading) is my editing time.

I think I draw more influence from who writers are, their identities, how they make their way through the world, how they embody their unique voice–than looking at someone’s craft. You could pick 10 master writers and they would all do craft differently–yet they each have something to teach, no matter how close or how far their writing style is from yours. I actually think I absorb everything I read and if there is value there, I absorb it knowing that it will help inform my choices as a writer. I could rattle off a list of names of writers and/or books that stand out to me because of their voice and the depth and plushness of the writing, but are they influences? I don’t know.

Take Octavia Butler for example. Amazing, peerless writer who is not afraid to carry you into the darkness of the human condition. I am inspired by the depth of her intelligence and her unwavering eye in dissecting humanity, her ability to do social commentary, and the fierce hold she maintains once she has a reader in her clutches. I want to do all that with my writing, but I don’t think it makes any sense for me to emulate her to get there. Her writing, her craft is hers. I believe my journey–and the journey of all artists–is to learn how be you–to improve your expression of yourself, to burnish and strengthen your own unique voice. We’re all different facets of expression and I think good writing just inspires me to do better, pushes me to find a way to be a better version of myself–so I can one day be on par with amazing artists, rather than lust after the possibility of being like them. 

That’s such a great answer! And okay, can we talk more about this? Because I’m really curious about the question of influence. I’m the kind of person who can rattle off names (Michael Ondaatje, Marguerite Duras, Assia Djebar, etc etc forever), and let me tell you, those people are INFLUENCES. I mean influences to the point where I feel I’ve absorbed the rhythms of their writing–like those rhythms are now part of my DNA. But this doesn’t feel like emulation, although I also emulate those writers. It’s not like I sit down and think “Now I am going to write like X.” I agree with you that their craft is theirs. It still gets into me, though, through rereading–through adoration, really. Does that make sense to you? Or is your experience completely different?

This conversation is really pushing me to figure out my discomfort with this question. I think the truth is we don’t really know what all that influences us. I mean we’d like to say that the things we like influence us, but in could also be the things we sort of like, not the things we adore. Case in point, last year I (I think it was last year), I read Wildwood by Colin Meloy. It was a fun rambunctious read (I talk about it briefly here as part of my January “pleasures.”) Fast forward to this year when I’ve been challenged to write a story for the upcoming Long Hiddenanthology for Crossed Genres. I was influence by the film Faubourg Treme to do something around the civil rights movement–of which there are many. The common history suggests there was slavery, Jim Crow, then Civil Rights, when actually there were multiple civil rights struggles—it’s been a long cyclical journey. In that film, it talks about black people integrating horse and buggies, then the streetcars in New Orleans, and it talks about the organizing and social disobedience around Plessy v. Ferguson. So I do some research, identify a time period and historical figure I want to write about and then a writer friend shares a term “calenture,” it’s a fever/delirious state that sailors suffered from where they imagined the sea was the earth and they plunged to their deaths (at least that’s how my friend defined it). Then that gave birth to the character I used and this alternate plane she created that was a suspended stretch of rolling land. She’s a swamp witch who, when she goes down to earth, has these swashbuckling adventures–I decided to make it swashbuckling because if the maritime roots of the word calenture. It’s possible that I drew from Wildwood in imagining new adventures around every corner of the swamps because that is what happens inWildwood. But did I? I don’t know. But if you asked me to list my influences, I would list the things that I thought were uber-amazing and masterful, but it’s highly unlikely that those are the only things that influenced me. It’s like plucking out the bits of genetic code that we like and ignoring the others. The influences are vast, random, and spontaneous–I can still see and site random scenes from Tamora Pierce books that I read because I found them on the bookshelf at my job. Is she an influence? I actually wrote a story based on Marguerite Duras’ Malady of Death. I loved the destabilizing, urgent, but also disconnected nature of the narrative. I took it as a template to tell a story that was urgent but I was emotionally unprepared to get any closer to. There are iconic writers that move me–and I could tell you who they are–but is that the same as those that influence me and can I honestly say that I can pluck out the threads of who has influenced me and who hasn’t? I don’t believe I can.

I think I see what you mean… that it’s impossible to tease out what all your influences are, so you don’t feel comfortable naming any? Is that right?

Also–which story was inspired by The Malady of Death??

The story that was inspired by The Malady of Death is not spec fic and has not been published anywhere.

I kind of feel like when you answer that question, you’re really saying whose company you’d like to be in as an author rather than who your true influences are. You know?

Actually, that’s a new way of thinking about it for me! Do you mean it as in “I’d like to be put in the same category as these writers”? Or as in, “I’d love to hang out with them”? The people I consider influences are ones I’d LOVE to hang out with, but I don’t think we’d ever be put in the same category or regarded in the same way. (Note: I’d love to read your Malady of Death story!)

I guess I’m just saying that it’s more aspirational. As in, where I’d like to grow toward, my full realization of my writer self is akin to these people I’m naming.

I’ll be sure to let you know if I ever put my Malady of Death story out there. I’ve toyed with submitting it a few times. May go back to it and reread it and do something with it. I just never got it to the point where I was cutting the cord!

Let’s talk about some of the stories you have put out there. The stories “Of Wings, Nectar, & Ancestors,” “MalKai’s Last Seduction,” and “At Life’s Limits,” in Ancient, Ancient, appear to be linked–can you talk about that? What sort of world, or worldview, were you expressing with these stories? Have you written more about it?

The “Of Wings, Nectar, & Ancestors” trilogy was written during a time that I was doing a lot of traveling. “Of Wings, Nectar, & Ancestors” was my attempt to render what it felt like to be an intelligent being constrained by language barriers. I studied abroad in the Dominican Republic in college and before I became fluent, I had to fight to communicate. I felt like an alien so often while I was there–I think encountering another culture can make you hyper aware of your habits, attitudes, and customs, so the stories were a vehicle for me to mull over myself as foreign in another culture. Many of my stories were written while traveling and I can remember the time spent in another country as it is encapsulated in my stories.

I have actually written a prequel to those stories. I’ll have to put it out somewhere, sooner or later. It’s interesting, those are my oldest stories yet they really capture people’s imagination. Many people wanted to read more from “Pod Rendezvous,” but overwhelmingly, the stories readers most often say they want more of are those from that trilogy. One reviewer specifically said she thought I ended “Of Life’s Limits” too soon. She said it felt unfinished, like I had ended it just when it was beginning. At the time that I wrote it, that was the longest story I had ever written–certainly the longest of the three and I felt I had completed the arc of the three stories. Yet I keep hearing this desire for more, this suggestion that there ought to be more. Writing the prequel was fun. I enjoyed visiting younger versions of MalKai and WaLiLa, traveling to their home planet and showing what came before–giving a closer look at their culture. When I was putting together the prequel, I thought I was writing a novel–and perhaps I am–but I changed gears before I got too far into it and started working on the novel I’m writing now–Fate–which is not speculative, but it is touched by magic.

Can you say more about the novel?

Before I talk about the novel, I just need to take a second to reflect on the. I stopped working on it, but I realize in having this discussion there’s no reason for me to have stopped working on it. I had fun taking the imaginative ride to go into MalKai and WaLiLa’s world, and I should totally keep going. Things to make you go, hmmm.

Okay, so the novel is something I finished right before Katrina. It is set in New Orleans and it’s the story of four women going through various transformations–physical, emotional, spiritual. Two of the women are young and two of them are approaching middle age. I had a ball writing it, but then had a crisis of point of view when I was challenged by my advisor on my use of present tense. This crisis put the novel on hold for quite some time. When I first wrote it I was closer to the experience of the young girls, now that I’m rewriting it, I’m closer to the age of the older women so it’s interesting for me to flip my perspective on the story. Sadly, I am still working on scaffolding and chapter structure, can’t wait till I get to the sexy draft where I’m just flowing and tweaking the voice and feeling my way deeper into the story’s “experience.”

Hmmm! 🙂 I hope the prequel comes back!

Did you feel like your advisor was right about the present tense? It makes me bristle hearing things like that–some authority telling a writer not to use the present tense or second person or something–but maybe it was good advice for you?

Yes, I think this conversation is cementing the fact that the prequel *must* come back (and likely should be my next project).

I honestly don’t know if it was good advice. It’s actually not like me to take on someone’s advice so fully, but I am much less confident in the novel writing sphere than I am in the short story sphere. I don’t know why people have such visceral reactions to present tense. I was once on the radio and this guy called up to ask me why I used present tense in my Dark Matter story. He needed to let me know that he hated present tense. I’m like really, dude? You’re up at the crack of dawn calling into a radio show to complain about the tense I used in a story? Who knew tense was such an urgent issue!

I feel like we could keep this up for weeks, but it’s probably time to bring this chat to an end! And since we’re on the subject of advice, I’d like to end by asking about the book you put out recently in the “Notes from the Trenches” series, On the Struggle to Self-Promote. What has that struggle been like for you? What have you learned? Anything you’d particularly like to pass on to other writers?You’ve just discovered one of my superpowers… talking! I love talking. I’ve learned so much about self-promotion! This is a good era for self-promoters because the Internet and social media really allows you to connect with people around the world. When I was getting on Twitter Nnedi Okorafor told me just be yourself, which is the exact same thing that was echoed at a Branding workshop I recently went to. The branding expert said that you–exactly the way you are–are perfect for your audience. You’re not making people like you, you’re being your true self so that your tribe can find you. I believe that–I believe the goal is to connect with your readers–the people for whom your words resonate. No matter what value you think your work has or doesn’t have, there are people out there who will really connect with what you have to say. I look at self-promotion as sharing my work with others, rather than selling myself to others. I believe if I am going to write, then it’s also my job to support my work by giving it the spotlight as often as I can. I see it as an extension of my writing work. I think if we look at it as a way to honor our hard work and our talent, it takes on a different energy and becomes a more gratifying and relevant activity.I’ve enjoyed chatting with you. Thanks so much for spending some time withAncient, Ancient!We share a superpower. 🙂 Thanks for spending time here with me!

Note: You can read a FREE story by Kiini Ibura Salaam right here at Interfictions Online!

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