scribbling sisters

1 augustus 2024

oh, amina cains a horse at night is deceptively thin. ik heb tot nu toe ongeveer twintig pagina's gelezen maar het voelt alsof ze ook dingen schrijft, heeft geschreven, die niet op papier staan. misschien the ghosts of former drafts, maar ik denk dat haar schrijven dense is zonder dat expres te willen zijn. ze verbergt haar bedoelingen en ideeën niet onder een lading nonsens—en toch is er van alles mogelijk, zoveel ruimte. waarmee ik bedoel dat ze de lezer niets oplegt.

(“we project our own self, what we want and what we want another person to be.” p25
“i project what i want, what i'm obsessed with, onto my writing more than any other place.” p26)

wat me zo boeit is dat schrijvers als cain en suzanne scanlon (ik lees nu, na onlangs committed te hebben gelezen, scanlons promising young women) zichzelf in hun werk niet verbergen. misschien is dit de invloed die kate zambreno's heroines (ik herlas het vorige maand en dat was een goed idee, ik was vergeten hoezeer het over schrijven zelf gaat) op mij heeft—maar het is een opluchting, ik ben blij te zien dat het mogelijk is; dat de woorden niet weggebackspaced zijn; dat er geen how-to blijkt te zijn als het om schrijven gaat—dat er geen antwoord is op die vraag die me altijd bezig hield maar me er niet van weerhield te schrijven: hoe moet je schrijven? (een andere vraag waarnaar ik obsessief een antwoord zocht: hoe moet je leven? dezelfde vraag. het zelfde (non)antwoord.) schrijven doe je door te schrijven. altijd, schrijven.

they who found their voice, or a way towards it, by blogging. so much writing.
scanlon en cain being zambreno's “scribbling sisters”.

de laatste pagina's van heroines.
urging us, her “scribbling sisters”, to write “our own selves”.
urging us to “refuse to self-immolate”:

“i think what publishing can do is help cement one's own self-identity as a writer—one can do without it, of course, but eventually most writers feel some need for readers, for a communion with the outside. but perhaps the internet has changed this—perhaps the very act of having readers now makes authors of us. self-published, xeroxed in zines, blogged on livejournal, later tumblr, wordpress, xanga, blogger, in micropresses, in comments sections, we write in the margins.

the girl-student with her marilyn monroe purse who told me she wanted to write, desperately—but didn't have an agent. this is the idea we need to destroy. we need to foster our own method of agency.

we cannot wait around to be discovered. if you can't write masterpieces why write? the doctors said to zelda. (..) the point, perhaps, is to write—by god to write—to write and refuse erasure while we're living at least—and to use up all the channels possible through which to scream, to sing, to singe. all of these things. to write because we desire to, because we need to—and to refuse to be ignored. or stopped.

(..) the only way our narratives will be told is if we write them ourselves. i urge you to write your own selves, your true and complicated selves. my scribbling sisters. we are amateurs. we are dilettantes. we are all those terms they use to dismiss the girl writing. we need, perhaps, to reclaim these terms, as well as these categories of minor or outsider or illegitimate.

if i have communicated anything to you i hope it is the absolute urgency to write yourself, your body, your own experience. the absolute necessity for you to write yourself in order to understand yourself, in order to become yourself. i ask you to fight against your own disappearance. to refuse to self-immolate. or to launch yourself as a burning, glorious spectacle into outer space. to scratch yourself out and begin again, to die and resurrect.

a different sort of nerve is needed. to say fuck you to these internal and social prohibitions dictating what literature should be about. fuck you to the objective correlative. fuck the canon. fuck the boys with their big books.

for, after all, we must be our own heroines.” (zambreno/ heroines (semiotext(e)2012), p295-297)