Last night, it was my honour to be in conversation with brilliant Taiwanese writer Naomi Sím (沈宛瑩 / Sím Oán-Êng) at the Birmingham (UK) International Literary Salon. We talked about the Taiwanese language (Tâi-gí / 台語), about Taiwan’s complicated history, about the project we’re working on to translate between Taiwanese and Gaelic (see the website here), and about a lot more. It was a fun conversation, with a group of around fifteen writers and readers from all around the globe, organised — with his usual grace and wit — by Writing West Midlands’ Jonathan Davidson.
If you want to read Naomi’s work, then you can preorder Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese & Gaelic. Naomi’s contribution to this collection, Chhùi-Lân ê chêng-phoe (Emerald Orchid Love Letter) is a simply wonderful tale of grandmothers and granddaughters, missing goddesses, prophetic dreams, and unexpected ailments — and, as a bonus, in the book you can read the story in English, Mandarin, Taiwanese or Gaelic.
The hour-long discussion was fascinating, and there was a lot more we could have talked about. But what interested me in particular was Naomi’s claim that she was not a creative writer so much as a _strategic_ writer. I find this distinction both interesting and helpful.
The trouble with the idea of creativity is that it often seems so very mysterious. It can have an air of otherworldly self-mythologising, and I’m never sure how helpful self-mythologising is. I’ve written quite a bit already about the idea of creativity, and how we can demythologise it, and make it work more in our favour (see this, this and — in particular — this piece). Nevertheless, the idea of strategy is a really powerful one. It opens up a different set of questions. Instead of asking about this mysterious quality of “creativity” and how it can be nurtured, the strategic writer asks a different question: how can I use the resources I have at my disposal to attain this or that particular end?
This feels to me a very powerful question. And it will be one that I’ll be continuing to think about over the coming days and weeks. Because, the more I think about it, the more it seems that worrying less about creativity, and more about strategy, may be the most strategic—and the most creative—choice.
