The Sunday News
Sibongile Ndiweni, Sunday Life Reporter
SOMETIMES finding the right fictional voices, style, setting and language is a headache, particularly when one wants to deliver a lasting impression and properly packaged artistic work.
It requires a lot of research and artistic acrobatics that usually separates novice writers from those that have stayed long in the industry and whose audiences are defined. A known playwright, arts veteran and critic Raisedon Baya is one such artist who is particular about what he gives out to the public each time he decides to share his talent. He can also testify to the amount of time and dedication that he puts in his work.
“Sometimes it gets to be unbelievable. Like someone who has been writing a bible,” he said.
But the final product, he says, should at least show that there was effort, quite a lot of it, and that it was not rushed – bubblegum like. Baya is finalising the publication of his second novel Secret of the Mountain after almost two decades of dedicated research.
The novel Secret of the Mountain is a short fictional piece of art that is designed to tell a story of post independent Zimbabwe through a unique style and the writer’s open but inspiring use of language. Baya’s novel Secret of the Mountain is his second novel although he had started working on it way before his novel Shut Your Eyes and Run which is popularly recognised as his first novel.
He said he felt that his work of art needed more of his time and dedication because of the complexity of the post-independence episodes that the novel covers. Being a perfectionist and a critic of artistic discourse, he didn’t want to create something that can easily be dismissed as just one of the pastime fictional stories which explains the time that he took to work on it.
“For like 20 years I kept wondering whether I’m writing the right things, saying the right things and bringing out the right emotions. And for some years, I tried to publish the novel but clashed with one of my publishers because of the complexity of the issues around its inspiration but as I became older and a lot more mature, I got to understand the issues better than how I did some 20 years ago and now that this issue is being talked about even at national level, getting the novel published and bringing out a standardised piece of art became a lot easier,” said Baya.
He drew comparisons with his first novel saying unlike his first novel which was easier and free flowing as he knew exactly what he wanted to say, writing the novel Secret of the Mountain had a lot of rewriting to do as the issue of post independe disturbances was some kind of taboo and was talked about in hushed tones in the past.
He said that in rewriting, he was trying to ensure that he brings out the issue without offending anyone or having to temper with the emotions of the reader.
“My main worry at the moment is the reception because when I write I want my readers to consume the book and then react to the book and not the issues in the book because as a writer I want people to talk about my writing and my treatment of the issues rather than the issue itself because in the novel Secret of the Mountain, the issue is bigger than me and bigger than quite a number of people and now that we are able to talk about it, other writers might also write about it. My body of work is just a contribution to the debate and discussion around the issue,” he added.
