Mohammed El-Kurd: commitment

Transcript context

…Do you edit a lot? I edit all the time and I can’t move on from one sentence until it’s perfect. But I will say, my other writer friends here in New York do not face how easily disrupted my writing is by other news. I’ll pitch a story to my editor about something, for example, and then as I’m writing it, 20 minutes in, some kid was shot and killed by the Israeli military, so I have to say something about it. And then 30 minutes later, as I’m writing it, there’s news about a home demolition in Silwan. There is this relentless onslaught of news that prevents us and deprives us of the ability to analyze, to frame, to think, to conceptualize, to write beyond the current affairs. We’re stuck in the relentlessness of the occupation that a lot of the time I worry that the things I’m writing are always in reaction to a crime that took place, to a bombing that took place, and so on and so forth. And I think that’s, unfortunately, true for so many Palestinian writers. I would say isolation and stepping away from the news is very important to do, but I don’t do it. Okay, so the struggle to find the timeless message in it is an ongoing struggle for you?…

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