A 10-point guide for aspiring writers

Sometimes I pity publishers like Lucas Wafula who have to answer, and sometimes take the flake, for a lot of things he writes that entitled upcoming creatives do not like to hear.

Like last week when he wrote about Facebook not being the place to grow writing talent; and that those ‘likes’ from your friends are not exactly the SI unit to measure one’s talent by. Anyway, as an author with several published books, here are ten of the most common questions I have heard both online and while in colleges and schools tours.

What Inspires Your Writing?

I like to say that the one good thing about living in a country with the corrupt moral fibre of Kenya and our rotten-to-the-core leaders and cynical citizenry is that, unlike a dull and beautiful and boring place like Venice, a writer will never lack material of things to write about.

For example, my novella ‘Princess Adhis & the Naija Coca Broda’ (Storymoja, 2012) is about a woman married to a Nigerian drug lord while enjoying a tryst with a local politician. Sounds familiar, anyone?

Take this creative challenge. Go through this newspaper from front to back (after you’ve completed reading this piece, of course). From the news, list down all the possible plot lines you could write. They’re many, uh.

Do you ever get writer’s block?

No, I do not. And the trick is to keep your mind ever flexible and nimble, through a lot of reading; and the habit of writing daily for an hour or two. Think of it as being a fit marathon runner, who runs miles daily at dawn. They never get cramps in a race, do they? Writer’s block is a form of mind cramping. Avoid it by writing daily, even when your Muse is not on fire.

Where does one get time to write?

Procrastination. That 15 letter word is the four letter word that kills a lot of budding writers. There will never be a golden idle stretch of life when you will have all the time in the world to work on that novel. If you stop thinking of writing as a hobby and approach it the way you would if building your mjengo, complete with plans and deadlines, then you are on your way to actually writing that first book.

Personally, I prefer to wake up early, by 4am latest, to get in an hour or two of creative writing, before that crowing jogoo, the mosque muezzin and the morning sun catch up with me and fading moonlight.

Why do writers like to drink, grow locs, dress weird and display other signs of eccentricity?

Writers live in a world of invention, so I suppose we are always trying to re-invent ourselves to the characters we wish to ideally be. As for poets, you need a perturbed mind and cracked heart to crack that dark art of pain and enlightenment. If you meet a true poet, just buy him/her a pint, without ‘maswali ya polisi.’

You did Law but changed your profession to media. Why?

In a global world, what the university should be teaching people is how to think.

Otherwise we have a lot of cramming charlatans, and half-baked unoriginal lecturers, in every other college these days. Look at our courageous Boniface Mwangi.

He has just completed doing his KCSE but is able to give moving (TED) talks even in universities abroad.

On the downside, you have quacks like Dr Ronald Melly who was running a whole hospital in Nandi County. Law is all very logical, and so you will find everything makes perfect intellectual sense in my works, which are also meticulously researched.

Are writers born or made?

This is the age-old question that seems to suggest some folks are born gifted, while others learn skills.

My own observation is that it does not really matter. If you have an interest in anything, whether writing or playing chess, pursue it to perfection. The earlier, the better, but I have seen late bloomers in my life like Sitawa N Muragori who picked up poetry in her forties. And even does corporate shows of poesy.

What can be done to improve literacy levels and also create a reading culture?

Recently, I was very pleased when a cousin who had attended a literary festival in Bayreuth that we were at with University of Nairobi’s Dr Tom Odhiambo told me (she’s visiting for a funeral, then a holiday), “Tony, I am so glad I picked up literary reading from you guys in Germany. It is so profound, and has changed me as a person”.

Like an orgiastic act, it is hard to explain to literary philistines that sense of mental power and sweet arch of knowledge being well versed and immersed in literary works one gives an individual. I can only ask that the new creative text curriculum for schools gives students novellas they can identify with. Because if you capture a young adult reader in high school, you have a reader for life.

Why do some writers, including you, use pseudonyms?

I cannot answer for every writer, but imagine if you are a banker but prefer to write erotic books in your spare time? For me, because I write across different genres, I prefer to keep my national identity name for my more ‘serious’ pieces, perhaps a ‘nom de guerre’ for certain youth magazine pieces, and for poetry, I embraced the ‘Literary Gangster’ title that my friend Prof Egara Kabaji endowed me with a decade ago.

What is your take on literary critics, especially the bashers?

Very few literary critics in this country are worth their salt. They are the proverbial lame person at the jig, screaming at the top of their lungs about how you should move your leg. I have encountered scathing attacks in the past from a whole professor of literature who did not quote one word from the referred book in his critique, for example.

Too many of these so-called critics are just in love with their own empty opinions (because they do not read the books they comment on) and like to shout loudly at the back sections of literary pages in the newspapers.

What is your opinion on Bob Dylan winning the literature Nobel at the expense of Ngugi wa Thiongo?

First of all, it is not a given Ngugi would have won in the absence of Dylan. There are still a few great writers the span of the earth, from Haruki Murakami in Japan to Thomas Pynchon in America.

But keep an eye on this space as the actual Nobel ceremony approaches for further opinion.

- The writer is a moderator at the free AMKA creative writing workshop held at the Goethe Institute every last Saturday of the month from 10am to 1pm.