Let’s not write off Facebook, some established authors made their names on it

When I received my copy of last week’s The Standard on Saturday from my vendor, I quickly flipped through its pages to my usual safe haven, Arts and Culture.

My literary contemporary, Lucas Wafula, had penned a piece with such an enthralling headline: Facebook posts will not make you a writer.
I reserved my comments upon reading it as I always treasure the writer’s work.

But my cool did not last long. Another literary pal posted on the same Facebook, “I wanted to agree with this but I cannot...’” The post was a bit long, and certainly, threw a spanner into the works.

The very Facebook that Mr Wafula loathed had now transformed into an avenue to debate his column. Both up-and-coming and established writers picked the topic for fierce literary rebuttals.

Wafula himself was also caught up in the thick of all this. He made a few comments to justify his ink.
Someone humorously commented, “I think the title is misleading. It’s like (saying) singing in the bathroom will not make you a musician”.

Another writer, this time a more established one, wrote: “A Facebook writer is arguably one of the most enjoyed Kenyan writers of the moment’.

Agreeably, I want to appreciate the great debate the writer elicited. Partially, he has a point or two, especially the one on Facebook likes not qualifying one as an amazing writer.

I have seen those who the entire time whine with a legion posts on most of the social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, yet they have not penned any artwork worth talking about.

There is also a crop of social media ‘writers’ who may make you think they live in the best apartment or have birthed a bestseller, though, they hardly attain such status.

Even so, Wafula should recognise that writing sometimes is a damn-lonely-affair because in most occasions, we lock ourselves up in solitary rooms to piece together that bestseller.

With the invention of Facebook, writers easily have a social dais to unmask their faces and connect with real people – mostly readers of their works. This helps them make friends, laugh and love, and, sometimes, even cry. Jennifer Blanchard, one of Amazon’s bestselling authors, praised the innovation of Facebook a few years ago.

“Such platforms force one to be concise, to be keen on vocabulary and in some way, it improves one’s editorial skills,” she said.

I have personally witnessed this since I started posting my writings on Facebook and other social media platforms. In fact, Facebook really improved my linguistic prowess as I began to be mindful of my writings.

I used to feel peeved when some of my honest followers on this platform corrected me, especially, on grammar.

Through such platforms, most nascent writers have also received praiseworthy advice on how to write that dream novel.

Facebook has also made writers of my ilk to freely connect with established ones who sometime ‘like’ or ‘comment’ about their posts.

It is in this platform that I started virtual conversation with epic writers such as Kinyajui Kombani, Ken Walibora and many other prolific writers. When Wafula avows that endorsement of one’s work by a professor or a renowned writer does not make a writer any better, I am surely lost on what endorsement means to him.

Methinks that before one’s work is approved by an established writer such as a professor, he or she must devour the whole piece before writing a comment about it.

It’s only a couple of weeks ago when I asked Prof Chris Wanjala, who is famed for his literary criticism, to do a foreword for my book, The Wasted Ink. He took close to a fortnight to sieve through the paperback before making his sincere remark about it.

But Facebook or not, we all should grow our writings as suggested by Wafula.

- The writer is a literary critic and teacher at Ng’iya Girls High School in Siaya County. His book, The Wasted Ink, will be launched on December 1