Navigating my Today...Finding my Tomorrow

Yes, yes, I know; I don't blog anymore and it is a terrible thing.

I have no idea when the words dried up or why I stopped writing. The muse went away. Funny enough, I never missed it until it simply wasn't there. My dearly departed compulsion to constantly scribble was something I always took for granted. I thought it was as much a part of me as the birthmark on my left hand. That mark has been there for as long as I can remember, and it was how I learned to differentiate between left and right.

Even today, as a grown woman of 30, I look to my birthmark when faced with the question, "left or right?". It serves as my compass, Old Faithful I like to say. So also have literary pursuits been my guiding light. Throughout the cacophony of being a middle child in a family of three, the pandemonium of being 'different' in an adolescence of sheep desperately trying to be as alike as possible, and the mildly controlled panic that marked my journey of making my way through adulthood two cultures removed from my home base, the books and the pen have been my solace.

But something all that managed to change. Somehow I allowed life to get in the way. It started with the writing and then permeated the reading, until slowly but surely, my life was entirely devoid of literary pursuits. At the beginning of 2009, I declared that it would be my anuus mirabilis, and indeed it was. My beautiful nephew was born, I turned a big corner in my career and I fell utterly and irrevocably in love. Because 2009 felt so right, so perfect, it wasn't until the round up in December that I realised that I had only read 7 books the entire year. Seven. And I had written nothing. This from the person who used to pass entire weekends alternating between the library and Barnes & Noble.

I felt bereft, like my identity had sneakily left me when I wasn't paying attention and I immediately decided that 2010 would be different. I made a pact to read more. I figure there is no point in worrying about the writing at the moment when I don't even read enough. If I get back to devouring books, the writing will come naturally like it used to. The reading is my today...the writing is my tomorrow, wish me luck finding my compass.

Cui multum datum est multum quaeretur ab eo

Or in English, 'to whom much has been given, much will be asked of him'

Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point published an article in The New Yorker magazine recently that I really appreciated. The topic in question was Late Bloomers: Why do we associate genius with precocity? He touched on something that has always coloured my perception of creative pursuits, the idea that if you don't become a shooting star at a very young age; it is over for you. I have often spoken of my love for writing and how I have abandoned it and picked it up again many times over the years. I have never really made a conscious effort to define myself as a writer, and I have never sought an audience for my work. Could that be as Mr Gladwell posits, because I am still honing my craft and as such remain unconvinced of my abilities? Or is it merely a lack of confidence and fear of being critiqued?

Am I supposed to be a writer? For some reason, I have never considered my literary pursuits worthy of a career, and yet I find myself drifting back to that question more often than not these days. It really has never occurred to me to seriously attempt to take writing beyond the confines of my journal previously, and now this blog. And yet, every time I read a short story or book by a new up and coming Nigerian writer, I find myself wondering why that cannot be me. In a sense, I suppose that blogging in and of itself is a step in that direction. I blog a lot less frequently (major understatement) now than I did in days gone by, because from time to time I go back to read my words and I cringe. I try not to post unless I have something worth saying, and even then, I like to try and choose my topics carefully. My blog is evolving from a pedestrian recording of everyday events in my life into a series of mini-essays.

I understand however, that to set myself on the path to success I must learn to take a more disciplined approach to my craft. I have never taken a Creative Writing class in my life, and I could certainly stand to benefit from doing so. That isn't the immediate problem though. The issue that sorely needs addressing is my lack of discipline. I constantly allow writer's block to defeat me, and go for months on end without writing anything. As soon as I put pen to paper again, I remember just how much I love it. How essential it is for my wellbeing.

Last year, I attempted to participate in National Novel Writing Month. A movement that involves thousands and thousands of people across the world working towards the goal of writing 50,000 words during the month of November. I failed miserably. I wrote a grand total of 1,783 words, a failure of monumental proportions because I essentially gave up less than halfway through. A year later, I am older, wiser and more aware of my shortcomings. I am ready to give it another go. On the 1st of November, I will once again enter the belly of the beast and attempt to write 50,000 words in one month. To achieve this, I will need to work at the pace of 1,667 words a day - or to be on the safe side, 2000 words per day.

I cannot promise to post regular excerpts as when writing that fast, a good deal of it will be worthless (there is no time to edit as you go), but I am hoping there will be some jewels in the rough that I can comfortably share on this blog. I cannot reach 50K without your encouragement, and hopefully anyone who reads this blog and hasn't been scared away by the constant writing droughts will pop by from time to time to push and goad me into achieving my goal. 50K, here I come, wish me luck.

D-Day

Today is the day. I have the rest of this week off work and the plan is to focus on my writing. My personal goal is currently set for 2,000 words per day. No mean feat when one is trying to get coherent narrative down. So far, I have 645 words and I hate them all. I am gazing longingly at the 'delete' button wishing I could use it.

I have to force myself to remember that my goal at this stage is not to create beautiful prose. It is just to get as many words as possible out there and let the story shape itself. It is quite a humbling experience, I haven't written fiction since I was fifteen. I have been told by experienced people that I will probaly hate the first 4,000 words of whatever I am writing, so I guess I just have to suck it up.

Oh well, 1,355 more words to go today ....

NaNoWriMo, Here I come

I respect my mother more than anyone else in the whole world (seriously, the whole world). So when she chastised me a month ago for not writing, I sat up and took notice. She has never been the type of mother who believes that all her children are immensely gifted at everything. She is a realist, down-to-earth, pragmatic and a voracious reader. She told me that I was wasting my God-given talent by not writing enough, and that made me sit up and take notice.

I have always been a writer. It has taken many shapes and forms, but has always been in there somewhere. Studying engineering at University was a big deviation from that path, and truth be told, were it not for this blog, I am not sure I would have found my way back anytime soon. I never stopped reading though, that has been one of the biggest constants in my life. I go through roughly 2-3 books a week, and in extraordinary circumstances e.g. Pottermania or extreme boredom that quota can be ratcheted up to 4.

When I read something that truly resonates with me, my first thought is always “I wish I had written that”. This leads me to conclude that the drive to create prose is still within me, buried deep somewhere. The difficulty I face however is I haven’t written fiction in about 10 years. Writing is like a muscle for me, the less I exercise it, the creakier it becomes. And so I find myself writing clunky unnatural sounding dialogue. Words that make me cringe as soon as I type them. My inner editor is at war with my creative muse.

I think I have found the perfect cure for that malady. National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). NaNoWriMo is a creative writing project that was born in the San Francisco Bay area in 1999. The idea is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. You must begin on November 1st and finish on November 30th in order to ‘win’. There is no prize for winning (you get a printable certificate to say you won), so there is no point in cheating. The real prize is the personal gratification, and for me, the impetus to pour 50,000 words out onto paper as they appear in my mind without stopping to edit, structure or fret.

This is no mean feat, to achieve my goal, I must write ~2,000 words a day! I have trouble with keeping my blog up to date, so how on earth will I manage to complete this task? Plus I am still laptop-less, so I can’t really write on the go per say, unless I do it long hand. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained right? And so, I commit myself to writing 50,000 words in the month of November, and hopefully I will come out with some semblance of a story, something that is on its way to being a rough first draft.

I will keep you guys posted on my progress, as I will definitely need some cheerleading to help me cross the finish line. I would love to say that I will post excerpts of what I am writing as I go, but it might be too awful to share with the world. I will have to play that one by ear…in the time being wish me luck as I venture into the world of deadline-intensive creative writing. Let’s hope my mother is right about this…I trust her instincts, she is almost never wrong. Wish me luck!

A Bit Schizo...But Its All Good

I think all children are blessed with a touch of schizophrenia. At least in the beginning, until we exhaust ourselves trying to turn them into clones of what society tells us responsible adults should be. We then churn out these cookie-cutter largely homogenised people who have had every ounce of creativity and individuality wrung out of them and send them out into the world to wreak mediocrity on humanity. This is understandable; schizophrenia is just so damn scary.

I was definitely a schizophrenic child. In fact, quite a few elderly Nigerians would have also classified me as a pathological liar. Let’s just say that I much preferred living in my head to living in reality. Not because there was anything wrong with my reality, on the contrary, I had a fantastic childhood. I was simply one of those children given to wild flights of fancy. I also had a knack for making it believable, in other words I knew just how far to push it, and when to reel it in.

I used to sit for hours making up entire worlds in my head. These places were very intricate with specific mythologies, legacies and multiple friends who I sometimes brought back with me to the real world. After a long day of traversing the complex webs I had woven, I would sit down to dinner with my family and often carry on these unfinished conversations with an imaginary friend or two. Even in my fantasies my childhood friendships were often as fickle as can be expected from a 7-year old. My mother would look on, utterly perplexed by the odd child who insisted on carrying on conversations with people who did not exist.

When I was 9, I mastered the art of embellishment. I would take a seemingly mundane scenario and put my own spin on it, recalling the events with such dramatic flair, I defy anyone to be less than fully absorbed. All Africans have storytelling woven into their DNA, and I was no exception. The difference however, was that I began to put pen to paper and record these masterpieces. I wrote my first novella at 11, a habit that was to stay with me for most of my teenage years. Somewhere along the way though, one by one all my friends deserted me. I cannot pinpoint the exact moment when it happened, but I woke up one day and realised that I was normal. Existing on this plane solely, just like everyone else...an ordinary person. Perhaps it was going to a Science & Technology focused school that did the trick, or maybe I just got tired of explaining constantly that I wasn't psychotic, either way something or the other caused me to throw in the towel and close off the gateway to my imagination. The more likely explanation is that I simply grew up, but lately I have realised one profound thing...reality is completely overrated.

Maybe we all grow up and our imaginary friends desert us. These days, my flights of fancy seem limited to winning the lottery and being whisked of into the sunset by Mr. Tall, Dark & Handsome. But occasionally, when I am lying in the park on a glorious summer day, I hear a whisper in my ear. A smile stretches across my face as I say hello to my friends of yore. More often than not, we engage in full-scale banter for a minute or two before I look round and realise that everyone around thinks I am crazy. I return to earth with a thud, ignoring the look of hurt and disdain on the faces of my imaginary friends. I know what they are thinking; “Why are you ashamed of us? You should be revelling in the glories of a world entirely of your own making.” These are the pitfalls of being a grown-up, saying goodbye to the friends who have kept me company for as long as I can remember. Suppressing the urge to leap out of Brooklyn and into the gossamer-filled world just yonder. I can’t help but think that some of my favourite authors never said goodbye to these friends, they speak to them everyday and the results are breathtaking. Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling, Phillip Pullman, Khaled Hosseni…..the list goes on and on.

I had an epiphany the other day, life is too short to spend all my time worrying about what other people think of me. As epiphanies go, I know it is rather simplistic and perhaps should have been more obvious to me a bit sooner, but better late than never. I have decided to wallow in the joys of my imaginary friends and all the characters that live in my head. I will give them free reign and let them grow, and then when they are mature enough I will share them with the world via my pen (or keyboard). Welcome back imaginary friends, I've really missed you.