The Wait

The river flows and we long
to pour, swell and pour.

We grasp the string of a kite yearning

to be caught and lost in the wind.
The sun dyes everything orange
and we hold our breaths
to be part of the painting.

Why have we been made
to watch the world from inside here–

This body
so jealously clings to us
with its pains and its desires.
This body
entices us with its little pleasures
begging us to stay.

But it cannot keep us
from wanting to be the tide
and  the stillness of the moon;
from wanting to be vibrations of music
and flames of fire.

We smell the dust when clouds

begin to fall,
we feel the coldness of a stone wall

and our bodies lose.
We become what we are

The Writer’s Death Shadow

I WRITE. ‘Oh woo, I couldn’t be a writer. I don’t have that kind of patience. You are amazing.’ This is the kind of line I get from people when they discover that I write.

I WRITE. How insufficient that phrase seems! How can I take it apart piece by piece and explain what I do? I do not dabble in writing. I’m not a once in a while writer. I am steeped in it. And like a tub of honey, it draws water out of me. Water, tears, explosive lines, energy and beauty. It gives me clarity and then it makes my eyes roll back into my head.

I WRITE. This is what I said to a young man this summer when he asked me what I do outside of school. How distrubing this revelation was to him. I could be doing so much more, he said. But how could he know the heat at the core of the creative writing. That intense flame that thrills so much more than it burns. Always so close to finding the centre, absolute clarity.

I WRITE. I untangle the threads of myself. I am perfectly and wonderfully made. So much so that I am as whole to myself as I am to others. And supposedly, my mind is king over all this terrain. But what terrain? What is thing called me?

I USED TO WRITE. My lamentations germinate from these four words. I’ve seen my flowers die and now there is stiffness in my stems. I am not the writer I was six years ago when I self-published my amateur novel. I have learned where to lay the strokes of my pen and how to seduce insipiration. I am ready. And now I find, that I no longer write. The story closest to my heart, my novel, has mutated in a million ways. It is a mad dog rattling in it’s cage, waiting to be shot dead but I want to caress it, reassure it that there is an antidote.

CAN I WRITE? Can Frankestin’s monster die and he live? Could any other story lure me to the bottom of hell?

The wrong love

I must have read this in a how-to-write book. (I confess to having read a good amount of those). Anyway, some author somewhere adviced me to be conscious of my readers. To think of them when I’m writing. So I have been gauging the temperature of the various pple who’ve read the various drafts of my novel. How annoying they have turned out to be. One said that the romance between my protagonist and a certain very hot character was just not right. ‘What?’ I asked. Said person went on to explain that the two characters didn’t suit each other. I’m still trying to decipher the meaning of that.

Anyway, my most recent sore encounter with the wishes and desires of my readership has been about Nairobi. Yes, the capital of Kenya. (I will assume we all know where that country is on the globe). In my first, first draft, my story began in Zimbabwe (random : ). Then I decided I knew nothing about Zimbabwe so I should start my story in my own country, in my territory. It’s a fantasy novel, but I wanted it to have a firm grounding in reality before I projected into a very magical alternative reality. (I heard that verisimilitude will get your readers hooked and then you can ask them to go anywhere and they will.)

I began constructing the life of my character in Nairobi. At first, it was just a chapter about her unpleasant interactions with her parents and twin brother. I was more interested in getting to the fantasy bit of the story, but I kept getting comments like ‘she’s so childish. WHy would she do that? she’s so melodramatic.’ etc. So I decided to extend that part of the story so I could explore the hardships my character faces. Then came my first creative writing class; to complete my second assignment, I sourced from my experiences in Nairobi. My professor liked it and encouraged me. So much fun. Nairobi is such uncharted terrain really. I decided to create a more real-life beginning for my novel. Make my protagonist thoroughly Nairobian. And voila, everything went wrong.

The writing was fine; my classmates liked it. The problem was, they liked it too much. It’s like I opened a pandora’s box (in the positive sense). Not many Kenyan writers are published and only one of those has reached international acclaim (after persecution and exile of course). Conclusion: Very few people in the US have ever encounter a story about Nairobi or visited the city. It’s not London that is so common place, Harry Potter has to find a parallel world to have a real adventure. My readers enter Nairobi and refuse to leave it for the great adventure in the fantasy world. Nairobi already feels like a fantasy world, I guess.

What to do? I’m thinking the protagonist should have a bad experience in Nairobi to rapture the connection readers have with that place. I hope that works. Otherwise, pple will stop reading my work after chapter 3. Really guys (readers that is) I’ve given you almost 50 double-spaced pages of Nairobi. Isn’t that enough?

The other species: Knight-in-shining-armour or Chauvinistic pig

I’ll be the first to admit. I know very little about men and that is more or less tainted by my experiences with violence, abandonment or just the everyfay unrequited love. So how the hell am supposed to write about men. I’ve lived, studied and worked with women all my life. I know most of their shades and I can easily empathize with female characters. As for male characters, I have no clue. Yes, I’m the kind of writer who paints only two masculine pictures: knight-in-shining-armour or chauvinistic pig.

I’m about to start constructing or rather reconstructing Ayinka, one of the main male characters in my novel. WHne I was fifteeen, he was an insensitive, eighteen year old bastard whose main preoccupation was keeping the (female) protagonist ‘in her place’. Well, may be guys like that exist out there. But at 21, guys seem to be (to my absolute surprise) somewhat human. They are not stones; they actually hurt when you stab them; they actually love and they actually have fears. I’m excited about working on Ayinka. He is truly plasticine in my hands (I didn’t say ‘clay’ on purpose. Tends to dry out).

As of now, I know that he is the member of a band of outcasts and he is their leader or one of their leaders. He has been stalking or watching a certain girl (OMG!!! I just had a ‘Eureka’ moment), waiting to steal her away from her tribe and make her his wife. I can’t decide whether Akinya wants this girl to increase his status in his tribe or whether he genuinely loves her or whether he is attracted to her beauty/body or whether he is attracted to her gentleness as compared to the more aggresive women in his tribe. Clearly, I have many options. I feel that I have to choose one or two or these motivations and at the same time, I do not want to make Ayinka just one thing. I want him to be complex, believable and human. He should have part that are hidden from us and he should have contradictions. I want him to be a knight-in-really old armour and a bit insensitive, with some room for improvement.

I think I’m beginning to see him in my head. Got to get it done on paper

Summing up:the end and the point

Today is officially the last day of the year here at Amherst College. They want us out at 5pm tomorrow. I haven’t even began packing. Goodbyes to be said; japanese and korean dramas to catch up on and well, the movies. Speaking of which, Chronicles of Narnia–Prince Caspian is excellent, if only for the handsome Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes).

Which makes me wonder, is a dashing young man the secret ingredient to spicing up a story? Jokes. I doubt it.

So, I ended up finding some funds for my research project. Not much but better than 0. And now that several individuals have sacrificed a few pennies on my behalf, I feel the pressure to finish this novel soon. Let’s even call it motivation. Now, all I have to find is a point. Stories, I hear, need to have a point. Usually something that can be summed up in six words.

I am looking to see if a different kind of fantastical adventure is possible. Almost always, the protagonist has some prophetic mission to fulfill and they have some superpower or they gather it on the way. And everyone in the story is invested in getting them to their destiny. With my story, I want something different. Characters who are not ‘special’ or ‘chosen’, who happen to be placed in certain position/dilemmas and who then evolve to face the challenge. Someone like Fyodor in Lord of the Rings, but yet someone who completes a circle with other characters to make things work out as they do. I want more complexity. I want characters who judge well sometimes and poorly, other times.

Still could I introduce all these facets into my story-telling and still hold the structure together? Books, movies, poems are always journeys in the realm of emotion for me. And thus, if a character is not glorified, destinied would i identify with them and thus get consumed in the story?

Still pondering

Peek into the novel–Prologue

I’m always nervous about posting my work online. There is that ‘first rights’ rope that publishers sometimes use to hang writers. But what the hell. The excerpt below is perhaps my only writing achievement this semester so I want to share it. Enjoy and leave comments.

 

 Wanigtanim. The one who will meet you on the bridge is called Wanigtanim. He is the keeper of the Ffraid Ritt, that bridge between the True World and its shadow; only he can guide you through the fog into the city.

He will say to you, ‘Child, you have not been called; you have known your path. The pendant finds only its heart.’

He will seem a man to you, with strength in his arms and depth in his voice like the men you have known in the True World. His true form will remain hidden to you until the day you sell you name, as I sold mine.

Yes, I was born, carried and born and given a name. I sold it and every remembrance of the time before I met Wanigtanim, and bought ‘Shilani’. It is not a name. The one who bought my name and my past said ‘Shilani’. Burn!  That is how I became fire.

I left him with different eyes. Eyes that could see laiks. You do not know this word. I will tell you. Understand that Wanigtanim is not a man. Wanigtanim is a laik and laiks are neither male nor female. They are smell; they are colour; they are what you feel; what you dream; everything that is but that is not in your world. Wanigtanim wears the sky. He wears it not like clothes but like skin. When he stands still, he melts into what he stands on. He sees without eyes; he hears without ears; he speaks without a mouth. When you see his true form, he will be carrying a lamp, a blue flame dancing in a copper loop on a chain dangling out of his sleeve.

On the day you arrive, you will not know this. You will follow Wanigtanim through the fog and not know that you walk on air. And that you, and not Wanigtanim, command the stepping stones out of the fog. You will be without knowledge and without doubt. You will only follow Wanigtanim out of the fog and into Eqriva, where the trees take up their roots and migrate to fertile land.

 

That Room– Tobias Wolff

***Spoilers***

 

This story leaves me wondering how Tobias Wolff could tell so much in such a small space. Four pages and five well-developed characters. Really? Usually, twenty something pages into my short story, after I have beaten every detail to death, everything is still up in the air. (I have a weakness for long Tolstoy-ish descriprive scenes). But ‘That Room’ sucks you in immediately and leaves out nothing important.

 

You’ve got to read the story yourself to awed by the master, but for now, short synopsis. Young man (narrator) working on a farm cutting hay versus migrant worker. Alcohol makes young man object of migrant workers misdirected anger. Gun on the table. (That’s all I’m giving away. Eeeh, use your imagination).

 

By the time the gun gets on the table, it’s not surprising that the migrant worker would draw one out. Wolff has already planted indications of seething anger. He also has already explained the reason why the young man is on the farm and the reader knows the young man’s self-perception and can see it getting shaken. A beautiful exposition scene appears after the gun. Suspense. And finally, foreshadowed events come into wrap things up. Simple and clear. The author would hate me for saying that, considering how much cutting and slashing he must have done, but there it is.

 

Note to self: good scenes for the sake of good scenery are not worth much. The reason for their existence relative to the plot is what you are going for.

 

 

Creative resuscitation of the dying will

So I’m done with my exams and I have all the time in the word to work on my novel. 110 days to be exact. Problem is, my exams are my inspiration. That is, I only burn for the pen when I’m stressed and stretched for time. Deduction: writing is my guilty-pleasure, my indulgence, my sin.

How will I get through my planned writing schedule for this summer? There is that recommendation that a writer should write a certain x number of pages a day (for most advisors, x equals 3).  Honestly, it gets boring and a publishing contract in the far distance is too elusive a reward to provide any real motivation. Of course writing a good sentence makes me glow inside, but I would hardly spend seven hours a day on my laptop just for that sensation.

My last secret weapon? Fantasies. Please don’t laugh. I’m dead serious. As a writer, it’s absolutely necessary to spend time rehearsing acceptance speeches for future accolades to be awarded to your non-existent works. You totally have to use a mirror for this, to make sure your expressions betray neither excitement nor satisfaction. Humility, humility. (That is a whole other story, right?) Another important exercise is the writing of query letters and cover letters. These are the writer’s tools for selling his/ her work. And if you are like me, you have no idea what your story is about so trying to colourfully but concisely explain the plot of your story to someone else (fictitious in this case) may help clear things up. (Disclaimer on the previous statement. Such an exercise may actually break your heart). Other helpful fantasies include day-dreaming about interviews with Oprah, practicing giving much sought-after autographs and creating potential bios. (It’s important to decide how much of your private life need go public when you get published). The more I write this, the more I uncover fantasies. How about coming up with a title for your work? And deciding which side of your face would give you an important-looking expression? Decisions, decisions.

What’s the point? Well, thinking about these things gets me excited about writing. It keeps me from descending into the valley of boredom and despair. I know, I know. I’m in this for all the wrong reasons. Writers are not supposed to want money and recognition. That’s tarnishing the art. Shrug. (I sense fear somewhere in there but shrug!). Long live fantasies.

 

On Delays and Epiphanies

There is a long discussion about epiphanies in Baxter’s ‘Burning the House Down’. All I got from that essay was that epiphanies, while they happen in real life, are not believable on the page. Note to self: Re-read the Baxter Essays. That aside, I had an epiphany this week.

If you’ve read my other posts, you know that I am looking for funding for my summer research project. I’ve been working on a novel for five years now and finally, I have the plot all sorted out. I’m returning to Kenya for the summer, so that three months of free time. All I need to complete my draft is reliable access to the internet for research, the must-read books on my booklist and a visit to Lamu town, a medieval town off the north coast of Kenya, to find more authentic descriptions of the primary setting for my novel. Unfortunately, these three items cost money. The English Department at Amherst College has a Writer’s Travel Award for this kind of thing but when the award letters were sent out and I didn’t get one. My eggs were all in one basket. Where else to look? I send out a desperate email to the only other person who could help, earlier this week, but from his prolonged silence, I guess it’s time to move on.

The epiphany? I realized that I aim too high. For me, anything less that the best has never been good enough. I thought it was weakness to start out with small goals. I’ve actually blazed through life, without reserve or ‘plan B’ and more or less got the things I killed myself for.

On my list of goals, is replicating the Harry-Potter -mania with my own work. Do things like that happen twice in one generation? Anyway, that’s my not-too-covert aim; everyone knows it and most think I’m crazy. I may be. People meet me and say, ‘Woo, you are so determined’ or ‘I wish I had your energy.’ To me, it’s what I have to do. If I did not live as hard as I do, I wouldn’t be me or would I be? Somewhere between those two–certainty and doubt–lay my epiphany.

I have not achieve what I wanted to have achieved by now, but I have not failed. Delays, just delays.

On Inspiration

Inspiration plays games with me sometimes. She does not understand that I need her, that when she is off on vacation, I am quite lonely.

Truth is, I’m greedy. Planning a novel is way easier than writing one so I devote considerable time to the easier task. This is why I have a complaint against Inspiration. She gives too little and expects me to trust her and walk around the plot of my novel without knowing where I am going. Of course, she drops surprises on me every so often. She blows the mist apart and points at links between characters that I had not seen before. She calls up the perfect memory to bridge the gap in this or that chapter. She is very good at her work. This is unquestionable. But she is unreliable. She has no idea of the urgency of time. For her a decade on the same story is nothing. Everything is about maturity. She definitely takes pleasure at mixing things up, fermenting them and serving wine.

What I am to do about her? It seems I must wait. Eat what she serve on my plate and hope that she will arrive when my next meal is due. Or should I chase after her and caress my plot points out of her? If I espouse the virtue of patience and never ask her, let her be, will she ever answer? Will she know that a question is in need of answer? So I ask and wait, and ask and wait, hammering on the same nail again and again until she is teeming with anger and she answers.