' How You Can Be A Writer And Still Live Like A Pop star'
Writing deserves hard work, as music, or any form of art. You have to spend more time honing it, making sure that you get it correctly. But it's more about passion, about mystery and the sort of energy you put into it. There's total beauty in writing as a form of art. Oh, let me not sound intellectual, when writing is not really an intellectual thing. This is my opinion. In this manner, I'm trying to make sure that my audience connects to me the same way they would have done, had I been a musician.
Just see how people approach classical and jazz music. It's more about thinking, of understanding what the concept behind it, is like.
Now, that is why we have different genres of writing: Prose. Poetry. Drama. When it comes to prose, we have different categories, which is boring, in my opinion. I don't like tags, which is why when people ask me the genre to which my novel belongs, I smile and say to them, 'I really don't know.'
Now, I want to make something clear: writers are no more the awkward- clothes-sporting types. We have changed. And those who still think that we are poor, should think twice. We can boast of getting the same attention as musicians, which is why names like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie keep coming to our mind. She's one writer any Nigerian can boast of. But how did she do it? Did she just boom in a broad daylight? No. Same way 2Face Idibia didn't boom in a day. He went through the thick and thin of life to get to where he is today.
For the most part, I see myself as a writer. I keep telling people that if you want to be a writer, you have to be a writer. I have heard people say, after meeting me, 'I write too'. No you don't have to write too. Just say, you are a writer too; which is better. Everyone writes too. But not everyone is a writer. There's more to being a writer, than I write too.
I'm a writer. I have written a novel. This is how I introduce myself and the spirit of writerness sticks with me.
For me as a writer, I'm also an artist and must behave like one.
You will say, 'What will I gain from being a writer?'
Well, a lot, my dear.
In 2004, I had the rare privilege of meeting Africa's first Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka in Lagos. I had travelled all the way from Imo State to see him. Luckily for me, I did. He held me close to himself while we took several photographs. That rare opportunity to meet him and talk with him changed the way I saw the world.
Few days ago, while walking through the grubby lanes of Yaba Market with my very close friend, Abiola Kilo (a young actor on the Super Story soap opera), a young women had touched me from the behind and said, ' Excuse me. Do you write? Are you a writer?' And I said yes. She told me that she had seen me on TV few days before that very day. She had seen an interview of me by SuperScreen TV.
Even as the market was filled up with many faces that could have resembled mine, she still was able to pick me out from the crowd. Maybe, because of my hair, maybe, just maybe, because of what I was wearing. Or just because she had put a deep interest in me that she was able to recognize me anywhere she saw me.
All of a sudden, it struck me that she hadn't noticed my friend who's more popular and has his face splattered all over the screen any time the soap opera is aired.
But that's just it.
The thing is that as someone who has decided to approach writing as a profession, as my future, as my life, I need to give it a unique touch, which is why I dress the way I do. The time when writers think that they can only sport funny-looking- clothes, is gone. People have come to realize that writers are just like movie stars and musicians; therefore, we should live similar lives.
If you are afraid to follow your heartbeat as a writer, because writers in Nigeria appear to be materially poor, then you must have to think twice. People make a mess of themselves when they follow rules. If you want to be noticed, you have to do something unique. But by the time you stick to the conventional technique, you definitely will get frustrated, which is why I keep telling people to think twice. Of course, all the stories necessary to be written have been written, but when you approach them unusually, you will find the glory coming to you.
In 2005, a young Nigerian girl, Helen Oyeyemi, based in London, wrote a book, The Icarus Girl, about a certain 8 year-old girl, who keeps an invisible friend, Tilly-Tilly. She signed a two-book deal with Bloomsbury Publishers; publishers of the Harry Potter books and the advance was rumoured to be about 400,000 pounds. Oh, I didn't tell you that she finished the novel on her 19th birthday, while she was sitting for her A-levels.
Most of us must have seen the wonderful movie, Eragon. It's the film adaptation of novel of the same title by Christopher Paolini. Mr Paolini had written the novel when he was 15. Fortunate enough to get recommendation from a seasoned author, Mr. Paolini signed a huge deal with Random House. Today, he's one of the richest young people in the US.
It doesn't happen only in the UK and the US. It also happens in India: 23-year-old Tushar Raheja's novel, Anything for you Ma'am? sold 5,0000 copies in one month.
If I keep using far-away-characters' you definitely will get bored.
Now, I will have to tell my own story: in 2006, I had travelled to India to write my first novel, under the invitation of the India Inter-Continental Cultural Association (IICA) based in Chandigarh, North India. I was a delegate at the 2nd international Writers' Festival there also, which held in many states of the subcontinent. I was the only African/ or Black at the event. I was also the youngest. After the event, which lasted for about four days, I travelled from Haryana to Delhi, the capital, with one of India's finest writers, Abha Iyengar. She asked me to stay in her home, since I knew no one in the country. I did.
She gave me everything I needed. And my work as a writer became very easy.
I asked questions about India and everything I needed to know. I went to bookshops and bought books. I read and met people, who talked to me about life in India. My perception of the country changed and gradually, I became so obsessed with it. Within three months, I finished the first draft of my book and started sending out proposals. In return, I got so many rejection slips, about 45 of them, from agents and publishers in the UK, the US and India. They came like thunder:
'Mr. Onyeka Nwelue, thank you so much for sending in your work, I have read and considered it and don't feel passionate enough about he voice.'
'Mr. Nwelue, I've read your work but I'm sorry, I can't represent you.'
'Mr. Nwelue, I've read your work, but we feel that there are so many characters and loose ends. Thank in your work.'
For once, I felt demoralized and my spirit was dampened.
I went back to work on the story. I re-wrote, cut and polished some parts of it. Many passages were cut off. Done, I sent the manuscript out to my editor in India, who worked on it and then got back to me. I decided to send it out again to publishers.
Around the middle of May last year, while I was in my friends' room in school - Nsukka campus of University of Nigeria - I got a call from cape town. That was the publisher of DADA Books, who was far away there for a workshop. He said he had read my manuscript and in his own words, 'liked the madness of the book, the magic realism and the so many characters'. And wanted to know if I could let him publish it. I thought he was joking, but oh no, he wasn't.
On his return to Nigeria, we agreed on something and I began to see more of myself as a writer. By the time my book came out, my lifestyle changed. Not to deceive you by trying to sound modest, I must say that everything changed with my novel. Everything.
The thing is: do what you like doing. Someone must like what you do. So far, I've gotten the sort of acclaim not even our established and older writers in Nigeria can get. Or a writer of my age.
Clare Dudman, British author of Edge of Danger and Wegener's Jigsaw describes it as 'unique'
Chika Unigwe, Nigerian-Belgian author of The Phoenix describes it as 'an ambitious novel'
Jude Dibia, award-winning author of Walking with Shadows and Unbridled describes myself the writer as 'an interesting new voice.'
Toyin Akinosho, publisher of FESTAC Books, in his review, has compared The Abyssinian Boy to Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. I will have to blow my trumpet, by quoting him: "The book is filled with perpetual storytelling, a form that's practiced by the British-Indian writer, Salman Rushdie and used extensively in Akin Adesokan's Roots in the Sky and Okey Ndibe's Arrows of the Rain. One story being told leads to another, shorter story and we are back to the main narrative, like solo takes in jazz music. The Abyssinian Boy even attempts, if rather unsuccessfully, to do for New Delhi, aspects of what Rushdie's Midnight's Children did for Bombay."
I wonder how many young musicians of this era get compared to the older ones. Rarely does that happen. This can aptly be that they do not listen to Nigerian music, but those of foreigners. Then again, how many of them have been compared to the foreign musicians? Comparison matters. It shapes the life and work of an artist; it broadens the horizon of his artistic mind. What more can I say when it's being said that I use the same narrative technique as some of the world's greatest storytellers: Salman Rushdie, Akin Adesokan and Okey Ndibe.
I do not let these things get into my head. But for once, I must tell you that sagging your trousers to appear sexy to girls, wearing the finest perfumes will never stop you from being what you want to be. Not only musicians use foul languages, we do. Not only TuPac Shakur uses swear-words, we do. Today, Zadie Smith is a celebrated author for her comic novels. And remember, she wrote her first novel, White Teeth when she was 21.
Not only musicians wear ear-rings. You can still wear these things and still be a writer. It will, for sure, help in the promotion of your work and then, people will get to understand what you do through the way you dress. I'm saying this, because when it comes to writing, we try to write about those things we don't like, which is why the Nigerian youth is not interested in the Nigerian novel or the Nigerian movies.
Writing has been made a very 'serious' affair, which in my opinion is wrong, when you don't trivialize tragedy. Nigerian writers are afraid to depict sex scenes. This is exactly why I've termed Toni Kan the best writer in Nigeria. This was judged from personal criteria. Humour is what gives hope to life. And most Nigeria books lack humour. I will rather ask you, the young mind, to approach writing the same way Indian, American and British writers approach writing, infusing humour to ease the pain we face in life.
If you live in a society you don't like, I keep telling people, pack your things and walk away, which just means that if you want to be a writer and don't want to look boring like other writers, you have the freedom to dress the way you want, think the way you want and live the way you want.
Remember, writers in Britain and the US are also celebrities.
Don't worry about the ones in Nigeria. We'll get there someday.
Being text of a talk presented to students of Regent (British) School, Abuja by Onyeka George Nwelue, author of The Abbyssinian Boy (Dada Book, 2009) on March 5 on occasion of the World Book Day 2009
