Cynics Or Critics? #1

Are you a budding writer and have this mind that grasps things and can keep them so vivid you can copy and paste them on pages for others to see the images too? You have this compelling urge to pass on messages to positively mould others; to tell them life isn’t vain (this is the school of writers I cherish to be in) and yet cynics who disguised as critics have been trying so hard to derail you from the right track? Well, first look at what they’re saying. Some people, even in their crude ways of correcting you, could have a good point or two to say but filled with venom which stems from their own failures, they may seem to come at you with an axe to hack you down.

Personally, I’ve had my own dire moments with this bitter set of critics (I call them cynics) and I witnessed the harshest criticisms in my writing life when I started penning my long poem, Dr Fixit (which is over half a million words long and is still progressing). When I was doing what everyone else was doing, everyone seemed to be comfortable with that. But immediately I stepped out of line (as others deemed it), the cynics with their criticisms were trying to hew me down. Have you checked: are those harsh comments you’re getting coming because you’re acting unusual?

 Now, an editor told me one thing at the beginning of my writing life. At age nineteen, just fresh from secondary school and with no hope of pursuing further education, I’d travelled from the south-eastern part of the country (Nigeria) to the west, a one-day journey, armed with three manuscripts – a collection of poems for children, another collection of poems targeted at mature audience (some pieces written in pidgin English) and my very first novel (based on the Nigeria-Biafra war – I was born right at the beginning of it). That happened after the magazine, ‘Monthly Life’ (now defunct but was published by Academy Press, Ilupeju, Lagos) published my poem for children, ‘Plea To A Bud’ (November 1986) from among several I sent to them. Wole Olaoye who I met in his office, the editor of ‘Monthly Life’, collected the manuscripts and sent the novel to the Book Editor. He’d welcomed me and the young man who accompanied me (I was new in the city and had to get to my destination with someone familiar with the terrain) with big bottles of orange drinks and complimentary copies of the magazine. The magazine editor in the course of our conversation told me: ‘You have to start from somewhere.’ I had to give the book editor some days to go through the manuscript. When I returned, he first asked me if I attended one of the unity schools. I shook my head in the negative and told him I was a product and pioneer student of a fledgling community school. He praised my effort in writing, especially my descriptive powers and he did ask me to use words I was acquainted with. Lastly, he told me to always type my manuscripts. All the manuscripts I took down there were handwritten.

I did drop a short story with Aunty Bose, the columnist who handled the children’s column, ‘Children’s Life’, where a second poem of mine, ‘Tell Me Please’, was published with an impression by the magazine’s artist in February 1987. I didn’t get any of my big projects published but my weak and strong points were highlighted and I went away with those.

Nigeria was in recession (just like it’s happening now) and with the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) introduced by the Babangida regime, local industries were in peril. I’d settled down in Lagos with my maternal grandpa’s sister, doing menial jobs with the hope I’d keep writing till eventually I’d get published. A few months later I returned to Academy Press to meet a different book editor and the magazine section was no more. The convivial editor (all editors I’d met seemed to be open and friendly) looked through the three or four-chapter manuscript I’d gone there with (this time it was typewritten and I wanted to present my new novel in bits so I could be corrected early enough) and told me I had a good script, told me I should handle themes that were within my grasp and shouldn’t let a roadside mechanic speak like a professor. The publishing house wanted to run a new series of fiction but with the downturn in the economy, the prospect looked grim. The last time I went back to Academy Press, the editors I’d met before weren’t there anymore and my insistence to see whosoever was in charge didn’t go down well with the female receptionist I met (not the ones I’d met before) but she gave in when I told her I’d been there a couple of times before. I met the person in the office she directed me to and he told me that the publishing house only handled the printing of books for other publishers – that is, if I had the cash to sponsor the printing of my book, they’d happily do it and that would be in hundreds of thousands of naira. It was the state of the economy and every facet of business was adjusting to fit in. When I returned in a few minutes to the reception, with my big khaki envelope and tattered shoddy sneakers, the contemptuous look the receptionist gave me told me if she had the opportunity she would’ve given me a crack on the head with her knuckles or lashed me with her tongue. To her, from the withering way she looked at me, I was young, poor, over-ambitious and a nuisance as long as her office was concerned. Frankly, I left the premises of Academy Press a very sad young man that day (and never went back to date). I returned to doing all sorts of menial jobs in Lagos and my writing took a lull for a long while.

I took to writing without any concrete knowledge of what it would entail. I was an avid reader who spent the least money I tricked my parents to get (with SAP, paying school fees was hard enough so asking for money to do other things was like overburdening them) on buying novels, magazines and newspapers. I was a big fan of the Mills and Boons and Pacesetters series, James Hadley Chase novels and later buried my head in reading war and spy novels. I remember my attempt in trying to read and complete an average of three novels in a day. I’d read, mark and cross-check the strange words in the dictionary. I remember also telling my father once that I needed money for some things to be done in my school. He told me I was lying but all the same, he’d give the money knowing I wanted to buy novels or magazines with it. He felled a plantain, sold the bunch and gave the money to me. That day I bought so many books from my regular vendor that he gifted three other books to me.

So my idea of a writer was garnered basically from novels by Westerners, especially Americans. I mistakenly tried to live the ‘American dream’ in a society that wasn’t yet ripe for one. Hanging on to that dream had taken me an unnecessarily longer time to realize but my tenacity has brought me to a zenith that cynics are not comfortable with. But that’s what happens when you keep your focus steady on your target and I have no apologies to anyone for climbing through the ranks. I thank God too for the objective critics who all helped give a good sense of direction to my writing life from the beginning. I came to Lagos with my manuscripts with the hope I’d get published and the good life (in my young mind) I’d expected to live was built around this. In fact, I wanted to first carve my niche as a writer right from home. I wrote my first serious poem in my last year in school (I remember attempting the very first in my third year and reading it to Dennis, my classmate and senior prefect – we were the pioneer students). The poem was entitled ‘War’ and I showed it to one Mr Ibe, one of the serving youth corps members – the very first set that was sent to our school.

I learnt Mr Ibe was a graduate of Philosophy. He had a corner in our classroom he tagged ‘The Philosopher’s Corner’. There he’d leave snippets of his writing. I did eavesdrop he was writing a novel too. So I let him look through my piece entitled ‘War’. I patterned the poem after J P Clark’s ‘Night Rain’ which was one of the poems we studied for that year’s Literature In English in the O' Level certificate exams organized by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC).

TO BE CONTINUED.