For some few seconds down these paragraphs, let me borrow you, as a writer, to paint the illustration below.
You
have a table secured at the corner of your room, beautifully decorated
with half read, half torn as well as newly bought books. Or perhaps
you're the virtual type: Notepad, MS word, WPS and the likes are the
tools with which you craft your magic.
You
have read the whole day, and just few minutes ago, you finished that
story you have always wanted to write. The story that has cost you
sleepless nights of research on and outside the web, questions and
queries from your teachers and mentors, and ache; the type that’s so
similar to migraine you felt your ugly neighbour was right for saying
writing would be your ticket to just one thing: an unexpected end.
This
is not the first story you would complete. But here, you feel special.
Perhaps you've written something similar in literary dexterity and well
articulated Africanism like Things fall apart; something deliberate with
so much carefulness like Purple Hibiscus. You just feel like you are
one step closer to your breakthrough. You could feel the walls of hall
of fame closing in on you. This is it. This has to be it.
But
there’s one problem: you are confused, you already sent the work out to
your editor, from there it goes straight to your publisher, and from
them straight to the world. But this has been the way you have always
done it with little to no success. Of course friends and families are
going to buy it. Your loyalists would read, review and share. But that’s
half the battle, and you know it.
Now if you don’t mind, here are few questions I would love you to go through with enough ease and give appropriate answers to:
- As a writer, what do you do after the completion of that great story/poem?
- The literary world is competitive and political. What strategy are you using?
- How well can you use controversy as catalyst to your growth?
- Aside the usual "Opportunity for Writers" magazines use as tagline for contests, what other opportunity do you think exist around here?
- Do you think you need more than winning prizes to stay atop your game and be relevant?
If
you can't answer them now, it's no problem. I wasn't expecting you to
anyways. My aim is to embed the answers within the lines of this
article, and my expectations are that you read carefully, find them
where they are buried like treasures, come back to these questions and
succeed at answering them. That's mission accomplished.
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