The Writing Room

First published on LinkedIn. Here are four comments that well-wishers/naysayers make to writers which writers would prefer not to hear. 1. Stop wasting your time. The writer’s job is one of struggle. The first struggle that she has to overcome is her struggle with a blank page. There are many times when the writer knows what she wants to write. But no matter how hard she tries, the right words refuse to show themselves. This happens more times than the writer likes to admit. But, eventually, the words start writing themselves. Not the best words, the ones that capture exactly what she wants to say, but adequate words that capture the essence of the story she wishes to tell — words that will be pruned by her editor’s pen over and over and over again before she is comfortable with sharing her work with the world. Completing a writing project is one of the writer’s greatest achievements. So, she enjoys wasting time writing. She enjoys writing and believes John Lennon who is reputed to

  First published on LinkedIn "Write an essay of not less than 3000 words and not more than 5000 words. You may choose your topic." That was my instruction. No problem. Nothing to it. I can write. I write all kinds of stuff. I know what I want to write about. I have the evidence to support my stance. I can do it. That was my thinking. I got out my computer, opened a word processing programme, wrote my title and before I knew it, my first draft was underway. In one night, I completed my first draft, not quite 3000 words, but enough to build the rest of my essay. By the second night, I had completed writing and editing my essay. It was ready for the world of readers who like the stuff that I write. That was a dream, though.  I would love to be able to be that kind of a writer who gets an idea and immediately manages to capture it in all its complexity in writing. But alas, I am not that kind of a writer. I get many ideas, wonderful ideas, but either I don’t feel compelled to

  I used to tell everybody that I didn’t have enemies. I really didn’t think I had any. I knew no one who was out to get me. My relationships were not perfect but I didn’t think anybody hated me. I was forced to think about my enemies , though, in one interview I attended. “ Suppose the current employees refuse to work with you, what would you do?” one of the interviewers asked. “ I would find a way for us to work together,” I said. “I tend to get on with people.” I had been confident in that conviction. That was before I had met my supervisor and that bus driver, but after I had met Mas Joe. “ Are you saying that you have no enemies?” That lady was persistent. “ None that I know of,” I had responded. “ Everybody has enemies,” she had told me, every one of her words imbued with a certainty that she had dared me to question. Since then, I had tried to figure out the meaning of that word — enemy. One dictionary told me that an enemy “is a person who is actively hostile

  The music of the crunching of stones under my feet, the bu-dum bu-dum of my heart and a head full of grown up thoughts accompanied me as I jogged down the dirt steps. The steps led to a dirt track that resembled a squiggly mark that a child who had not yet learnt to write had scribbled on a page. My body traced its curves until I reached its end. A hop and I was on the main road which was not much different from the track, but wider. I was ready to experience the first of many firsts in my life. I ran past silent houses, free from the constant bickering of their owners. After rounding two more corners of silent houses, I reached the guango tree that guarded other silent houses. The guango tree provided shade for people and beasts. I stopped, not because I wanted solace from the blazing sun overhead. Stopping there was what travellers did when they reached that spot. Climbing atop one of the gnarled, sprawling roots of the guango tree, I gazed to my left at the far end of the fiel