Final #WriterPrompt For 2016: Guest Writer Wole Talabi

How quickly a year goes by! We have a treat for the final #WriterPrompt of the year but first a look at the micro-writing workshop's beginnings.

 

How #WriterPrompt Came To Be

Short Story Day Africa’s online writing workshop was launched back in April, 2015 with a gleaming line of text running across an image of an ominous alleyway;

“He wasn’t from around here, not really.”

Those words invited the damned and the lost and the aspirant, who came from far and wide with pockets full of pretty words and devastating imaginations. They breathed fire, and #WriterPrompt was a living thing.

Beneath the editorial gaze of SSDA’s devoted team, daring writers learnt how to interpret prompts in new and surprising ways, how to shock and inspire awe, create believable, loveable, detestable characters and how to navigate all those tricky bits like grammar, punctuation, sentence structure or flow. All in under 250 words. That’s all you get, and boy, do they make every word count.

Fellow writers, or indeed, voracious readers are able to stop by and drop their constructive critique, overwhelming praise or their simple thoughts into any given offering. This creates a productive learning environment for the writers – and at the end of the allocated time window – the piece which blows everybody away the hardest is chosen for publication on SSDA’s website.

To date, SSDA has published a multitude of winning pieces and unearthed diamonds.

The Twist In The Tale

The recently re-launched, re-vamped #WriterPrompt introduces a new twist – your stories may be critiqued and judged by guest authors. Some of the selected prompts have a new guest – and don’t expect them to pull any punches.

For the last #WriterPrompt of the year we decided to end with a bang, roping in Wole Talabi to be our Guest Writer. Here's a little bit about this fascinating writer. 

 

WOLE TALABI is a full-time engineer, part-time writer and some-time editor from Nigeria. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Lightspeed, Omenana, F&SF, Terraform, Abyss & Apex, The Kalahari Review, the anthologies Imagine Africa 500, Futuristica Vol. 1 and a few other places. He edited the anthologies These Words Expose Us and Lights Out: Resurrection and co-wrote the play Color Me Man. He currently lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. You can keep up with him on Twitter too: @WTalabi or catch up with him on his blog.

Watch out for #WriterPrompt 14 on the 28th of November and join the event on Facebook to take part. We can't wait to read your writing.

"Correctness...is not the be-all & end-all of editing." The Art Of Editing, 3

Helen Moffett, Efemia Chela and Bongani Kona and SSDA's intern, Catherine Shepherd are all involved in the SSDA/Worldreader Editing Mentorship. In the third edition of the series, they talk about what they've learnt editing a collection with stories from 9 different countries and that draws inspiration from even more.

 

Editing in the African context is fairly unique. The writers of our fair continent travel in their writing, creating complex stories that rarely draw on just one place, one generation, one lived experience or language. As an editor you have a responsibility to keep an eye out for the changes in tone and slang. There are 54 countries that make up Africa - so there's nothing homogenous about the writing you will be encountering. 

During the fellowship we noted it was important to place the story's own voice as well as its characters in the proper context. Hopefully the writer will have done the proper research, but if something sounds strange. Look it up and then draw it to the author's attention. 

Related to this is the issue of over-editing:

"It's a tricky balance to strike but the best editors are tightrope walkers." - Bongani Kona

"Books that have been stripped of their local flavour and language, make for a boring read. It can be difficult to parse particular words into "standard" English. So in quite a few cases they should just be left as they are - okada, trotro, lobola, counterback.

I think you should trust the reader to be invested enough in the story to gather meaning from the surrounding words. Or Google it." - Efemia Chela

Helen Moffett adds:

My pet peeve is editors who “correct” local idiom & vibrant dialogue. The Queen’s English is not required for most characters.

The editor in Africa must be sensitive to variety of Englishes reflecting/representing multilingual societies.

It's a similar thing with correctness; it is not the be-all & end-all of editing. Consistency is sometimes more important. What does have to be correct is the Internal logic of story. Even short stories can have plot holes or contradictions.

Cathy's experience of the mentorship is slightly different and she explains what that entails:

I'm dealing with the e-book for the young writers that entered Migrations. It's well on its way as I am feverishly editing some powerful stories written by young African writers still in high school, under the guidance of the talented writer and literary critic Karina Szczurek.

Editing is definitely a big responsibility but like the actual art of writing,  the more you do it the easier it flows. There are some hard and fast rules in the editing game but I got some good advice about things that don't follow those rules.

"Follow your gut," Karina Szczurek told me before I began to chop, suggest and rearrange someone else's baby.

Worldreader is sponsoring the first SSDA Editing Mentorship Programme. Next week in the final edition, we talk about tying up loose ends. 

Writing Boot Camp at Ba re e ne re Literature Festival

We're honoured to be invited to this year's Ba re e ne re Literature Festival in Lesotho from the 9th to 11th of December. The festival programme is out and Efemia Chela, Catherine Shepherd and Karina Szczurek will be running a workshop on the final day.

If you were unable to get to any of the Flow Workshops earlier this year, the Writing Boot Camp would be perfect for you as the format is similar. So be sure to follow the submission guidelines above and enter your writing for consideration. There are 20 spots available!

Here's how some of the attendees of the Flow Workshops across Africa found the experience:

"It’s helped me debunk my own myths about time and the idea of the kind of space I need (at least in my head), in order to write" - Mercy Wambui, Addis Ababa participant

 

Nairobi Flow Workshop

Nairobi Flow Workshop

"I’m very thankful for the workshop. It has already changed my writing habits and increased my level of discipline. It gave me a routine, which is what I was missing. “ - Agazit Abate, Addis Ababa participant

 

Yaoundé Flow Workshop

Yaoundé Flow Workshop

 

"Well, after the workshop, I felt the story I had previously written for Migrations was not good enough, so I wrote another one, 4,500 words in two days; and at the end I began having interesting ideas. That story is now part of my a novel, which I finished on 30th, last month - a first draft. (But I ended up submitting another story to Migrations). Were it not for the workshop, I might not have thought of writing the manuscript. I really appreciate it. “ - Peter Ngila, Nairobi participant

 

See you there!

Many thanks to the Miles Morland Foundation. Without them the Boot Camp at Ba re e ne re Literature Festival and many other SSDA initiatives would not be possible.

"...your work must remain invisible to the naked eye." The Art of Editing, 2

Helen Moffett, Efemia Chela and Bongani Kona and SSDA's intern, Catherine Shepherd are all involved in the SSDA/Worldreader Editing Mentorship. More information about it can be found here. In the second edition of the series, they discuss the role of the editor, writer/editor boundaries and how to navigate them.

 

To lead us in here is a beautiful analogy of the role of the editor:

"In a small office on the fourth floor of the building I work in, is a Senegalese tailor with gold-rimmed spectacles, Mr. M. Over the years, I’ve dropped off various garments with him, all needing a mend of some kind and within a day or two, Mr. M. has returned them looking as good as new. 

It’s no surprise then that I draw parallels between Mr. M and my own work as an editor-in-training.

Editing, I think, works the same way: lonely hours in a dark room mending stories.

And much as each garment has to be treated differently, each story requires different levels of intervention. Sometimes it may just be changing the order of a sentence or it could require deleting entire paragraphs. But everything is done in the service of the story and like Mr. M., your work must remain invisible to the naked eye." - Bongani Kona

 

The other fellows echo Bongani's sentiments: 

"Don't fall into the trap of rewriting someone's story. It's unfair to you as an editor - you don't get credited. And it's unfair to the writer - it doesn't give them a chance to work on THEIR story and get their words out. It's their vision. They have to take responsibility for their story.

Don't be the midwife that snatches the baby from the mother and flees!

Give suggestions:

  • Encourage more research if their characters are weak
  • Correct obvious grammar issues but enquire about issues of tone
  • Raise concerns about plot development and character arcs

If what the writer needs is an intensive rewrite and reworking, they should hire you as a ghost writer NOT an editor." - Efemia Chela

Helen's Moffet's take:

"Never impose your own voice.

Your job as an editor is to become a writing chameleon

To blend into the author’s text. But you’re also the reader’s representative. You are their eyes and ears. Your job is to ask: how will they respond to this story?

In terms of the editor's role, I find fact-checking is a much neglected element of editing. Part of being an editor is raising red flags about suspect facts. In a story I edited once, the writer had a ship sail from Suez to Khartoum – via sea. Er, no. Not geographically possible."

Efemia adds: 

[Fact-checking] is especially important if you're writing about a place people know. Nothing irritates me more than having been somewhere, reading a book set in the same place and the author getting it wrong. It's my pet peeve and so many authors are guilty of it. GRR!!! It's jarring for the reader. Yes its fiction so they suspend their disbelief but a patently obvious error ruins the narrative for them.

Speaking of pet peeves, Catherine raises one of hers:

"The repetition of the same word used again too soon. Our brain likes to repeat a concept without us even realising what we have done. I stumble over repetition easily now when editing but it must be one of the most natural writing errors we make in the beginning as writers. So as an editor that's something you need to point out."

 

 

Worldreader is sponsoring the first SSDA Editing Mentorship Programme. In next week's Art of Editing, the Migrations editing team discuss the challenges and privileges of editing in a multi-lingual context like Africa and more.