I’ve
been reading one book for close to six months now. Can you believe that? That’s
how bad things have gotten for me with reading for some time now.
It’s
bordering on ridiculous. And it’s one of the reasons why writing this blog or
at least pretending to write it, is one of the items on my to-do list.
I
bought “A Cup of
Comfort for writers... by Colleen Sell” because it called out to me like
any book worth its salt (to me at least) would have to do before I’d put my
money into it.
I
had been living like a the miserable result of a tryst between Guilt and
Procrastination ever since an entry I’d submitted for a writing contest in 2010
was shortlisted and I was chosen to attend a writers workshop as one of the
twenty selected from about four hundred aspiring writers.
We
had a mentally stimulating time at the ten-day workshop followed. I left at the
end of the gathering brimming with ideas. I couldn’t control the buzzing in my
head from all the stories
I was ready to tell, of the words I was going to weave
and marshal and command to sit together in the community that I was going to
call my book.
I
was armed with a barrow-full of tips and wisdom from world respected writers
like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chika
Unigwe and the very affable Binyavanga Wainaina (winner
of the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing), and as far as I knew back then, I
had everything I needed to become the first published writer from my immediate
family.
Or so I thought.
Reality
hit me almost as soon as I got back to my news booth at work. I had to figure
out how to do all the things I did as head of news, presenter and producer at
Smooth, and still have enough love left in me with which to smile at my laptop
enough to beat out a structure for my first book.
That's
when I really understood how jealous the writing muse could be. It demands total
submission and can’t stand competition.
I wondered if that was why writers
often go away to finish work on their current book. You just can’t juggle
distraction and writing. At least I have found that I can’t.
Then
the laptop gave me the perfect excuse for not writing; it caught a bug. I
gladly tucked it away somewhere not too easy to get to, and told my conscience
I would start writing as soon as I bought another more appropriate writing tool
aka Laptop.
Well I now have a beautiful recent model HP-Pavilion laptop, and
all I’ve done with it so far, is write the regular articles I write for a
Wedding Magazine I’ve been writing for, for over three years now.
I
still haven’t worked on that structure for my first book. My current excuse is
that I need to get a Samsung Galaxy tab, one that I can carry about and whip
out anywhere the muse finds me.
But
I’ve been living in guilt and it’s killing me because I just know I’m not ready
to put more than a hundred thousand Naira into another gadget I won’t use much
and if I have to wait till I have a tab to write, I might as well just push
that book back by another three years.
I
thought if I read more, I’d find the push I needed to start writing. That was
why I bought a cup of comfort for writers.
It’s a really good book, I read one
piece of it at a time whenever guilt lunges for my conscience about reading or
writing, since I figure reading a book about writing and writers is as close to
killing two birds with one stone as any “almost writer” could get.
So far, I have obviously not been inspired to start writing that book, but hey, at least I’m writing about writing a book. Does that count?
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