Dear Dr Siundu, all that readers want is a well-told story

Kinyanjui Kombani’s piece, ‘Who Will Save us from the Yoke of Thematic Concerns?’ eloquently captured what is a familiar struggle for many of us who identify as writers. I couldn’t help but chime into the conversation. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • People like Dr Godwin Siundu, (his article ‘What, Pray, is there to Celebrate?’ refers) who make us want to recoil in fear and not share with the world stories that have been welling up in our hearts; stories that have caused us to be restless and cost us sleepless nights as they demanded to be told.
  • Readers can find depth and meaning from the most mundane of scenes and might find none at all in a carefully choreographed one.
  • The truth is that when most of us set out to write, we are not looking to impress a don in his ivory tower, armed with a literary thermometer that can detect ‘apprentice aspirations’ and those worthy of celebration.  We are not looking to win regional awards, though we wouldn’t mind if we did.

I read Kinyanjui Kombani’s piece, ‘Who Will Save us from the Yoke of Thematic Concerns?’ with tears in my eyes. He has so eloquently captured what is a familiar struggle for many of us who identify as writers. I couldn’t help but chime into the conversation.

I can’t speak for everyone, but my own journey as a writer or storyteller, if you will, has been fraught with missteps, tears and having to wage a spirited war against that paralysing impostor syndrome that can chokehold and halt a creative endeavour in its tracks.

It is not until last year that I started to openly identify as a writer. My ‘coming out’, as my editor once called it, was occasioned by two things: I had upped and left my regular 8 to 5 and needed something to say when people asked what it is I did. Secondly, I had published my first young adult novella, having only previously published children’s books and short stories. I could now say, with some measure of confidence, that I was a writer.

But it is people like Dr Godwin Siundu, (his article ‘What, Pray, is there to Celebrate?’ refers) who make us want to recoil in fear and not share with the world stories that have been welling up in our hearts; stories that have caused us to be restless and cost us sleepless nights as they demanded to be told.

While many of us are happy to contend that there could be a number of problems that can afflict a novel, for example, editorial errors, poor research, gaping plot holes, sheer blandness and even unnecessary padding and awkward constructions as Dr Siundu proposed; it would be quite unfair to list the absence of ‘philosophising’ as one of them.

I was quite tickled by Kombani’s examples of how literature students are forced to harass meaning out of images that were not intended to be symbolic at all. I remember upon the publication of my children’s book, Rundo the Elephant, a friend remarked how genius it was to rearrange letters in the word ‘round’ to give my (round and plump) elephant character the name Rundo. My jaw nearly dropped at this astounding revelation. I was tempted to take credit for this genius literary feat, when in truth, the name Rundo was as random as they come. That it ended up as a play on ‘round’ was purely coincidental.

SIMPLE PLEASURES

With my novella, The High Road, though, there are symbols and images I deliberately put in there.  They were not forced in to make the book more philosophical. They were simply a by-product of the creative process. Interestingly, none of my readers have picked up on them. In fact, I am often the one asking, “Did you see what I did there?”  Upon which they reply in surprise, “Very clever.”

In my case, the unconscious styles and images used are often the ones readers picked up on. One reader warmed my heart when he sent a WhatsApp picture of a section he termed as lyrical. Some readers tell me of parts they found funny or tear-jerking that I did not intentionally set out to make them as such. 

One of my readers, upon completion, found herself rummaging through her dusty old suitcase where she kept her long lost high school love letters — because the story took her back to the days she was a confused love-struck teenager.

Why do I share this? Because your regular reader often just wants a good story. At least the readers for whom I write. They are not looking to examine it under a microscope and take it apart! Quite possibly all they want is to be delighted or intrigued. Readers see different things in a story. Readers can find depth and meaning from the most mundane of scenes and might find none at all in a carefully choreographed one.

Not to give the impression that my book has been lavished with nothing but praise, I have had readers who told me that I shouldn’t have had an epilogue. I was fortunate enough to have a reader point out that my boy characters often choked up with emotion and burst into tears at the slightest provocation, which, he explained, was quite uncharacteristic.

Luckily, this was caught early and I was able to attempt a modification to capture them in a more realistic manner. I acknowledge my literary handicaps, and will be happy to learn of others as I am looking to grow.

But the truth is that when most of us set out to write, we are not looking to impress a don in his ivory tower, armed with a literary thermometer that can detect ‘apprentice aspirations’ and those worthy of celebration.  We are not looking to win regional awards, though we wouldn’t mind if we did. We are simply looking to tell a story – an honest story that overflows from the wealth and depths of our unique human imagination; each one just as worthy of sharing as the next.

This beautiful, yet solitary, journey of creation can easily be muddied by unnecessary pressure to please a certain group of ‘important’ people in literary circles. We want our names to be dropped alongside the names Dr Siundu listed in his article as accomplished and having achieved international acclaim, never mind that some of their books were a real struggle to read despite their glowing reviews.

TERRIFYING PROSPECT

I remember how terrified I was once to share a short story I’d written with PEN-Kenya’s president Khainga O’ Okwemba – a brilliant mind whose passion and grasp of matters literature I admire and respect.

Why was it a terrifying prospect? Because although in my view, it captured aspects of the human experience, I was afraid he’d dismiss my story as soap-opera-ish and shallow. I was afraid that because it did not tackle tribalism or neocolonialism; didn’t have spectacular flashbacks or mind-blowing imagery; it did not have ‘a story within a story’ or sagely Maasai proverbs, then it would not hold any literary merit.

I was thus pleasantly surprised when he shared that while he is in fact passionate about what are considered ‘deep’ themes, what he often looks for is a well told story.

For many of us, putting our work out there takes a great deal of courage. We are already fighting our own internal literary critics. These unwelcome voices inside our heads (that should be silenced) tell us that our writing is rubbish. If only we could write like so and so, then maybe we’d be better. In light of this, we really could do with a lot less vague and blanket dismissals and a lot more clear and helpful suggestions and even training.

Please hear me right. We are not against constructive criticism that builds and enriches. We are not calling for unwarranted praise of the mediocre. What we are against is declaring a whole generation of writers unworthy of celebration for not succeeding in this abstract and unclear category called philosophising!