TAKE 5: Christine Odeph

What you need to know:

  • Validation to me is like a double-edged sword because there is no harsher career than that of a writer.
  • You slave over your computer, battling characters, insomnia, writer’s block and so many other elements, only for your manuscript to be rejected or unread.
  • My greatest moments of validation come from hearing people I have never met write, tweet me, inbox me or email me just to tell me that my stories transformed them somehow.

Christine Odeph is a writer and editor with an extensive portfolio. As a journalist, she writes human interest stories impacting various facets of our society.

In 2016, her short story, My Sister’s Husband, written using a pen name, Nyarsipi Odeph, was published in the 2016 Short Story Day Africa anthology titled Migrations.

In 2017, her manuscript, When Mountains Meet, was selected one of the top five winners in the Anasoma Writing Contest. She was also one of the 2018 participants at the 2018 invite-only Miles Morland Creative Writing Workshop. She recently started a vlog on Youtube, under her internet moniker, Kenyanisa, where she intends to share tongue-in-cheek experiences based on her own life after turning 30. Follow her on Twitter @kenyanisa

1. As a writer, what brings you the most validation in your career?

Validation to me is like a double-edged sword because there is no harsher career than that of a writer. Many seek it for years but never get a taste of it. You slave over your computer, battling characters, insomnia, writer’s block and so many other elements, only for your manuscript to be rejected or unread. To be a writer, one essentially has to have an audience. The bigger the audience, the greater the validation. A bigger audience means a wider net into which the writer’s message can be cast into.

My greatest moments of validation come from hearing people I have never met write, tweet me, inbox me or email me just to tell me that my stories transformed them somehow. It makes those dark in between moments of creating so worthwhile.

Winning literary prizes triples the validation. The masters of the craft saying yes after decades of obscurity mean your pen has finally made its mark. It’s an incredible high.

2.Why do you think people say Kenya is not a reading nation? Do Facebook posts count?

As long as you have a person’s attention for any amount of time based on a string of letters you created, then yes, they are reading, so yes, Facebook posts count (to some extent).

Reading is too broad a subject to be boxed into one definition, there is a book for every conceivable subject under the sun. The question is, is the demand and supply adding up? I disagree with this stereotype.

Kenyans are voracious readers, but the publishing space does not give room for writing that translates to the evolving tastes of the audiences. So many talented writers are constantly creating on a daily basis, and eventually the dam will burst.

3. What are some of the highs and lows you have experienced in your writing career? And what was it like when you got published for the first time?

Highs and lows will always be there, it’s the nature of being a creator. I think having people affected by my writing scares me sometimes and them as well. People think that you are, in fact, everything you write, especially in fiction, and they cross boundaries as a result. For the most part, I consider my (fiction) writing a commentary on my society, so when people react, I know I am doing something right. Getting published was surreal. I was used to hiding my work in an undisclosed folder until a friend pushed me to submit my first story. The day I got shortlisted, I think they heard me screaming in Mars. It lit a fire in me, and it also scared me.

4. Who else have you written for, outside of your magazine and editing work?

I am a freelance newspaper correspondent, but I also work in corporate and private spaces: research, web writing, copywriting, media writing and PR consulting. Diversity in key in this kind of career.

5.What do you think is the most important thing for a writer in Kenya to have, or to know?

You need a thick skin. Also, the chances of living large off writing are slim to none. The writing should be a vessel to channel out the art that was put in you. If the validation comes, that’s a bonus.