A GUY WRITES A NOVEL…

   126     I’m in awe of people who write books. Big books with important characters and brainy plot twists. I can’t comprehend that mental stoicism, to spend all your time with these characters, to feed them, pick their clothes, give them emotions, educate them (or dis-educate them) and give them spouses, put them in fenced homes with running hot water and then maybe, even decide on what gender of babies to give them. Don’t even start on where you will find a spouse for them in these dim dating times, but most definitely someone who doesn’t go to bed in underwear. I have little patience for that level of artistic longevity. I get bored with characters too quickly and I want to be rid of them. I want to banish them to a faraway land where nobody speaks their tongue and pale people eat celery for dinner. It’s worse if they utter smart things, these well-coiffed sound bites that I can only dream of. So yes, I’m jealous of them and their triumphs and I try to withhold their rewards and quite often I put them in a position of weakness before I (reluctantly) think of how I can make them strong again. Plus I hate when characters are too happy if I’m not the one making them happy. Yes, I’m like a wife or a girlfriend. I hate characters who just want to spend their days sitting in garden restaurants on sunny days, drinking healthy smoothies through thick straws and showing their beautiful teeth in laughter. That. Shit. Drives. Me. Up. The. Wall. I like when my characters sit quietly by windows and stare outside with sardonic looks. I love characters that eat alone -chewing their food absentmindedly, as if they are using someone else’s jaws.  I never ever want my characters to laugh too loudly either. It upsets me. You see why it’s too demanding, too involving? Then comes the exhaustive and completely soul waning zone where they have to market the book in person by sitting (and smiling throughout) at tables and signing those books at book signings with a handful of (mostly) curious people (ni nini anapeana? Ni bure ama tunalipia?). And then actually hope that they make some decent money off their body of work. I have ran into authors who walk around everywhere with their books and when you bump into them in petrol stations or in the supermarket or as you stand watching your kids swing at a restaurant’s play area, they say, “By the way, have you read my book?” And you say,” No, I haven’t had a chance”, and before you can shout, “Stop swinging the baby so hard, he will fall,” they retrieve a copy from their bag and say, “Here, it’s only a1000 bob.” Then you have to buy it. How can you not buy it when you are a writer and you empathise with the very challenging process of creating? And so you support this great literal cause even though it leaves a distinct strong after-taste of affront. To be honest, this grim part of authoring a book has never appealed to me. The idea that I might one day be ‘forced’ to ‘impose’ my book on friends and acquaintances in public spaces and hawk it from a knapsack on my back. I have always wondered, could this be my impending destiny? Will I be the writer in supermarket’s dairy section who confronts acquaintances I haven’t seen in dog years to buy my book? Is it not hard enough writing that book? Nonetheless I remain quite impressed, proud and somewhat jealous at the brevity of these authors and their ability to try and sell these books in these unappealing and unappreciative literary conditions. But most of all I remain very fearful of spending all that mental power, sacrificing sleep, battling author insecurity and writing a book only for people to photocopy it. Or say, “Can you hook me up me with a free copy?”  This annoying Kenyan culture of people wanting to be bloody ‘hooked up’ with free shit.  More so, ‘tickos.’ Lord! *Insert whiny middle-class voice*: “Do you have free tickos you hook me up?” These are people who prefer to buy expensive drinks instead of buying a 1,000 bob ticket. I can’t think of a greater insult to an artist’s talent. Or time. By the way, let me just walk away from this story before I get off tangent and eat into Kinyanjui Kombani’s time. You know Kinyanjui, don’t you? The banker who writes and has about 16 books to his name. Well he wants to talk about what it entails to write a book. By KINYANJUI KOMBANI He has been contemplating it for a long time – two years to be exact. The story has been simmering in his head all this time, and is now boiling over, threatening to explode if he doesn’t jot it down. He has conjured up all the characters, their motivations, traits, drive, emotions. He has cried with them, laughed with them, and mourned them when he had to kill them. It is no wonder that he has become a recluse, talking to himself sometimes. His spouse has been looking at him strangely. So, now he has to write it. It is not going to be an easy task. It has to compete with many things that he would rather be doing. Relationships will suffer. Friendships will be left to the sidelines. Family events will have to be skipped. Children may have to be pushed away, rather angrily, when they interrupt moments of intense writing. Family money will be diverted to research. There are times he will look at the piece of paper and no words will come to his mind. And like writer Anthony Gitonga says, he will stare down the piece of paper until droplets of blood drip from his forehead onto the paper. He will walk around town to see if something will inspire him. And he will see bookshop displays with other people’s books. ‘How does one feel to see his book on a bookshop display?’ he will ask himself. A book you have written?  And then he will find inspiration and go back to writing. And finally, the novel will be done! He has managed what most writers never do – to actually write. He has done it! Welcome to stardom! He will seek out publishers. He will walk importantly to publishing houses. And the receptionist will give him a look of slight disdain. The, who-are-you-to-come-here-in-your-rags look. And he will smile. It’s only a matter of time. Once his book sells millions they will give him VIP treatment. Just you wait. Kuteseka ni kwa muda. Poverty has no roots. And a young editorial staff will be called to attend to him. Our guy will be turned away. They do not do not accept hand written manuscripts. Times New Roman. Double Space. Size 12. Printed on one side only. Bound. Fair enough. Only that he doesn’t have a computer. And cyber cafés charge seven shillings a minute. And he walked all the way there. Meanwhile he knows no one with a computer. He will go back home, dejected. So much for writing. A few months later, a friend will see the handwritten manuscript and offer to help. The guy can come type it at the friend’s cyber café when there are no clients. Perfect. Only that the friend’s cyber café is kilometers away. And the café is almost always busy. It will be another year before the full novel is typed. The guy will gather a few coins, print and bind the work. Then he will resubmit the manuscript. And he will be given a slip and told to wait. “Don’t call us. We will call you.” He will walk back to his house, smiling and with a spring in his step. He does not know this, but it will be a long wait. Weeks will turn into months. Finally he will call the publisher. “Oh, that one. We have decided not to publish it. It doesn’t fit into our house style.” “Ah, there are many other publishers”, he will say as he collects the manuscript. And the cycle will continue. “You know we receive over 30 manuscripts a week, we cannot publish them all.” “The book is good. But we will not publish it.” As if that even makes sense. And very soon hope turns into despair. He keeps all rejection letters in a file, and the file is getting bigger. Despair turns into acceptance. Maybe he wasn’t meant to be a writer. So he starts doing other things. One day out of the blue, he will receive a call. Actually, the call will go to his older brother because he has no phone. “We’d like to discuss your manuscript.” Renewed hope. Mungu halali. The Lord does not sleep. He says a prayer and gets to the publisher’s office an hour before the appointed time. “Your manuscript shows potential,” the publisher says. Our guy will be smiling, thinking of how to break the news to his spouse who, just yesterday, was asking him if he could consider another career. “We are considering publishing it so long as you change a few things.” Fair enough. He is given a 5-page list of things to change. The smirk on his face turns to consternation. He has to remove huge chunks, and rewrite whole chapters. And, oh no! He has to remove some characters. The characters he grew up with, and whom he has loved passionately. It has to be done. There will be no less than ten rewrites. And finally the book is finished. And our guy does not recognise the book at all. Characters have been added – imposters to spoil the party. Others have been removed. He has had to change the title. The publisher doesn’t like it. Nevertheless, the book is ready. He sees the cover. He doesn’t like it much. But the book has to come out. It has been a four-year wait. And on his walk back to town, he will stop at a motor vehicle showroom. His emotions getting ahead of him, he will step in, and ask for the price of an SUV. The sales person will laugh out loud, looking at our guy’s dusty, worn out shoes and wondering if he is mad. Our guy will make the oath. Just you wait. I will buy this car. Cash. Let’s wait till the book is out and I am a celebrity. But it will be a whole six years before the book is released. He will have grown tired of calling, emailing, threatening, and pleading with the publisher. The book is not ready, he will be told. The country is not ready for your book. We have no budget at this time. And then, one day, the book will be launched. A great ceremony with family and friends. He will be elated. There will be a review of the book in the media. He will see the book at a bookshop. And he will cry again. And he will start to earn the respect of family and friends. He will hear the good news – a university has decided to pick the book as a study text. Wow! He has arrived. All he ever dreamt was to see his book in print. Who had ever thought it would be taught at university? Not in his lifetime.

1. Kelly’s song will become a favourite: Did you ever think that you would be this rich?

Only that four years later, he will be a disappointed man. Despite the successes the book has had, he has not received a single cent in royalties. And the publisher has gone underground. Our guy is older and wiser, and knows a few more people. A lawyer will draft him a demand letter. The publisher has to give up all rights to the book, or face legal action. The publisher does not contest the demand. He has only two conditions: that the writer buys all the books in his store, and that subsequent editions of the book indicate that his company did the first publication. Fair enough. The writer, seeing the big picture, will obtain a bank loan and buy off all copies. Our guy will move to another publisher. He has built a few more relationships and is getting to be well known in literary circles. Exactly ten years after the book was written, it is re-launched in a well-attended function at a private university. Our guy is exultant. The book becomes world famous. It is picked by more universities. It goes across borders. There is talk of turning it into a film. It is one of the critically acclaimed books in modern times. This inspires our guy more. He writes and writes. He does literary festivals. The new publishers are giving him regular reports on sales. The royalties are not as much as he would like them to be, but our guy knows that there is hope. One day, the SUV will come home. Just you wait. And then the publisher calls a meeting of its top writers. In the meeting there is the who’s who in the country’s writing scene.  Our guy is honoured to attend. He can see people he only sees on TV. The publisher doesn’t have very good news. The publishing industry is not thriving. Apart from competition and government policy changes, there is a real threat in piracy. Revenues are being lost to pirates who have become so sophisticated that their work is better quality than the original. Our guy is worried. If this goes on, the publishers will redirect resources to better earning genres. Creative fiction is constantly under threat from text books. He has stuck with this publisher because he knows they have intentional investment in creative fiction. And then our guy goes to talk at one of the universities where his book is a study text. He receives a heroic welcome. It is a grueling two-hour talk. He loves every minute of it. To see people who hang on to every word he says, who say how his characters changed their lives, is heavenly. And then, to answer a question, he requests for a copy of the book. Nobody has it. Surprise. In other universities he has visited, the students have proudly displayed copies for him to read. Then to his horror, a student offers a photocopied version of his book. Right then, it is revealed to him that out of the 200 students he is talking with, none has seen the original copy. It is no wonder the question they are struggling with has to do with the cover page. Nobody has seen the cover page! It then dawns on our guy, no wonder the royalties are not coming. He does his research. It is happening in the universities right under the eyes of the administration. Only one book is being bought, the rest of the students photocopy from that book. In some cases, the photocopies are being done by the lecturers. He is told about a copy of an autographed book making rounds in his alma mater, a copy which was given to a good friend as a complementary. Astounding. He usually has to buy copies from his publisher – only the 6 author copies are free. It has taken blood, sweat and tears to get here. Everyone is stabbing him in the back. Et tu? He asks. Et tu? His fists are now clenched. Ps: The 10th Writing Masterclass is open for registration. It will be between 7th to 9th Dec. To register email [email protected]