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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Writing was not the easy way out...




Writing
Was not the easy way out…
Sam Mwaka-karama
A walk on the streets of Kampala or other up-country towns will show
You how much penmanship is there among the street people: art pencil doodlers, Illustrators, painters, musicians, clowns, and comics… name it Uganda has them. Natural talents of which writing is a pillar is not lacking in our Country. In some districts as would be usual and certainly natural, many young talents get suppressed by poverty and, who will tell you that actually to defy poverty, your small talent properly practiced would make you even a success.

I am one of really very many Ugandan self made writers. At least I know many who are like me - a number of them older ones, never made it beyond several even a few newspaper articles and, retired Largely unknown beyond their generations – I am like many of them, perhaps that I made an unguided break-through in Indie writing and publishing on Amazon is The only unique valuable inborn element of talent I have, that somehow with practice materialized. And which I would like more Ugandans to follow.

I have had two manuscripts with a conventional publishing company in
Kampala that are ten years dead and very unbelievably so… even before that, actually way back in 1994/5 I had an earlier manuscript dead in Nairobi Kenya, with a stint in jail appended to it: I just walked away easy at the remote end: “Bolicks, you think I won’t ever be able to write another book manuscript – watch! And today I have an eBook live online through Amazon Kindle Direct; an American publishing company.  

Suffer the African publishers: the most successful African publishing firms [at least I am sure about those in Uganda – apart from the newspaper houses] are run by unknown self made businessmen who are mostly shy of being [public figure] paradox of the myth around the publishing industry in Africa. Are the bizarre dead end manuscript junk-yard African witers suffer. It gives me profound joy to applaud the tremendous bailout – online publishing firms have developed. The opportunity is suddenly there abundantly and, for a talented person the intricate online publishing challenges in technicalities is the real sieve of the merits.

Academic writers Versus Academic reading book markets…

          Strange but true - Lately I have been reading on some blogs issues raised by ‘re-discover the wheel’ writers who are urging the educated world to insulate itself by discovering this ‘academic publishing’; sort of explained would mean, academics writing and publishing for their own closed market.
          To me it is still the same old thing; who reads ‘Lancet’? And who has been reading all those classic academic Journals, texts and newsletters since time immemorial? Why talk of academicians writing for the academicians’ market now - that has been the norm for centuries!

          The argument raised by some of the Blogs on the subject of developing books by and for the academics, is to me invalid; that the academics don’t ‘make wealth’ out of what they write is a paralysis of sorts: There are whole publishing houses whose entire systems thrive on works exclusively for and  by academics… and these are not small printing press departments on campus – they are fully fledged international publishing houses. If the academic writers don’t ‘make wealth’ then they should sort it out between the academic writers and the academic publishing houses and perhaps their marketing systems.

          The bugles and trumpets have been heard over the blogs – like when it happened a few years ago in LA and the Hollywood writers were on the streets for the first time. This time it is the academic writers and the issue of ‘wealth making’ over their publications. For some of us outside the box… it’s a shocking discovery! That, actually academic publications of great packaging and note were more “quantity” output than “quality” works. As a Laureate was more recently remotely quoted as having said.    
          The world of the academics is a complex one and complexity as it is known psychologically, might cause paralyses of sorts even, en masse… and it is the fear of the unknown we outsiders might bite the end of our pencils about. And when that happens in the confines of the upper echelon of academics and its publishing sphere of influences… which is now a much wider global body of associations, affiliations, then trouble is up there in the winds. If they called the other one a “spring” then this one might be the Penguins’ “Chill”.
         The African academics will tell you that “Rascals” are bad. And Africa writers should refrain from [writings that don’t count] – and then it is the same academics that turn around and applaud rascal stories…

          I am currently refreshing my knowledge of ‘Tom Sawyer’. The Mark Twain Adventure story. To me old Mark Twain was a rascal who wrote awesome rascal kid tales. He was also a word miser… he thought-out most of the story details quietly; perhaps seated on his benign arm Chair, and only let-out the barest essential; ‘cut a long story short’ guy. How about this…

~~
          “Thomas Sawyer why are you late again? He said.
          Tom began to speak… and then stopped. There was a new girl in the Schoolroom – a beautiful girl with blue eyes and long yellow hair. Tom Looked and looked.
          Oh! How beautiful she was! And in two seconds Tom was in love! He must sit next to her. But How?
          In the girl’s half of the room there was only one empty chair, and it was next to the girl. Tom thought quickly and then looked at the teacher.
          I stopped to talk to Huckleberry Finn! He said.
          The teacher was very, very angry. Boys were often late for School. That was bad. But talking to Huckleberry Finn was worse! The teacher took his stick, and two minutes later Tom’s trouser was very hot and the teacher’s arm was very tired.” [From The Adventure of Tom Sawyer]

~~
          I think Tom Sawyer might still be read in lower Ed here in Uganda. Though the academics want to replace them with local stories, the scheme seems bleak. The African academic publishers have lots of text books, but these sort of “Adventures of the little devils” format of story-telling are scoffed at most times – even by the publishers themselves – more often a story is cover dismissed. A synopsis might not even get a cursory reading. So unknown writers might as well just go online. ***

          The Writer is an Independent Thinker,  Author, Blogger and Indie publisher    

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