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
