These are a few (100) of my favourite things

Before leaving the US I bought a copy of Vein of Gold, one of Julia Cameron’s books on exploring creativity and talent. While it’s not as good as some of her other books – the Artist’s Way in particular – Vein of Gold offers some great wisdom and fun exercises for poking around in the dusty corners of your creative mind. One I found a lot of fun was a challenge to list 100 things that you love.

It’s a great exercise for a quiet afternoon; an opportunity to reflect and explore and to put yourself in the middle of your life. With a target of 100 you need to really delve deep, to explore the natural world, friends, family, experiences, spirituality, travel, or less physical experiences – sights, smells, tastes and sounds. The more specific you can be the better. Sure you may love irises, but which ones? The ones in a huge vase on your kitchen table mixed in with a bunch of daffodils? Sure you like that particular aftershave, but on whom? And where were you when you first smelt it…?

Go on, give it a try. Number a page from 1-100 and start writing. Guaranteed, by the time you reach the 90s you’ll be mining some real gems. Give yourself an undertaking that you won’t show the list to anyone, ever, then see what additional items you come up with!

Independent thinking

Saturday was a day of celebration in Ghana, marking 53 years since this country became the first black African nation to gain independence.

I find days like these hard to write about. The safest way to comment on a day of national celebration is from a purely visual perspective: across the country parades were held to celebrate the day featuring marching school children and acrobatics and martial arts displays in line with this year’s theme: ‘Investing In The Youth For A Better Ghana’. It was a day of pageantry and celebration during which students were reminded that ‘there are no shortcuts in life. Hard work pays.’

I’ve tried to find other angles into the day’s celebrations but I keep coming back to that speech.

If I was a student in Ghana I’d be tempted to ask – does hard work really pay? Throughout the country there are people working incredibly hard. Many of the children listening to that speech would come from families who work long hours for minimal pay. And yet, fifty-three years after Independence, Ghana sits at 152 on the UN’s Human Development Index. Life expectancy is at 56.5, literacy 65% and nearly 30% of the population lives below the poverty line. National debt stands at $5.4 billion. And you don’t have to travel far to put a human face to those numbers.

As any number of analysts argue, there’s plenty of context to explain the current state of affairs including leadership issues, neo-colonialism, the outflow of capital and resources, environmental impact of climate change, food prices, global economic crisis, foreign food subsidies and the policies of organisations like the World Bank and IMF. It’s a complex situation without simple solutions, and one that requires more than just hard work.

Personally, I think ‘work hard’ is lousy advice. It implies that no matter what you do, as long as you work hard that’s all that matters. Sure it was a short speech, to kids, but there was scope for something more. What about – be creative? Look to fields where Ghana can be a leader in the international arena? Use knowledge and information as a stepping stone to innovative solutions? Or even, take the opportunity to reflect on what history has to teach us. The world is faced with global challenges like climate change – we here in Ghana have something to teach the world; if only that traditional techniques and land practises are as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe those standing in the sun listening to Independence Day speeches will be inspired by talk of 'struggle and toil'. Just maybe though people, youth included, are ready for something else.

The end of the line

So much has been written about the evils of the e-book, that it is refreshing to come across someone who actually sees it as an evolutionary step. In his recent blog post, Craig Mod writes of the potential for e-books to succeed by challenging the linear notion of the novel.

It is a fascinating concept. To date, e-books have primarily been a digital rendering of the paper version. The electronic format, however, offers the opportunity to completely challenge this format.

At a simple level, there’s the Choose Your Own Adventure model – the opportunity for the reader to send the story off in a variety of different directions. To date the reader has been given the chance to control the outcome, but what if the reader were to be offered even greater control?

What about the back story? While the main character’s years in the wilderness (or the like) may not be integral to the basic story, the reader may enjoy a brief diversion to delve into a few ulterior motives. (Hold my place! I’ll be back in a moment!) Or what of the secondary characters? Again, linked text would allow the reader to go off on a tangent.

With the removal of many of the physical limitations of publishing (ie.trees and shipping) there is also scope for an author to publish timely updates. Just as we have become used to downloading software updates, perhaps we are moving towards a time when readers will be able to lobby authors for an update on their favourite character; available for download in the months or years after initial publication.

It would also be good to see a non-linear telling emerge in non-fiction. History texts are one genre that would be perfect for this approach. In moving beyond a simple page-by-page rendering of events, history can be placed in multi-dimensional context. Imagine being able to give a high school student a history text on the second world war that layered politics and military strategy with sport, music and literature. And no matter how large the volume of information, it would only ever be an inch thick.

Perhaps the time is coming when we no longer teach prospective authors to plot like this,but rather, like this.

Blogging in Ghana

While the question of who should tell a story is hotly debated, so too is the issue of what story should be told.

I attended a meeting of Ghana bloggers last week – an opportunity for the very small community of Accra-based bloggers to come together to discuss issues, and generally provide moral support. It’s a funny concept, bringing together all the bloggers in town, around a small café table! Imagine attempting something similar in New York!

It was fascinating though to hear the issues being discussed. In Ghana, internet penetration is around 2%, and it is hard won access at that. Access is slow and sporadic and you have to be committed to the cause. The local audience is small and new to the blogsphere. In many countries video is at the forefront of searching and information distribution and yet here slow connections make video an agonising experience.

Interesting too to hear bloggers debating the nature of what should be written – whether it is important to tell good news stories in order to correct/balance the international perception of Ghana or whether it’s better to tell the bad stories, and act as a form of national conscience. In part I suspect the divergence on this issue relates to audience. With such small domestic consumption of blog content, to gain a bigger following bloggers have to look to the international readership. And yet I’m not sure there’s clarity on that. There’s an interesting focus group to be run on who bloggers are writing for and what they believe those readers are actually wanting to read.

We’ve heard it said many times that it’s ok to criticise Ghana to locals, but you wouldn’t want to say anything to an outsider – a difficult concept if you’re a blogger. Stories abound too about the notion of ‘free press’ here, as to who watches what is written and who responds… It will be interesting to see how African countries respond to the growth of the blogging communities. So far only two Africa countries make it into the list of the ten worst countries to be a blogger. Hopefully it stays that way.

Telling a single story

This week I’ve had the good fortune to review a book I actually enjoyed reading. It took a bit of doing – choosing the book myself, lobbying the magazine to agree, then virtually having to promise any future offspring to the local book store so that they would lend me the book to read. (They were thrilled to see it back! And somewhat surprised I think!)

The book is That Thing Around Your Neck, by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her first two novels – Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun – have been incredibly successful earning her a Commonwealth Writers Prize and Orange Prize respectively. Her latest, a collection of short stories, has just been nominated for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, which will be announced in April.

Adichie's stories are beautifully written and had I not read Juhmpa Lahiri’s collection – The Interpreter of Maladies – a couple of weeks beforehand, I probably would have loved them more. Lahiri’s book is written in a very similar style, but with India as a focus rather than Nigeria, and is absolutely stunning. While many of Lahiri’s stories are quite bleak, there are passages of writing that you just want to reread and savour. Adichie is not quite in the same class, but her stories paint a vivid picture of the lives of Nigerians, both at home and living in the United States.

I have to admit though, that I find Adichie the commentator, even more interesting than Adichie the writer. Her TED talks presentation on the danger of telling a single story for example, is well constructed and provides great food for thought on the ease of seeing people/cultures/issues in a blinkered way: ie all Nigerians are terrorists/scammers, all Mexicans are illegal immigrants, all Africans live in mud huts in the desert and in poverty.

While it is easy to dismiss her argument as being something ‘other people do’ you really don’t have to look too far to see the single story creeping in.

I read an interesting blog article by a woman talking about her daughter’s kindergarten class learning about Africa. As she wandered around the classroom looking at photographs of skinny children squatting outside mud huts and lots of pictures of wild animals, she felt her irritation growing. Where were the pictures of bustling cities? The multitude of races and religions? The professionals? The artists? The athletes? The snow covered mountains, the beaches or the jungles?

I sometimes wonder whether people perceive our experience here in Ghana through a similar filter.

Perhaps one of Adichie’s greatest strengths is her ability to see the danger of the single story in herself. In the TED talk she refers to her preconceptions about Mexicans. In another interview she talks about being prepared to hate Dave Eggers, for daring, as a white man, to write about Africa in the way he did, and then having to admit later that not only was his book, What is the What wonderful, but that she also liked him as a person.

The question of who is qualified to write about Africa is clearly one Adichie has strong views on. In That Thing Around Your Neck, one of the stories is set at a writers retreat in South Africa where the narrator goes head to head with the English moderator of the group who continually berates them for not writing “authentic” stories. He demands poverty and violence, dismissing the everyday struggles of ordinary people dealing with relationships, bad bosses or, as Adichie does in her other short stories, tales of wayward teenagers, childhood mistakes, jobs, parenting and old age.

My one regret with this review, is not being able to track Adichie down for an interview. I would have loved to discuss the extent to which she believes the ability to tell an authentic story is dependant upon the race of the reader/writer.Perhaps that time will come. I should have a long list of questions by then!

Special Event

Today for something different I thought we'd go on a field trip, a journey of discovery if you like.

Ready?

Got your hat and sunscreen? Packed lunch?

Good. Then let's begin. Please Click Here.

It’s a start

For homeschool, Teya and I have been writing opening lines for stories. It’s amazing how much easier it is to write an opening couple of sentences, than a whole book! It’s also fun to see the random ideas that pop into your head. Below are some of the openings we (why should kids have all the fun??) came up with. I've mixed up the order as to who wrote each one.

Science Fiction:

a) The door to the lab slid open as the figure walked in. His boots made a dull clumping noise and when he opened his mouth to speak, a deep booming voice came out. “Prepare the rocket! Today the world will be destroyed!”

b) With a quick twist of his head, Zardox achieved his two objectives – narrowly avoiding being crushed by the massive pod doors and having the satisfaction of seeing the Commander’s look of disappointment.

Adventure:

a) Arthur recoiled as the smell of his captor’s breath slid like a damp dish cloth across his shoulders.

b) Ami reached above her head and grasped the ledge. She grimaced with the effort of pulling herself up. She looked down at Ryan who wasn’t far behind, then up again. They had a long climb ahead of them.

Fantasy:

a) Round about now in a world parallel to Earth there was a palace, bright orange in fact, and inside that palace there was a princess who did not, under any circumstance, like orange.

b) The tiny goblin let out such a howl that in the tree high above the crows wrapped their wings around their heads. Felicia, however, remained unmoved.

Romance:

a) Maria caught the coconut with both hands and a sense of dread. She didn’t need to look around at the horrified faces to realise it was a bad sign. She knew that already.

b) As Alyssa stood with the matchmaker, looking at her options, her lip curled in disgust. They were short, fat and disgusting. Was she forever to be stuck living with someone like this? The thought filled her with an ominous feeling of dread.

But What Does It Mean?

My adventures in the land of serendipity continue. I have my moments of vagueness where I forget about if for a day or so, and then get back into the swing of it. Funny how you don’t notice things when you stop looking…

One of the interesting things though, is trying to draw connections between events.

In one week I received three books to review/read over, plus an email from someone wanting advice on publishing kids books and another on ideas for a young adult novel.

How to interpret this convergence of events? That I should start a website as an agony aunt for authors? That I should write books? That I have interesting friends doing interesting things? If nothing else, it's fun to wonder.