Eneh Akpan Writes: Michelle Obama

Saturday, August 22, 2015

When We Bleed

If I needed someone

Would you be my redemption?

If I needed 100% and nothing less

Would you offer the best of yourself;

Spooling till there’s nothing left to give?

And would you not do it free and easy

Would you bleed when we bleed to death?

Would you freeze the Atlantic to erase the threat?

Before terror brings a nation of millions to her knees?

Won’t you help us?

While there’s still an “us” breathing oxygen?

Won’t you help us?

If I came crashing down,

Would you catch me before I hit the ground?

If I called to you on a clarion,

Would the answer in the wind convey the nostrum?

Would you walk with me thro a landmine?

Can I trust you with my heart in my darkest night?

Won’t you help us?

Akpan

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Bad Artists Copy. Good Artists Steal

It's possible to go on forever afflicting yourself trying to define a writing style appropriate to your taste. When you are new to a place, you are at best, a pawn of guesswork. And there's that old cliché . . . what cliché isn't? If seven hundred monkeys spent seven hundred years bashing away at seven hundred typewriters . . . What this boils down to is you are placed on the raw edge of panic thinking you could choke on the dirt of your own decision.

Stop! Before you work your passion to death and probably give it all up as a lost cause. You got leverage, 'cause you can tell yourself "this is who I want to be" and then identify people who have achieved similar things at high levels (Steven Barnes) and map your course on their example. A big chunk of the weight is thrown off your shoulders which saves you a whole lot of energy. And that's a LOT of energy!

Everyday you should expose yourself to the work and lives of those role models whose path you would like to emulate. Steven Barnes.

That's E-V-E-R-Y-D-A-Y. It would do you a whole world of good and buy you time to take in the sweeter details of life besides sitting in a corner worrying and scowling at your problems.

Here's a rule you will need to remember. This is serious; it's what you must do before picking a role model(s).

Define your goals.

A map is nothing but a piece of trash if you can't name your street. You can be in the neck of the woods and still be at sea with an atlas in your back pocket. And it's all role models are meant to be. Maps not a destination. A pointer to where you want to be.

Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters. Michael Moorcock.

Why do you suppose your role models look like you a few years from here? 'Cause they have (still are) gone through what you will go through. It is an inexorable truth. You would get there a lot sooner if you trained your heart to listen for footfalls of legends on the same wave length with you. Going after it with wit and care of a person crossing a stream on a bridge of scattered rocks.

Someday, you might make a visit to the halls of memory and finding the points of change crack open the husk of Picasso's legend: Bad artists copy. Good artists steal. In copying Picasso implies plagiarism in which the author is not credited. And in stealing . . . Well, that's our game plan. It's exactly what we're working with. Some of my role models are, Stephen King, Maya Angelou and Steven Barnes. I'm not going to lie and claim I got here all by myself because I did not.

And there you are working yourself into worsted yarn when you have been issued a license to steal. An educated paparazzo never got anybody jailed.

Let your pen keep bleeding!

Eneh