Eneh Akpan Writes: Non-fiction

Showing posts with label Non-fiction. Show all posts

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Grounds to 'Read With a Pencil Close By'

Here are a handful of grounds to “Read with a pencil close by.” I found out it is still one of the best advices ever given to writers or students of the printed text.

Mark Phrases/Sentences & Paragraphs

When a phrase or paragraph catches my eye and sparks up a desire for complemental musing, I mark it using a colored pen/pencil or highlighter. I feel much better having a textual landmark around it, knowing it will arouse zeal whenever I spot it.

A Sign of Commitment

I pick up a fiction/nonfiction text then grab for a colored pencil or highlighter and I feel a sense of commitment. The pen/pencil informs every nerve in my body that I mean business. I aint just doing this for fun, I intend to come off the reading project with a lesson and some learned.

Recall Entire Textual Matter

It’s a lot more easy to call up words from memory if you underline/mark them when you read. I do that often and when my mind coughs up those peculiar sentences they usually appear on the wall of my subconscious as images. I visualize the interesting set of words hemmed in by my scrawls before the title of the book essentially floats to the surface.

Spot Peculiar Phrases/Sentences/Paragraphs

I find I can navigate the text with ease when I circle or box words that chase my fancy. For me, it’s become less stressful identifying a line or box in the middle of a page, to find the sentence or phrase it guards. I can pick out these phrases during my research period. The lines and symbols seem to beg for my attention.

Lookout for Peculiar Twists

Having a highlighter close by where I can reach it and tag a phrase keeps my faculty amped up and on the lookout for expressions full of shades of meaning. The search for inspired language morphs into a conscious, energetic process and for somebody out to learn a new thing that’s a lot.

That’s all folks. I guess you know what you need for your next reading exercise besides the text, that is.

Keep your pen bleeding.

Akpan

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The World Owes You Nothing

Courtesy: Naja Niketa

Every single day I remind myself that the world owes me nothing. I whack myself upside the head with the essence of that affirmation daily. No man is indebted to me and I think the feeling is genuinely reciprocated. When I run into a fix, I like calling this fact to mind. And I think the guy on the inside is gradually, coming to grasps with this reality.

Life is an adventure, which if mastered, could develop into art. I strive for clarity in the pursuit of my goals and battle to remain persuaded that what I know about myself would still be true whether I believe it or not. I long to separate myself from the beguiling influence of come-easy ideas and hurtle into the willful abandon of creative aloneness.

Still I recognize the fact (I must, you see) that I cannot survive without the rest of humanity.

I am indebted to society to exploit the depths of my individuality; to reach for the utmost I could achieve and to bring that into the development of man. I must come to terms with the reality that to a certain measure, I share similar qualities with the rest of the human family.

I see a need to repaint the big picture. I perceive a call to define my destination and attain a level of awareness of the inner individual. Life can be a work of art, I tell myself. And the more I see the frame of the picture, the more I acquaint myself with the truth that stares me in the face. I see how I fit into the scheme of things and I’m able to separate wit from ability; to understand the debt I owe myself and the blame that is not the world’s.

The faith I possess in my abilities turns my eyes on responsibilities. I can’t refuse my obligations because I recognize I can only thrive and expect the full thrust of fulfillment to do its work when I admit I have nothing to prove to anybody.

Keep your pens bleeding!

Akpan

Friday, October 19, 2012

Who’s Calling The Shots?

Photo credit: sytereitz.com

We will grapple with opposition as long as there’s a world to occupy. But, tragedy is we often perceive the people (the bringers of bad luck) involved as challenges in themselves. That’s taking it a little too far, don’t you think?

You got it all wrong when you got your rage misplaced. ‘Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.’ (I think Maya Angelou said that.) The struggles you tackle are like chisels for carving masterpieces from artless rock. And the fools who bring ‘em are exactly that.

It’s to your credit to engage your dreams in the midst of raw opposition. There are times, it’s a natural response when you’re under heavy fire, you view your goals lurking on the other side of impossible. These are the moments you need to believe in the worth of your aspirations or you will get distracted. This is the primary objective of a conflict, what it drives for when it sneaks up on you. To steer your focus off your locus.

You ain’t going to remember pursuit of a vision when you’re way in over your head chasing after phantasmas. Turn the spotlight on bitterness for a minute. When bitterness trundles in a room with its crew, joy flies out the window. In the absence of joy and enthusiasm, your mission peels away in narrow strips in the ball of your fist.

Tons of experiences are chucked out when you waste your strength on people. Holding out under pressure opens you up to latent power, potentials buried deep within you. Like fuel to dying embers. It renews your faith in your dream.

Have you ever heard the saying, ‘Time wasted can never be regained?’ While you’re busy fighting people, opposition is taking bigger chunks of your time, poisoning your dream. To pay the cost, to be the boss, to be the one calling the shots, you need to stay on the grind.

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

3 Tips on Developing a Relevant Writing Style

An understanding of your personality and true worth fuels your deepest capacities. It’s impossible to create knock-out write ups when you have not defined yourself for yourself. This is the concrete stuff you will present in your writing.

Write with every intention to communicate everything you stand for. Your art is the expression of the inner character. Therefore, to improve your flow, define a personal writing style and straddle your craft along that line.

For an artist to thrive in his work, he’s got to know who he is.

Where are you coming from?

What have you been through? Going through right now?

What is your outlook on life?

What is your mind state?

The slums/mansion you grew up in could be a ledge on which you project your trade. Again, it all boils down to your frame of mind. Look really deep within and touch things. Touch the individual waiting to be reaped like the wheat of harvest. This is where your experiences come into the picture. You’re never fully dressed for the job without one.

Define what you stand for. Study your history.

What do you believe about yourself, the world and its future?

What drives you? Motivates you?

Visualize and then congeal the things that describe you in your writing.

Do you stand for justice in the legal system;

Free education for ghetto children;

Better days on the streets;

An end to incessant domestic violence;

Waking the world up to the evil it willfully shuts its eyes to;

The love in a family or in relationships?

It’s time to take a stand so you can make a statement.

A lot of writers have sleepless nights trying to find a subject to write about. You might find your interest pushes you towards reading the papers. Don’t fight it.

In formulating a personal writing style, try to imagine the ideal life you want for yourself and the price you are willing to pay to possess it–What really matters to you?

What would you be doing with your life a few years from now?

How seriously do you want people to take you and the message of your stories?

If you make the decision to place your craft above every other thing, to make writing your medium for communicating to the world, your channel for expressing yourself, for changing lives, then what atcha write and the way atcha write it will come to you as naturally as sleep comes to a man trapped under the spell of Morpheus.

Your experience is the connect between becoming a fulfilled writer and discovery of a unique, personal and relevant writing style. Focus on these things, keep going over them in your mind, let them place you in your niche.

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

Thursday, October 4, 2012

5 Tips on Reading Like a Writer

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

I have something for you. Especially, if you’re a writer but I guess any fervid reader might learn a few tricks from this post.

There is a world of difference between reading (despite the intensity of the reader) and reading like a writer. I know a lot of writers feel the same way, too. The tips which follow are not all there is about reading like a writer but they’ll suffice for now. For me, more than for you.

1. Live Inside the Story

This is an attempt to see the reader through your eyes as well as your senses. You’re learning how the reader is influenced by the printed page. Don’t act it. Really live in the pages and allow the words touch and move you until you hear the author’s pulse as the words pour through the windows of your eyes into your heart. Take the words through the follicles in your body.

2. Read with a Pencil Close By

If ‘Read a lot’ is the first part of the writer’s creed (The second part being Write a lot.), the writer ought to regard books as a student treats his/her textbooks. Underline words and phrases, which strike you as peculiar. Put a square around special words. Use curly brackets, asterisks, question marks, exclamation marks, any symbols that might aid sharp and brilliant recall in time of need.

The purpose of marking phrases or whole sentences and paragraphs is to help you find the appropriate words/phrases or paragraph during your writing period. It’s easy to identify a line or box standing in the middle of a page, to find the sentence it guards. Use highlighters and colored pencils/pen. Any word that kicks up your interest should be marked for further escapades.

3. Read between the Lines

Look beyond the obvious. Strip the words of contextual and metaphorical context and dig straight for the meat.’

Read guided by the simple but forceful truth: you are a writer. Make the words on the page appeal to you; listen to the author’s heartbeat as he speaks to you. Weigh each word on the scale of your emotion as the meaning slides home with an audible thump.

4. Add Your Own Words

Here’s one important reason you should have a pen or pencil beside you when you read.

Reading is a stimuli for creativity. A word, a phrase, an expression could spark a bust of inspiration and you would want to mark your place with… words. No other spot can serve that need like the space beside the words that initiated the inspiration.

Add your words to the ones already on the page; it will make you feel like you belong. The pages become less formal and more personal. To have your thoughts side by side, buttressing, explaining and magnifying the ones on the page gives the idea of everlastingness to the printed text. It keeps the memory of the experience fresh.

5. Observe the Writing Style

Ask yourself questions like, How would I write this, if given the opportunity? Or How would this look if I had penned it?

Be on the lookout for peculiar twists, things out of the way the author uses to achieve a particular effect.

Note the beginning, the middle (body, if nonfiction, rising action/climax, if fiction) and the landing of the story. We can always learn a thing or two from one another. Sometimes, it might be what not to do while writing in a particular field or genre.

What a writer needs to do above all else, is to live inside books. Read intensely and in every field there is. You need to be something of an expert at various times to write in a particular field.

So read. Let the words form pinions under you, fly you beyond the edge of reality until you tread unknown pastures, and smell the fragrance of the Shakespearean Rose.

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

Monday, December 7, 2009

Fear is a Writer's Toy

I remember the many times I sat before my computer and dreaded touching the keyboard afraid of what strange words might find it’s way to the screen.

Many of those times I knew there was a story waiting to be written. I could see the actions played out in my mind, it was like watching a theater act during rehearsals. What then was the underlying cause of my unrest?

I was afraid that my 'limited' vocabulary would be insufficient in communicating the world on my insides to the mind of my readers. I felt I couldn't be true to the images flickering on the walls of my mind owing to a lack of words to 'appropriately' express them. Hence, many of those stories died before they were born; they experienced literary stillbirths.

Have you ever been hindered by a seeming 'remoteness' of your story-ideas? Have you ever had a moment you regarded a picture in your own mind as superior to your writing abilities?

The story might be mightier than the warrior but definitely not the storyteller.

If two distinct authors could reproduce the telling or the showing of a specified event using exactly the same format-vocabulary and writing style inclusive-I suppose then the idea of originality would be defeated. You probably share my sentiment, don't you?

Here are a few tips from Steven Barnes which I believe could transform any writer's fears into tools for mastery of the craft:

1. What will a writing career add to your life?

2. What is the greatest risk connected with your goal? Greatest potential reward?

3. There are voices in your mind speaking to you about your plans. Whose voice speaks most loudly?

After listing these three leading questions Steven has this to say:

The more clearly you understand the potential benefits of actually fulfilling your dreams, the easier it is to feel the motivation necessary to accomplish them.

In the following lines he takes a step further suggesting that the writer ought to turn his fears into his character's fears thereby enhancing the plausibility of his story:

1. What does your lead character want, and how will her desires affect her life?

2. What danger lies ahead for your character?

3. What ghosts from your character's past keep her from seeing things clearly?

Remember, ideas in your mind sound different on paper. You can only tell a good idea from a bad one after you put it down.

Put it down. I guess that's the hardest part. The hardest moment is always before you start. This blog is my little way of learning how to conquer my personal demons.

Until next time.

Write Everyday!

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan