writer/editor/writing instructor. commonwealth short story prize shortlist 2020/ longlist 2022. 📝adda, @The_Rumpus,@guernicamag, @theoffingmag,@JoylandMagazine
In a sentence.
Joined September 2011
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Hello Everyone,
I'm here to clean up your manuscript. I offer line, structural, and developmental edits. Of course, your short story, novel, poem is in good hands. Send a message. ✌️
Your job as a writer is to write the story that needs to be written. The audience will be fine. It's more on whether you, the writer, pays attention to the story's demand or not.
A Wrinkle in the Realm - Ben Okri
After the Bird - Ope Adedeji
Ghana Boy - Frances Ogamba
Ifeanyichukwu. retweeted
The rumors are true. After years of drafts, revisions, and more revisions, Exodus finally has a cover. My debut essay collection arrives March 2, 2027, from @CavanKerryPress. Big shout-out to Julia Robbins of the Office of Public Scholarship at WashU for making the video reel.
Ifeanyichukwu. retweeted
Glad to announce that my debut collection of stories will be published by the amazing @masobebooks! 🙏
Yes. The story is simmering in your head. But as soon as you sit down to write her, she begins to play hide and seek so much you forget your words. Maybe you should play her own game too. Catch her each time she throws herself open. She likes to play.
Humans: What is your work about?
Writer:
Humans: Ohhh, I get it now. You mean this right? It's very interesting. Really clever.
Writer:
Humans: I found this line very witty. It reminds me a lot about my childhood.
Humans: What do you do?
Writer: Harry walked the streets like a stranger. Those who saw him said he swayed his hands and chuckled along with people no one could see. When 'Onlookers' debuted last year, everyone said it was a stunning mimicry of their lives.
While you wait for the big literary bodies to admit you into their writing residencies or workshops, you can do a personal one for yourself.
Start the writing. Start the story. Start the poem. Start the book. Start the whatsoever. Just start.
Humans: I like you.
Writer: Two missed calls later, Layo picked the phone but did not say anything to the caller's repeated Hellos. When he hung up, she fidgeted with the phone in her hand, hoping it'd ring again...
They send you a rejection. Send them a new work. And the rejected work, send it elsewhere. Or sit with it again. Let sending out your work or sitting with it be your mourning.
You could be struggling with that story because you don't want to change anything. It's too perfect nau. Well, turn everything on its head. The story could be residing in those pieces of scatterings. Disorder is not what scares you but the work to be done.
You have done a draft. But you know a lot of work is still needed. And the thought of it makes you tired already. But that's the point. Go to the desk, as you are, with all your sighs and frowns and groans. Sometimes, effort is all you need.
Permit yourself to write imperfect drafts. Sometimes, the second, third drafts, might still be scratches. The most important thing is the habit you build: sitting with the story, returning to it over and over like a lover to the beloved. And, you're at work.
Ifeanyichukwu. retweeted
unrelated, your constant and insightful tweets on here finally prodded me to write out my first prose, albeit a nonfiction, after so many trials I gave up on along the way. it's a limited first timer work but created irregardless. thank u & continue pls, my good sir. ❤️🔥 – at Ojo, Nigeria
Your writer's block is just your body saying it has emptied itself out and wants to do something else to refill.
Humans: stop wasting your life.
Writer: ( sits down and does nothing the whole day)
Humans: i've had a productive day.
Writer: ( finally fixed the first chapter's paragraph)
So, you want to give up because you are getting rejections? Well, everyone else is also getting rejected. You are just one of the everyone-else. Drink some water and get back to work. There's so much to do. And this includes doing nothing.