When I was in the fourth grade my father bought me a book titled “How to become a Writer.” I threw the book in a stack and never gave it a second thought. I had always heard the expression instead of looking for a book that you want to read why don’t you write it, but I have never quite gotten down to what it is that I want to write about, because just like my attention span my creative bouts come to me in ebbs and flows, they are unstructured and wild, whimsical and stimulating.
Perhaps that is why I became a lawyer. Unlike most of my colleagues I did not read about Atticus Finch in “To kill a mockingbird,” haven’t even seen the movie (which used to shock my dear husband to no end, God rest his soul.) Perhaps the law was clear in choosing me, I wasn’t exactly bad at science subjects, far from it, my mother, a mathematics teacher made sure I attained the highest grade possible when I wrote the subject. I just had an uncanny ability to structure words in a manner that stood out to other minds. And that is what I hope to achieve, for my words to stand out to other minds.
I have noted that most local authors were once lawyers, Sue Nyathi, Pettina Gappah, but I was convinced I could not be one, because their works of fiction, while brilliant, had zero resemblance of myself in them. The chaotic elements of something waiting to be said, the unpredictability of where each story would go when it is not fiction. In fact, the only writer I resonated with was Marian Keyes. You had no idea where her stories would go, from spas in the northern Alps, to food trays and displays at a movie set, her chaotic nature stayed with me. It made it okay for my mind to have bouts of structuredness, in bits and pieces and that is how I know my home will undoubtedly be, in this gift to myself, short form prose.
And so, we go back to how the law chose me, because its rooms are vast and many, its halls are wide and accommodating, sometimes it narrows down but there is always room for evolution, for a difference, in marbled floors, unplastered walls and screed floors. Whether you choose to build on or paint over, no one is none the wiser because it is all a masterpiece. Maybe, in some tiny nook, in a comfortable rocking chair, with a window overlooking a rose garden and a waterbody, there is space to be a writer too.
Years later, I picked up that book my father gave me, I thought perhaps I could try it out, I never went past the second page, because maybe, just maybe, I just did not see myself in it and that too is okay.
woow i am hooked