MOMENT WITH OFUMA AGALI

 

Talk of a brilliant communicator, blessed with the wizary of words. Please, make welcome my special guest,  Ofuma Agali as he shares with me on writing and honing the craft. Seat back and enjoy!

Who is Ofuma Agali?

Ofuma can often be many things and a few things. He is a writer (or loves writing); he is a communications practitioner (with focus on public relations and content marketing), he is a journalist (although not currently practicing), he is a live right advocate, and sometimes an entrepreneur. He is fortunate to have a collection of poems to his credit. He is also a lover of maps, travelling, and science.

Everyone in the literary circle claims to be a creative writer. What is your definition of a Creative writer?

Writing is broad. And to a large extent, everyone writes. Where the creative writer is different, therefore, is that he/she must strive to create art with his/her writing.

I have done all kinds of writings in my life. So it takes art consciousness for me to come into the realm of creative writing for art sake. That first before rewards.

What are those clear cut signifiers that separates a writer from a creative one?

Writing has been in existence since civilisation. Lots of persons write everyday. Professional people do professional writing. Journalists do journalistic writing. Academics do academic writing. People in all forms of technical businesses do technical writing. Business people do business writing. The rest of the people engage in simple everyday writing. It's all writing, requiring some talent or skill or competence. For the creative writer, things are notches ahead. Talent may come to play. Literary skill or competence will come to play. The power of observation, ability to analyse human beings and nature, the craft of narration and of language - all of these set the creative writer apart. So you see already that you are on a different terrain if you have to write poetry, fiction, or drama for instance. Above all, the creative writer must produce art.

 It is believed that the best way to become a good writer is to write. But what do you think are the pitfalls writers are constantly finding themselves and what  they must do to get out of it and get better at their craft?

Let's assume you have a destination in mind as an aspiring writer. That destination could be to be published (as a book author) or to be simply known as a good writer who has a wide audience (reading your stuff from say, literary magazines and journals or newspapers).  Or your destination could be somewhere else. Whatever your destination is, you must produce some writing to arrive there. Therefore, to become a good writer, you must write. There may, however, be obstacles to overcome to be able to achieve this. You will have to horn your skills for instance, learn, learn hard, and read widely. These things, like most serious things in life, often do sound simple. In reality, they require lots of effort and time and practice. Some degree of passion is required too. Love for your chosen art will also help. Now, do not forget that life goes on even as you strive to put all these things in place. Naturally, life can get in the way. The devil can get in the details. Any obstacle (it's not the same for everyone) therefore, must not be treated with kids gloves. Tenacity, patience, and your eyes on the ball will get you rolling. In between all these, do not let time play its usual trick on you. Keep going, define your pace, accept your gaps, practice hard, and never lose sight of the destination you have envisioned for your self. To reduce life's heat on you, do other things and find the balance that works for you.

What is your definition of success when it comes to writing?

My relative response here is: To write great books.

If you are not writing, what will you be doing?

I am a journalist; I do not practice this intensely at the moment, but I still have mind space for it. I am a communications consultant and I do public relations and content marketing practice. I do some writings outside of creative writing too. And I have a few other business concerns. When I am not doing all of these, and if my mind is clear, I write. I have also experimented with writing during down times. It worked.

Has any of your submitted work been rejected before? What was the feeling like especially when you believed you gave it your best and how did you handle the situation?

I have not done a lot of submissions in my literary life. But among the ones I have done, I have received more rejections than acceptances or encouraging words. At the onset, this always left me dejected - sometimes, knocked out for days. Then after a while, I began to see the flip side. There are positive flickers of light in these rejections if you look deeper. So, in the end, you emerge even better. Besides, submissions have many relative dimensions to it. The editor may have certain expectations that your submission did not offer. They may have a certain promise for their audience that your submission did not give. They may not understand your submission based on their pre-set judgment criteria. They may like your work but constraints of space come into play whereby they can only accept a few. And so on. So rejections do not necessarily mean bad writing. It shouldn't discourage a writer (at least, not for too long). And where you find out that it's bad writing, take the lessons and move on. Some of them will be kind enough to give you some brief feedback. Take it and move on. Overall, there is always something to learn from these things. The goal of submissions, therefore, should not only be to get accepted and published or to win. But gun for that as much as you can. It helps if you read stuff they have published previously and understand what they love before you submit. Even at that, you can still be disappointed. It's the stuff of competitions. Accept it.

What do you think could be the reasons a writer's work(s) are not being engaged by readers?

I am not sure I understand what you mean here.

I mean for writers with  platforms, say blogs, websites, facebook pages etc where they churn out their writings.

There is a whole lot of factors to this. Type of content exposed to an audience, online trends at the particular time of content exposure, digital optimisation issues, content distribution issues, and so on. A lot of writers, for instance, depend on organic effort whereas paid effort may be required to get the content further out there. With paid efforts also, audience targeting is more defined.

Beyond all these, however, consistency over a long period of time helps writers' content to find acceptance online. Often times, inertia sets in before this happens. A creative writer with an online platform must be patient and must not give up while waiting for the desired traffic.

At what point can it be said that a creative writer has failed?

Let's just assume a creative writer writes one story every week for one year. That's fifty two stories, right? If there isn't one good story out of the fifty two, then that writer has failed. He or she should consider doing something else.

Let's talk about your short story that was published on Kalahari Review, Village People. What are the misconceptions  about village people?

Misconceptions? That's broad. Not sure that will fit into our chat here. But why did I write the story, Village People? I did because it has become a common expression used by people to underscore evil from a remote source, especially rural. Within the bracket of such perception, you will find that what they refer to exist everywhere else. Village People, therefore, is the story of a nameless young graduate who worked against the belief that the handiwork of evil people were preventing him from getting a job. Thereafter, he went ahead to become successful. It is left for the reader to decide whether his visit to the village played a role in his eventual success or not.

Was it a personal story, a story of someone you knew or was it just a figment of imagination?

It's just pure fiction. Some real life general experiences, however, influenced parts of the story.

What  other platforms can we find your works?

I have poems in four anthologies. I also have poems in  Sentinel Literary Quarterly and Praxis Journal of Gender and Cultural Critiques. And then I have a published collection of poems.

Thank you for your time.

You are welcome.

We will hang the chat  boot here for today. Let's make it happen again. Thank you for stopping by. You are amazing!

I remain Yours Truly,

Julius Topohozin.