The first article or book you publish is almost like something miraculous. When you are young and aspiring to see your writing printed on paper, you feel as if you are a godlike creator who produces feats of miracles out of pen and paper. Writing is indeed something like an act of divine miracle at the personal level. It gives you the illusion that you are on top of the world and creating characters, incidents, plots and dialogues to make people happy, enthralled or shocked depending on what you write about or how you write it.
You are not of course playing god but you almost feel like you do. This is what even the big writers and journalists call a “moment of epiphany”, which is defined as, “a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of, something that is very important to you.”
First comes the first moment of deep-going happiness as you are seeing you writing in print, particularly when you start writing for a newspaper or magazine. The feeling goes to your mind as if it were a drug, some kind of alcohol or a moment of epiphany as most writers agree. The feeling is so powerful that you feel like a pleasant electric shock passes through your body, forcing your heart to beat harder and to feel blood flowing to you head as if some invisible force is at work. You don’t believe your eyes even though you hold a copy of the newspaper and the book in your hand and read your own article for umpteenth times. You mutter, “Me, a writer? A journalist? An author? An editor?”
It might take you a long time to give a definitive answer to your own questions. It may take you days or weeks to believe that you are indeed a writer or a journalist even if you have never thought in your wildest dreams that you will become one. It is total surprise and total shock. You may go to a wayside pub both to alleviate your strong feelings or to multiply them a hundred times with the glass of beer in front of you.
The first few sips from your drink rush to your head as if they were mixed with opium. Everything is moving quickly within yourself both spiritually and physically. Writing is in a way a long spiritual journey. The feeling of being a “human god” is quickly replaced with the feeling of being on the ninth cloud looking down at humanity with words like, “I am on my way to becoming a writer! That is a miracle!”
This strange feeling dissipates within weeks or if you are lucky in matters of months or years. It often stays with you coming and going and hibernating or sleeping like a computer that is not turned off. Back in your village or home, you announce to friends and family that your article has indeed appeared on one of the prestigious national papers and you are going to become a journalist.
The first question that most people ask you is “How much did you earn from your writing?” You don’t mind the pay at this stage. The act of being a newspaper writer, a journalist is sufficient gratification in itself. You may not even know that you are paid for writing something printable because, the act of writing itself feels like you were playing with words like a child. Writing at this stage is painless and pleasant.
So, why do they pay you for something you enjoy doing? You do not yet know what they call “writer’s block” or depression or fatigue. You are barely scratching the surface of what is to become your lifelong love, passion and even your prayer because you will be doing it every day and every week, night or day.
When hen you go back to your place of work the following day, the editor may tell you that you have a future as a journalist. You doubt it because you have never been to a journalism class back in college. You doubt it because you have never read how-to books on the art and craft of writing. That is mainly why you feel your first article is a work of miracle.
The editor, if he is a good man is going to encourage you, appreciate your first burst of writing, your first wordplay and your first creation. If he is not the type of fatherly editor who takes you for a child barely starting to take his first baby steps with his two fledgling legs, he might read your article and tells you that your are not doing bad and that you need to do better next time.
The first impression you create in your editor is as important as the first impression you create in your employer when you go for an interview dressed in your Sunday best. Fortunately for you, it is possible that you go to the editorial office in tattered jeans and an unwashed shirt as long as what you have written makes sense and satisfies the man who is sitting there in front of you to evaluate and even predict your future as a writer or journalist.
The mistakes novice writers may make during their first visit to their editor might be overestimating what they have done or act as if they are consummate writers or journalists. The second mistake is to look lightly your first attempt. Passion is the name of the game for novice writers. If you have no passion for writing, you can move mountains. If you lack the passion, don’t go to a newspaper office or to a book publisher with your manuscript.
They say that writing is 99% perspiration and one percent inspiration. I can now say that it is also a matter of passion. Nothing can be achieved without passion. The first passions or emotions dissipate quickly and what is left is a heap of ashes of disappointment. Like any other profession, journalism is not only a bread earner but also a soul searcher and an all-consuming passion.
Journalism is not a part-time job or a profession that you go to when the going gets tough. It is like a spirit that guides you in life and tells you what is wrong and right in life. Writing is a great responsibility on the part of the novice writer who should first know and believe that he is made to live and breathe with words, news, articles and what not. You must have genuine passion if you plan to spend the rest of your life staring at the screens of laptops or desktops, running here and there in search of breaking news or study the lives of prominent personalities for your profile page.
The same goes with writing books. The feeling is the same but the labor varies. In case of books, the pleasure may not last until you write the last page of your novel or any writing in any genre. The pain might be permanent and last for days, weeks, months and even years. Some writers need decades to finish what they have started. Others and more fortunate ones need weeks or months to so the same job.
However, the energy and passion required to complete the work are the same in all cases. British Prime Minster and Nobel Prize winning author Winston Churchill used to say that “literature is news that remains news.” In other words literature is news with a longer shelf life. Colombian author of “One hundred Years of Solitude” wrote his news-turned-novel and entitled, “News of a Kidnapping” based his observations on newspaper reports of the Medelin drug cartel under Escobar that used to kidnap and kill innocent people whom it suspected of working as informers to the police.
Writing a book is like dividing the pain and pleasure over a long time. The epiphany moment which is short-lived, comes at the end of the last chapter when you feel you have completed your job and that you have the right to a bottle of wine to celebrate your achievement. Whether the book would be published or not is a secondary concern. Whether it will sell or not is also unimportant or secondary. What matters is the writing itself.
Money may not buy happiness as the French would say. We can say that royalties may not buy the writer’s happiness and they do not in most cases. Fortunately we have few publishers and many self-published writers. Otherwise, the royalty you might have earned from a publisher might not buy you a kilogram of meat or a good lunch in one of the posh restaurants around Bole area, particularly at this time.
Returning to the topic of writing for newspapers or writing books, I may be allowed to quote one of the most famous utterance from Garcia Marquez who one said that writing is the most pleasurable, most beautiful and most peaceful activity in the world. You may not agree with this observation but there are tens of thousands of journalists and authors around the world who are laboring in complete anonymity, fueled as they are by the belief in a possible glory. They may or may not achieve glory but they work in complete confidence and love of their craft and this is what we call one of the miracles of writing or the miracle of living and creating.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 30 JUNE 2023
