A Free Writing Class For Enyinnaya Onuegbu And The Rat In His Briefcase

During our growing up days, we had this village wag whose stock is in entertaining us with big English words, and we would think of him as highly intelligent and vastly read, even though, he didn’t seem to understand the words he was spewing with relish.

Creative writing is an art. It is for artistes, not for artisans. When you engage an artisan, with tattered self confidence as a writer, he would think that writing is about copying high-falutin words from books of lexicon in order to impress his scarcely educated readers or audience to think of them as highly-read. Like the minstrels in Eke-onunwa market, such artisans with flowing ink are only interested in being seen by philistines as an intellectual rather than investing time and energy to learn the art of writing and get cooked in the pot of intellectualism.

A lot of us must have come in contact with such characters in our younger days – loquacious and tactless, they would always come to market squares or other public places to entertain people with words copied right out of books of vocabularies, and most times the combination of these words would be right out of sync. In Orie Akokwa, we used to have one village wag like that, who came from neighbouring Isiokpo, and his head was so big and amorphous that we him the alias; Isiokpo, which as kids we believed described his unusually shaped head. We saw him as a very intelligent man, because he could manage to recite unpopular words right out of his English Language Dictionary. My grandmother liked him so much and would always give him something to eat whenever he came to our shop. She would always tell me to take a paper and pen to copy some new words from Isiokpo. My grandmother was a knowledge lover, but she didn’t attend any formal school for one day, but eventually taught herself how to read and write. She wanted her first grandson to be well-respected, if for nothing else, but for how he could spew big English language words.

Most times, those whose definition of elegance in writing is tied to the use of high-falutin words, are those we may describe as ‘intellectual rapscallions’; they suffer from the most depraving kind of inferiority complex. They lack imagination and can only copy and paste or at most copy and vomit. There definition of finesse in writing is in the strangeness of the words, rather than the parse, syntax or even mechanics of their composition. Such people, instead of churning out inanities to the public should either be degraded to a basic classroom in writing or be sent to Eke-Onunwa to sell secondhand clothes- we pray they don’t sell covid-19 contaminated ones.

So, today, I woke up from the right side of the bed. I didn’t smile to bed, but I woke up smiling. I was wondering what is making me so happy. Did I win a contract or has some political pretenders and renowned electoral fraudsters been put in their place again? Oh, I just remembered; it’s my second daughter’s birthday today. No wonder, I am so happy.

While still grinning from heart to cheek, I opened my WhatsApp to see messages obviously written by Enyinnaya ONUEGBU, the commissioner for lands and owned up by the small rat in his briefcase, Cajethan Duke. I like to call him the ‘Dully Duke’. Because these individuals have insisted on dragging along the name of our Party in their strides of ignominy, I have elected to teach them, for free, some basic rules in writing, so that they may stop casting our Party in ignoble light before the reading public.

My dear Ebekuo Dike, now pick up a pen and paper and note down these five fundamental principles in writing;

LESSON ONE: Writing is an art, which has mechanics and techniques, but to be a good writer, you must understand the mechanics and techniques, but not act or write like a technician or a mechanic. If you must write, or aspire to be a writer, you must be an artiste or at least pretend to be one.

LESSON TWO: Writing is communication. If you only write to impress, then, you would have as well been better off as a minstrel, singing and dancing in the market square for handouts from bored traders.

LESSON THREE: There is a world of difference between an essay or article in journalistic parlance, an open letter, a press statement, a public notice or announcement and news report. If you must act as an official spokesperson to an organization or an individual, you do not write a news report and publish same as press statement. It is from your press statement that reporters should create their news report. Unfortunately, some people who should be in newsrooms, learning the ropes are now too keen and too fast to identify as veterans, when they should be vendors.

LESSON FOUR: Stylistics is important in writing. A writer must have a peculiar style with which he is easily identified. Like every other art, writing is an imitative art or some kinds of mimesis, but in imitating, your creative fidelity must not be lost.

LESSON FIVE: Simplicity is more useful than complexities. Writing is an art of the wise and it remains correct the saying that; “brevity is the soul of wisdom.”

Maybe, Enyinnaya Onuegbu should learn first before pretending to be a teacher to another, so you “don’t teach him nonsense” (Apologies to Fela Anikulapo Ransome Kuti). Let me also commend Enyinnaya and his ‘Dully Duke’ for quickly changing from the designation; DG, Imo APC Media Directorate to DG, Imo APC Media Center. It means that as hasty as I am usually, in writing political posts, I was able to communicate something vital. Unfortunately, no matter how many times I reread Enyinnaya’s and his Dully Duke’s rambles, I still find it difficult to pick anything more than the sound of anger and frustration of some men trying so hard to break into the revered confraternity of bloody ink drinkers.

ONWUASOANYA FCC JONES