Getting Started:

Good writing depends on practice, like sports; the more limbered up you are the better you perform
But how do you pass through that first, often terrifying, encounter with the blank page and find a voice
A voice that will carry your thoughts and feelings with eloquence and flair
You have lots of ideas, but little confidence in your ability to express them
What if it comes out wrong?
What if it makes you look childish or naive?
What if you can't do it?
The blank page seems to taunt you with your own underconfindence; it points to all the great works that have gone before and says, you can't for that, or what's the point?
It's all been said already
The ream of sentences, the characters, the ideas that drove you to the page in the first place wither into nothing
Suddenly the whole project becomes impossible and your desire to write remains just that
The only way to overcome this problem is to write
Get some materials down on paper
However rough and ready
Start off with notes, fragments, half sentences, until stuttering stops and you find yourself writing whole sentenced, paragraphs, pages.
Often the first hurdle is the writer's own self-consciousness about the act of writing itself
And that hurdles might well take a few pages to clear, like an old car with dirty petrol tank; the first few miles will be a juddering, stop-start journey.
Be prepared for this.
You are engaging with something unfamiliar to you, don't expect to produce a master piece in your first attempt
Start off with what you had for tea, the last phone call you made, the colour of your lovers eyes,
Your favorite CD.
Give yourself a subject and write about it
Write about it without stopping or correcting yourself, for five minutes
Just generate some pages, a body of work
Then read it back to yourself
This will be hard: a first time encounter with your own work is not dissimilar to watching yourself on TV or hearing your recorded voice for the first time-do I really sound like that? Oh no, I never knew I looked like that
You might well be embarrass and dissapointef
So this is a rite of pasage
Good radio presenters listen to thier voice over and over so they can control and improve their pitch and delivery
In same way, good writer will read through their own writing, looking for sentences that can be improved, pushed further, expanded, cut
It is only when you have developed a sense of your fictional VOICE that you will really have the confidence to jump in and write a story, a poem or a play
However, paradoxically, it is only through writing that you will develop a sense of what your voice is
Your fictional voice is not a million miles away from how you speak
A good storytelling voice is a more honed and structured version of speech and it is as individual to you as your fingerprints
Look at the poem or novel you read
What kinds of voice are clamouring for your attention on your bookshelf

You are likely to find to find lots of disparate voices talking, all with different accents, references, cadences, obsessions.
Voice in fiction or poetry can be interpreted as perspective or personality
It is different from style, which is something that you can develop later to created effects.
A poem I wrote when I wrote my waec still sounds like me in my 20
Perhaps it is a sad reflection on my continuing juvenility or more seriously, it is the thread of me-ness
that runs through my work,
the personality that inhabits all the words i write

I don't know what this is all about
But it look front pagic
So ama just stick around

oloyolo:
I don't know what this is all about
But it look front pagic
So ama just stick around

it has been modified

cisse7575:
it has been modified

Beraa still sticking around

Can somebody brings a topic to start with?

How did I miss this. Nice job Cisse.

texanomaly:
How did I miss this. Nice job Cisse.

Why I started following you beats me. See where you led me to.
What the hell is this place?

AlfaSeltzer:


Why I started following you beats me. See where you led me to.
What the hell is this place?

Because you love me.

texanomaly:
How did I miss this. Nice job Cisse.

Because you are out there, teaching, explaining and reading to the students. You are one of my mentors here....

#sneaks in