₦airaland Forum

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

it has been modified

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

[b]Poem:

Haunted Houses
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends, Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.[/b]

Thanks Tex and Everest, you guys did a great job... Please teach up

Students, Tex has been banned, she us working to get back on. She will be on shortly, please bear with us.

Walk into the class smiling with my senegalese attire, i said "good evening class. Happy new year."