₦airaland Forum

And your point is?

RuuDie:
gripping stuff, !really like it !

So do I, though the poet could have been referring to a number of things e.g. a wave, the eye of a hurricane, a sand storm e.t.c.

Still, I Like.

Riff-Raff:
@ smc
The bible is a book.

Ol' boy no be me you suppose tell that one o. Na me first talk am sey Holy Bible na book. Na Orikinla you suppose tell that yarn as ne hin dey talk now sey no be book after hin don already call am book the day before that retraction.

So abeg, I don already agree sey HOLY BIBLE NA BOOK O!!!

@ Ladebi, What is the question mark for?

doyin13:
I saw her on the BBC and fell in love.
Such a nice diction.
Such a turn on.

Now don't you go getting your knickers in a twist mate. 

Otunba X:
SMC,
Orikinla has already reported the news before anyone on Nairaland.
Orikinla is with me in Lagos and will soon be online.
Oriklinla is the first to celebrate Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Nairaland. In fact, his poem on her was already published in his Scarlet Tears of London since last July where he even mentioned Half of a Yellow Sun, before the novel was released.

And why are you telling me huh? Was I the one who created this thread? Abeg o. And I know you are Orikinla, so abeg just stop this Otunba crap. Moreover, who the heck cares who reported it first? What matters is that we are all proud of our girl Miss Adichie. So move on please. NEXT.

Imani:
Have you been watching too much nollywood?

I don't watch Nollywood movies. At least I haven't watched any for years and years.

She looks like a chuffed witch holding a voodoo doll. LOL

@Vitastraka,

Are you sure you are not Orikinla? Cos you sure do sound somehow like him. ^{[s]Apologies to Orikinla if you are not him. Not that you/he will ever admit it if you are the same person.[/s]}

She isnt bad looking. Not exceptionally beautiful, but she is a little bit pretty.

That photograph above does not do her justice at all. She just looks like she was wearing a mismatched combo, and what the heck is that thing she has on her head?  She looked really sophisticated at an award ceremony earlier this year. Don't judge her looks by this photograph.

Nevertheless, she has got talent and that is the main issue, not her looks.

Vitastraka:
Vitastraka does not share the same sentiments as you people!

Vitastraka is a writer and I confess I am very jealous. Vitastraka feels he is better than Chimamanda!

You people have refused to read the works of Vitastraka

Please don't crucify me! I resent the fact that I am not recognized.

Yes! Vitastraka is not happy at this development, he feels cheated,

And that is why you won't win anything or make any progress if you cannot be happy at the success of others. I wonder who informed you of your alleged literary brilliance. Hopefully you will see the errors of your ways soon.

It is a good book. Congratulations to her.

What mass market?

denex:
You mean poetic licence includes a right to murder English? All those pepper sellers in Ojuelegba should hurry and apply for this poetic licence O!
This is how your poem is supposed to go:

Life is a tale by an idiot man
full of sound and fun
signifying nothing

an epistle of a lunatic
read by the learned
listened to by serious audiences
ending in laughter

a flying bird
pursued by a frog
for a thousand and one years
till its sudden and arrant death

a football pitch
with numerous players
yet only one ball
and a monkey post.

Much better grammer, but poem is still makes no sense as a whole . Maybe original poster only wanted to make sense line by line basis, hence his use of the so called word "linesense"

Orikinla:
The Holy Bible is not a book.

The Holy Bible is a compilation of many books.
The Bible contains 66 books.
39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament.

How did I know you will come up with that lame argument?  You are predictable that's how.

The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines the Bible as -

"the holy BOOK of the Christian religion, consisting of the Old Testament and the New Testament"


Also, The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy defines the Bible as -

"The BOOK sacred to Christians, which they consider to be the inspired word of God. The Bible includes the Old Testament, which contains the sacred books of the Jews, and the New Testament, which begins with the birth of Jesus."

I addition to the foregoing, YOU yourself Orikinla have described the Holy Bible as a BOOK on June 01, 2007 at 08:11 AM in one of your previous posts which is inserted below from your thread titled "Proverbs 31 In Full Colour Print And Audio Media." This was less than 16 hours before you did a volte-face and changed your stance. It seems you simply delight in opposing me unnecessarily albeit with little success.

Orikinla on June 01, 2007, 08:11 AM:
I am working on the fully illustrated in colour version of Proverbs 31.

The book of Proverbs is my third most favourite books of the Holy Bible.
The New Testament, the Psalms and the Proverbs.
My life is being built on the foundation of the Word of God.

I work with two books, the Holy Bible and Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

I love Proverbs 31, because the words speak volumes to me. And God has also sent me my own Virtuous Woman of verses 10-31.

The fully illustrated book Proverbs 31 should be ready for Christmas with an audio CD of it included in the package and downloads will be available.

NEED I SAY MORE? I Rest my Case!!!

ROFLMFAO. With this kind of grammer, I wonder who will persevere with the reading. Seems to me that the poster does not even have a clue that he has written lots of crap over several posts. Goodluck to you iice.

Orikinla:
I believe the Holy Bible is not a book.

^{[s]I don't care what you believe. It is definitely a book. [/s]} Isn't the Bible also referred to as "the Holy Book"? Hmmmmmmm.

Ndipe:
If the Holy Bible is not a Book, what is It then?

Thank you o my brother. Abeg Help me ask am.

Favourite Book of ALL Time: Definitely THE HOLY BIBLE for me.

denex:
www.poetry.com is a total sham. Right now, they've even removed the option of Nigerians participating. Good riddance!
Well ANA organises poetry competitions for authors of poetry, prose and other works of literature.
However there are far more amateur poets than authors. Besides, isn't it ironic that established authors should be encouraged while upcoming poets are ignored.
Anyways, we're holding our own national poetry contest with the support of almighty First Bank. So y'all keep your fingers crossed.

Why have Nigerians been excluded? And do keep us posted about the poetry contest.

@ Seun,

Agreed the title is a little lame, but when your book is projected to sell Three Million copies in the first 24 hours of being released, you can call it any damn thing you want. Despite the fact that the book is not even out yet, it is Number 1 on many lists and Amazon says that sales by pre-order is out-stripping the combined sales of all the books which are Number 2 to Number 20 at a ratio of 5:1. Now that is mind boggling. Most authors will be chuffed to have 1 million copies of their books sold and to be able to achieve three times that amount in a 24 hour period will be phenomenal. It will be a new record and J.K. Rowling will be beating her own former record of selling 2 million books in 24 hours.

Nevertheless, it will never outsell the bible on the whole, as sales will definitely die off after a while while the bible will continue to be churned out.

You really need to read carefully Orikinla. I used the qualifying word "usually" not always. Nevertheless, you have not even succeeded in proving anything regarding "apartments" with your massive posts.

Stop disturbing yourself over nothing and get back to work.

Seun, abeg help us reduce the size of the font on this man's post before we all go blind from "font shock"

And your point is?

I believe that you have gone temporarily insane mate.

PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER and get a Fu*king Grip.

And why the heck have you magnified the font of the story? I don't think anyone had trouble reading it the first time Orikinla.

Orikinla:
Mr Mayor even saw an apartment block when I did not include it. And he does not even know the difference between house custodians and janitors. And erred in his lame attempt to correct me.

He did not err. You did write in the story that "The New York Police Department found the three bodies in the burnt apartment". And in the USA, "apartments" usually come in blocks unlike flats in places like the UK where you can have as little as two flats in a building (don't get me wrong there are also blocks of flats in the UK akin to the US apartment blocks). I believe the equivalent of those kind of UK flats are referred to as Condos in the USA.

Like I said before, I can see what you wrote leading to a nice juicy story but as always, you need to work on it and work hard too. They have raised valid points and although you have attempted to counter them, you need to work on issues raised as these are things that people reading will always raise. When I first read your story, I thought your intended plot was that the assassin had taken the job as the janitor but no one would know his true identity as he may have changed his looks and either stolen someone else's ID or created a new one (or even better still, that the bodies were so charred -inclusive of teeth- that the cops could not obtain any records to identify who the victims were).

Like you said, it is your story to do with as you like, but don't complain cause people do not agree with you. If you don't like criticism, stop posting your work here. You really need to stop taking criticism of your work as attacks on your person or integrity.

Orikinla:
When Ben Okri wrote Flowers and Shdaows before he was 19, he spent over two years to correct the drafts.

Everybody has a method of writing.
It is best to write according to the momentum of your stream of consciousness and don't lose sleep over your common errors in English grammar.

Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy was written in bastard english, but it is now a modern classic.

I am not advocating bad grammar. But being original is better than using common English phrases.
If possible, use your poetic license to create your own original style of modern literature in English.

African writers writing as they speak in their mother-tongue have had constraints in expressing themselves.

Mo gbo bi ogiri se run in Yoruba translates as I hear as the ogiri is smelling.
But it wrong to say you hear something smelling in Englsih Grammar.

When you complete your first draft, you can send a copy to my darling SMC to proof-read it.

Oshare may become one the most memorable female characters in modern African fiction.

Orikinla, I do not recall making any comments about expressions and their translations in different languages. That is why the phrase "Lost in Translation" was coined to deal with words/phrases which could not be interpreted or translated literally without there being either a variation in the meaning intended or in other instances, the entire meaning being totally lost.

Also, I'd appreciate it if you do not patronise me in future. I do not provide editing services much less proofreading ones. There is this disgusting trend on this Nairaland forum where numerous people give glowing praises to peoples written work even though it is glaring that what has been tendered for objective analysis is complete crap. You as an individual, do it a lot and I am sure that you will say that you are "encouraging" such people. What you are in fact doing is setting them up for a big fall and major humiliation because they tend to believe that the garbage they have spewed out is in fact good.

@ Jesusfreak, Most publishers receive numerous scripts daily (and for top publishers, scripts received run into thousands). Believe me, no one likes to waste time reading a product where it seems that the writer does not have a basic grasp of the tools of his/her trade. As you may well know, words are the tools of an authors trade and it is imperative that you have an understanding of your tools.  You also have to identify your target audience when writing. I am not talking about simple typographical errors here, and I am not saying you should dot your I's and cross your T's at this point.

Regarding revising drafts, this is a normal occurence in the writing world and there isn't a writer who does not revise his/her work before it is finally published. It usually is time consuming work in itself. Ken Follet took about 10 years or more to write "The Pillars of the Earth" (and although this is one of my favourite books, the critics rightly slated him saying amongst other things, that the language he used was not appropriate for the period he covered. Also, I found errors in the book as well as unnecessary repitition, and these things reduced what should have been a truly remarkable book to one that was a "miss" in the literary world).

Everyone is entitled to give their opinions and I have given mine. I reiterate what I said in my previous post that "I think your story needs a lot of work. It seems like you have a good idea to begin with and you need to pay attention to the little details".

I AM DONE HERE.

Orikinla:
Just write first, you can always correct the grammar as you revise your drafts.

And that's why lots of people's stories never make it to the bookshelves.