Are You Laughing Yet?…Writers Quote Wednesday.

April 14, 2016November 1, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha18 Comments

Always laugh when you can. It’s cheap medicine. George Gordon Byron

The writers quote Wednesday’s prompt for this week is laughter and I looked up that lovely quote above.

I love laughing. In my opinion, robust laughter is like a song to the ears that the soul dances to. I like being around people who have a good sense of humour and can make me laugh and who equally laugh at themselves. They don’t nitpick and take offence easily. Staying around grouches can be bone wearing and grey. At some point, we would all die, but while we are alive let’s live it with laughter on our lips.

Sometimes, especially during the weekends, I deliberately go on YouTube to look up comedians and enjoy a good half hour of silliness 🙂

When we moved here, I was initially taken aback by the number of serious, stoic faces that dotted the horizon. I even wrote a poem about it which languished in my draft. Some looked outrightly like people who had sucked on sour lemons as if it would hurt them to smile while some wore a grimace like they had a bad case of gas.

Over time, I started distinguishing them by their nationalities and realised that some of the tightness of the faces are due to upbringing and religion. Of robbing the minds of reasons to be joyful and to see a fellow human in suspicion or disdain.

Some reminded me of the staunch hard-nosed Church deaconesses whose lips are perpetually pursed in criticism. Some religious tenets sap some humans of the joy of living. Their belief that your hard faced stoic stance shows you as a serious Muslim or Christain or whatever, is so wrong. Laughter or smiling is beautiful.

No one expects anyone to go around looking like a clown, but life can be taken seriously without looking morbid about it.

Since we are all going to die anyway, I think I would look better with a smile on my face as I sign off on the last day in mirth.

Writing

Write Garbage, Edit Brilliantly! ….Writer’s Quote Wednesday

March 16, 2016March 17, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha44 Comments

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
– Somerset Maugham

It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.
– C. J. Cherryh

The above quotes repeats in my head when I think of my writing and encourages me to trudge along.

Someone once asked me how I decided that I am writer and my simple response that I have lots of stories to tell which left a blank look on her face made me feel as if I spoke Greek. Now and again, her blank face surfaces in my memory and I begin to question myself.

When I am struggling to put down the riotous thoughts in my head into a readable format, the question rises again and sometimes, a tiny voice of doubt tells me, ‘YOU ARE A FRAUD!’ WRITER YOU ARE NOT!

I have learnt to slap and shut the impish voice down, to go ahead and scribble my nonsense and leave it at that.

Well, seeing such quotes from established authors does tickle my fancy bone, and I have come to realize that there is no perfect writer. We just write that which needs to be written and leave it at that.

Written for Writer’s quote Wednesday.

Memes · Quotes For You · Uncategorized

Perhaps…Writers quote Wednesday

March 2, 2016March 2, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha38 Comments

During my recent foray for freelance writing opportunities, the quote below jumped out from somewhere and glared me in the eyes.

The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece, or per word or perhaps. Robert Benchley.

The ‘perhaps’ part got stuck in my head, drumming away at my thoughts and I knew that it’s my quote for Writer’s quote Wednesday.

I mulled over it nursing a mug of tea and toast and not willing to accept the perhaps part of these things.

I continued ruminating over it even as I later nursed this yogurt and granola beside me, still questioning the perhaps part of things.

My dull mind refused to acknowledge the fact that perhaps meant you may go for months and months as a writer, waxing brilliant and intelligent words and all, yet pauperized.

Perhaps meant, queries that may never get answered and yet you continue swallowing the bitter pill of your writers pride and keep sending the queries until your name is emblazoned on the medulla oblongata of the editor, until he/she decides to save himself a thriving headache and gives you a space to submit your write up on the different species of Cactus.

I ruminated further, taking off my rose-coloured spectacles and the truth of the matter is that we are all freelancing on our blogs, labouring lovingly over our words with the word ‘perhaps’ hanging in the balance of our thoughts.

‘Perhaps,’ in the long run, every single word would be worth the trouble and your medal as a writer, well worn with pride.