Wat De Brouhaha?

October 29, 2014October 29, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 38 Comments

After I finished writing, A Portrait of Success, I opted for the WordPress proofreader to scan my post before publishing. It underlined brouhaha in blue because it is a cliché. I didn’t know that, maybe I should have. How else would I have known about such a word if not from reading it a thousand times on the web? Brouhaha, even saying it sounds like a joke.

Okay, because I’m a junior at Grammar Police, because I laugh and laugh and laugh at the (autocorrect) spelling mistakes of friends, a cliché cannot be found on my blog ever! A passive sentence yes, a cliché, nooo!

I ran to my trusty friend, Google, and typed, synonyms for brouhaha¹, while trying not to laugh. Here’s what I found and my comments.

babel

So, the Tower of Babel still haunts us . . .

coil

Reminds me of snakes and snakes don’t brouhaha.

commotion

I go to YouTube and listen to Madonna, I’ve got the moves baby, you’ve got the motion, if we got together we’ll be causing a commotion. After reliving my youth, I decide I’m too adult for this synonym. Next please!

conturbation

No way! Even if it’s the last synonym on earth. Tufiakwa! It sounds like – – – – – – – – – – – -.

flutteration

I see. I see butterflies in flutteration. Come on, get real! Even MS Word flags this one and gives me flirtation, floatation, and literation as options.

hubbub

Has an “amazing” 165 synonyms including bobbery, charivari, feery-fary, and shivaree. I think I can write a poem!

jumpiness

Reminds me of sokugo² in Cyprian Ekwensi’s Burning Grass. Nah, nah, not a good match.

kerfuffle

I think they made this one up. Someone shuffled into the office and to meet the quota, the editor wrote kerfuffle!

moil

Means to work hard. Just had to share, who knows when you might need to moil to write a post. Of course it’s archaic, but some of you are in your mid-eighties!

nerviness

Laughing gas will do that to you!

ruckus

Could have used this, but isn’t it a cliché as well?

tumultuation

Sounds like something they say from the pulpit in church.

turbidity

Water swirling round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round. Are you dizzy yet?

twitter

I read that for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction, plus a social media overreaction. What the brouhaha! Figures doesn’t it?

zealousness

The reason Sunday after Sunday I’m still here. Um, I’ll save this one in my brain, thanks!

My 100^th post, how time flies! I couldn’t have made it without you, and that is no joke. Thank you for flying with me.

Take lemons, make life & jump for joy!

©Timi Yeseibo 2014

1. Synonyms courtesy of Thesaurasize: http://thesaurasize.com/brouhaha

2. Sokugo: a wandering disease that causes one to undertake a restless journey at its onset. Described by Cyprain Ekwensi in his book, Burning Bush.

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Picture Your Story

October 12, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 73 Comments

Ever noticed how newspapers use photographs of public figures? If Obama scores a big one, we get smiling Obama, maybe with a fist pump. When the roof caves in, we get tight-lipped, greying, worry lines Obama. All underneath screaming headlines. If the paper has integrity, we are not disappointed with the text that follows, our minds having been conditioned for it. They say we see with our eyes and we see with our minds.

And yet after I left primary school, my books, whether novels or textbooks, were devoid of images except for academic (boring), charts, graphs, drawings, and photos illustrating the concept being taught, as if to say, now that you’ve mastered comprehension, you don’t need visual aids or we want you to concentrate, no mucking around!

The web changed everything. Of course, it had to since everyone became a (potential) content provider. The downside of information overload is digital ADD. Mixing text with pictures and videos means we might win the scramble for eight seconds of surfing attention. However, beyond this, I integrate photos with text because it breaks monotony and can say what words cannot, helping to build emotional connections. Moreover, we decipher meaning from images, adding to the reading experience.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it might not tell the whole story. Perhaps that’s why on the web, text continues to dominate information exchange and videos, which combine visuals and words, are on the rise.

Visual art and writing don’t exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can’t do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating. – William S. Burroughs –

After writing an article, I hunt for images that complement it. During my search, I encounter photos that have nothing to do with the text, which haunt me and inspire me to manufacture a story, like this one.

The right story hasn’t come along for this image yet, but I can’t wait any longer. Let’s find the story together. You don’t need to be a writer, just human. Tell what the photo evokes in you. There is no right or wrong, because we see the sun at different times. Day for me may be night for you. You can write your headline (title) in sentence caps and/or a few lines of the story. Indulge me, please? I’ll start.

The Boy Who Stole Tomorrow

Truth did not have consequences when we were young, so we exchanged it freely as though playing Ping-Pong. Some days you won. Other days I won. We did not keep score but maintained equilibrium until she came. Then, you made me lose more than I should have.

————–

P.s. Like seriously? Of course there’s no prize, I’m not Oprah! Alright then, just comment on how multimedia content enhances online interaction. See? Told ya! The story option is easier 😉

©Timi Yeseibo 2014

Photo credit: Photo credit: ©Lisa Runnels/www.pixabay.com (used with permission)

http://pixabay.com/en/boy-walking-teddy-bear-child-walk-447701/

What Should I Write About?

September 21, 2014November 22, 2018 ~ livelytwist ~ 75 Comments

This question never leaves me. Suspended in my subconscious, I answer it every moment, every day. The events of my life and yours, past, present, and a future I envision, are being stored somewhere in my brain cells. To write, I start with a title, which provides direction. Developing the story resembles opening a wardrobe and sifting through clothes, pulling one and then another from the rack, admiring, discarding, until you find the perfect outfit for the occasion. Most times, my wardrobe is full, so full that choice is the problem.

Another problem arises from the opinion of others. How many times have you asked someone, what do you think I should wear, and they picked an outfit that was just so not you? Or asked the question that makes the people we love dance around the truth—how do I look?

But, input from external sources also comes without me soliciting for it.

“I definitely think you should write about it,” Toyin said quietly.

“Mmhmmm.”

“This is an issue that touches the heart of the nation. Can you just imagine . . .”

She was right. Newspapers and social media channels brimmed with the controversy over section 29 of the Nigerian Constitution and legitimising child marriage. I had skimmed a few articles but had neither researched the issue nor signed the child-not-bride petition. Like her, I was upset, unlike her, I had not yet reached boiling point. A couple more friends called. I felt the steam from their whistling kettles, so I caved in. Between midnight and 2 a.m., I wrote an opinion piece centred on an imaginary conversation with my daughter in 2025. It had many holes that I could not fill.

That Friday, I stumbled on an elegant piece written by a lawyer. Wading through the tide of emotion, he separated fact from fiction and proposed platforms to channel the wave of mass hysteria. Hearsay and conspiracy theories belong in fiction novels, and so, I was relieved that Sunday was still faraway. I would have sent my article to the recycle bin, but for a few sentences I felt I could use in a future post.

I have not let people convince me to use my “voice” to “talk” for them since then. Although I read political articles, I rarely write about politics because I don’t have the resources to carry out investigative journalism that would result in balanced pieces.

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence. – Samuel Butler –

My blog gives me freedom to wear anything I like from my wardrobe. Four criteria guide my choice, inform, entertain, inspire, and provoke thought. Oh, and try to keep it short!

Someone accused me of misleading readers since the tag line of my blog, because life happens to all of us and sometimes we get a second chance, isn’t reflected in the posts I publish. Perhaps he is right, and only I see the redemptive theme woven in my stories or maybe, you see what you want to see depending on the strength of your lenses.

So, what should I write about? Anything that catches my fancy, which I think will add value to you. Including this piece, which on the surface isn’t about redemption, but if you reflect on it, a large chunk focuses on wrestling my voice from peer pressure and speaking a language I understand. Second chances? Maybe, maybe not.

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. – Isaac Bashevis Singer –

©Timi Yeseibo 2014

Blogging, a Lot Like Running

August 31, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 48 Comments

My running journey provides metaphors for life. At that time of day when my neighbours court sleep and win an hour or two, the wind serves crisp air as I begin jogging. I contemplate my life’s compass until I land on lighter matters like the kinds of personal bloggers I’ve come across and how they resemble the runners who share the four-kilometre boulevard with me.

Hit and Runn-ers

These bloggers resemble that runner whose gear I like but couldn’t find at the mall. I wonder if Nike customised it for her, but swallow my Maggi-size envy before it burgeons. I swear that in a previous life, she was a rare gazelle. Hit and run bloggers excel at their craft, but they only tease us with their brilliance once in a long while, lighting our skies with their fireworks. Where will their gift take them? Some roads don’t take you anywhere and maybe, that’s okay because nowhere is a place where you can start again.

Aveng-ers

Their blogs exist to avenge their enemies. They remind me of the runner whose painful breathing heralds his presence. Punishing his thighs for a crime they did not commit, he nods and grunts as he overtakes me. One kilometre later, I find him sitting on a bench shouting, “Sh*t this, sh*t that, sh*t, sh*t, sh*t!” while tying his shoelaces. Determination and ugly are not synonyms. Avenger bloggers name names, places, times, and events, as they roast people on their spit over and over. They blog as frequently as they are offended.

Observ-ers

An about page and maybe one post make up the contents of their blogs. They hop from blog to blog reading, liking, and commenting. They are like the fishmongers who yell, “Kom op! Hup hup hup!” as I turn the bend, spent, and ready to head home. These perpetual encouragers put a smile on my face and help me gain a second wind. Observer bloggers cheer other bloggers all the way to the finish line.

Reblogg–ers

They are first cousins of Observ-er. An about page and maybe one blog post they actually wrote is the extent of their originality. They have found their niche just like that blond woman in her fifties who walks her three dogs every morning. She waves to every jogger and has the same kind word for those of us slow enough to hear, “Goede morgen! Succes!” Rummaging for content on blogosphere is a reblogg-er’s high. Redistributing wealth they do not possess is an elixir. Their blogs are exotic mosaics of content from essays on Marilyn Monroe to breaking news on CNN. Rebloggers would flatter other bloggers if only not every post on their blogs was a reblog.

Promis-ers

Promis-ers begin the year with the New Year resolution, I swear to blog consistently this year, so help me God! They bring to mind the fast and furious joggers who make the word high-speed redundant. In January, they published eighteen posts, serving essays, satires, how-tos, poems, and short stories. By February, they joined Mr fast and furious on the park bench gulping air and thinking, na who send me work? When Promis-ers woo us next New Year, we will embrace them, yet no one is deceived. Why work so hard to lose credibility?

Slow and Steady-ers

They are neither cheetahs nor tortoises, but pace themselves for longevity. They run like joggers whose even breathing ensure they complete six kilometres in just over an hour. Slow and steady-ers write posts that are boring, exciting, poor, average, or excellent, but their publishing schedule is predictable. They may not win the race, but they will live to run it another day because they understand their clock and resist the pressure to reset.

Because we’re doing life together, these patterns transcend blogging. So, you don’t have to tell me which category you fall in, tell me about other categories I missed.

©Timi Yeseibo 2014

Photo credit: Francois Peeters / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Returning, Blogorophobia, and the Gourd of Friendship

July 23, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 49 Comments

July. The month rolls in gently. I trace my footprints from last July until now. Small, hesitant, and then larger and bolder. Yours criss-cross with mine. I smile and laugh. I cry, but not for long. I cannot tell my story without telling yours too. This is what blogging has meant to me. So, what next? I narrow my choices, but refuse to sign the dotted line. Fear? Maybe. Hope? Maybe. Fluid like water, I look at the sky. In the meaning of the shape of the clouds, my answers are there. Tell me, how have you been?

My first weekend away from blogging, I was attacked by intense “blogorophobia”— the fear that you’ll lose your readers because you’re not blogging. While others slept, I stared at my monitor. Insecurity and desperation have only produced compromise in my life.

***

Rewind plot to earlier in the week, to that conversation with a friend.

“When will you start blogging again, so I can read your blog?”

“Oh, in about three weeks, but I’m reblogging stuff I like, you should read those.”

“The reason I drop by your blog is to read your stuff.”

“Really?”

“Whatever, don’t stay away too long. You know how fickle internet relationships are.”

Did I know?

Two more people shared similar sentiments that same week and I felt like the mother who on dropping her child at day care for the first time, experiences severe separation anxiety.

***

I went to bed without writing. Anything of value, that is. I remembered that when I left my son at day care for the first time, his cries followed me all the way to work. That as I immersed myself in reports and meetings, his voice could not compete. And when I returned to get him, his tiny arms clung to me and mine to him, as if our being apart had taught us to spell together differently. Thereafter, our parting became easier as we learnt to trust.

My stats did not nosedive. You visited and left comments. I visited you and sometimes I left comments. Internet relationships can be fickle, but you, yes you, you’ve hung around longer than most. It seems fitting then that I leave you with a poem by Richard Ntiru¹.

The Gourd of Friendship

Where is the curiosity we’ve lost in discovery?

Where is the discovery we’ve lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we’ve lost in communication?

Where is the communication we’ve lost in mass media?

Where is the message we’ve lost in the medium?

And where is the community we’ve lost in all these?

It is easy to go to the moon:

There, there are no people.

It is easier to count the stars:

They will not complain.

But the road to your neighbour’s heart –

Who has surveyed it?

The formula to your brother’s head –

Who has devised it?

The gourd that doesn’t spill friendship-

In whose garden has it ever grown?

You never know despair

Until you’ve lost hope;

You never know your aspiration

Until you’ve seen others’ disillusionment.

Peace resides in the hearts of men

Not in conference tables and delegates’ signatures

True friendship never dies-

It grows stronger the more it is tested.

See you Sunday?

Take lemons, make life, and then jump for joy!

©Timi Yeseibo 2014

Ntiru, Richard, The Gourd of Friendship, Poems of Black Africa, ed. Soyinka Wole (London: Heinemann/AWS, 1975), 169.

Image credit: tattoo ink painting by Mina van Berkum

Taking Stock and Resting

July 2, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 27 Comments

The first six months of 2014 on WordPress have been good. I’ve grown as a writer and you’ve helped me along the way, thank you so much. Now, it’s time to take stock. So, I’m taking a break from posting my stuff. I’m going to rest, but I’ll introduce you to some writers and blogs I enjoy starting this Sunday. I hope you’ll stay and show my friends the same regard you do me. I’ll be around in the comments, and you can reach me via my contact form.

Connecting with people is one of the high points of blogging for me. Lately I’ve had many likes and follows, and I haven’t been able to connect with my new blogger friends. I’ll use my break to meet you and catch up with old friends on blogosphere. I’m also going to (finally) read the books lying on my coffee table and enjoy the sun.

See you on Sunday.

Take lemons, make life, and then jump for joy!

©Timi Yeseibo 2014

WordPress 107: How I Write My Blog Posts

June 29, 2014June 29, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 48 Comments

I can scribble on the bus, at a party, or in the kitchen, but when it is time to pull my thoughts together, a chair and table lend seriousness to what I do. Although writing brings me satisfaction and can be fun, I do not write for fun. Familiar sound is unwelcome. I cannot let anything or anyone I know compete with the voices in my head. But the strangers at the café? Their conversation is a tunnel guiding me to the place where thoughts reside.

I don’t understand creativity, the neuroscience of it. To write my blog posts, I need an idea or two, or three. Don’t believe me? Just ask Neil Gaiman.

Happy now? So, here’s how ideas and words cross-pollinate and become blog posts on Livelytwist.

Inspiration

Words are the last thing I want to see for I have just spent four hours editing a manuscript. I drag myself to bed at 2 a.m. Ants crawl in the space above my eyes and Paracetamol has had little effect. I hear the words, “Six is just a number,” and understand the meaning, but I close my eyes and snuggle deeper under the covers. I hear the first line, the second, and then the third. I grab my laptop. The words are coming faster than I can type, a deluge. Like one possessed, I write until 2:30 a.m., 900 words of dialogue, and then I reread. I laugh, yawn, and sleep. Later, I email a friend.

“Naughty, naughty, naughty. This will get you in all kinds of trouble,” he replies.

I wish everything I wrote came to me by inspiration. I also wish I played the lottery yesterday and won a million Dollars. Instead, I get dressed, go to work, and collect my pay cheque at the end of the month.

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous. – Bill Moyers¹

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Saturday, one day before publication. Nothing, nothing at all. Experience tempers panic so its waves do not break on my shore and retreat, making everything wet. I pound away at my keyboard like a blacksmith hammering metal sheets into shape—delete, cut, copy, paste. I surf the internet. I read other blogs. I watch TV. I pray. I flip through my T.B.D.L. notebook. I leaf through my experiences and run through my imagination. I write, one sentence at a time, like a child learning to walk. I visit the thesaurus. I employ literary devices. I pull words from the well in me. I push until I reach 500 words. Eureka!

Sunday, I upload and publish. I hold my breath until I see the first like or comment. Then slowly, I exhale. The best writing advice I’ve ever received? Just start and inspiration will find you.

The trick to creativity, if there is a single useful thing to say about it, is to identify your own peculiar talent and then to settle down to work with it for a good long time. – Denise Shekerjian, Uncommon Genius: How Great Ideas Are Born²

The Force of Belief

Something I hear, see, read, or experience captures my attention and moves me deeply. It stews in my mind for days, weeks, months even, and I read what others have to say. I examine my life for inconsistencies as conviction takes root. I determine to do better because what I write will change me. When the thoughts crystallise, a title is not far off.

I write with what I hope is restraint, in a measured tone. I know it will stir readers for it is the force of conviction on paper. It alienates or binds. Only in my response to comments, do I try toe the middle ground, to be gracious. I wrote, I am not What I wear and Other Lies we Tell Ourselves, this way. In a world of muddled grey, black or white can bring pain or gain.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. – Steve Jobs, I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words³

All this is theory as all three elements are at play when I write, sometimes, one is more dominant than the other two and vice-versa. Some days it is hard. Some days it comes easy. Always, it is rewarding, like chocolate cake after lean meat and vegetables.

So, how do you write, or draw, or make music, or do what you do?

©Timi Yeseibo 2014

Image credit: cartoon figures from Microsoft

The Creative Process, adapted from Julia Quinn’s photo: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151963920732054&set=a.59952827053.71263.42811462053&type=1&theater

Finding and Becoming You

June 22, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 62 Comments

You start to write this post and your fingers hesitate over the keyboard. One part of your brain wonders when you bought a franchise for Oprah’s Life Class. You wonder about sounding like a preacher, roll your eyes like a teacher, and resume typing with a sigh. Authenticity on a personal blog is sometimes writing what matters to you with your style and in your voice.

The first time you realised you had a distinct writing voice was when you rewrote the foreword of a friend’s manuscript because she asked you to. You’d found it stuffy like a chemistry class about atoms without pictures. You thought that an inspirational book should make readers feel as though they were drinking coffee with the author and talking about life. You transcribed this photo, infecting your words with warmth that spreads from intimate conversation.

Your approach couldn’t have been more wrong for your friend read it, shook her head, and demanded, “Why didn’t you write like you write at work? That’s why I came to you in the first place!”

You stammered, “But that is my job. This is my heart.”

To write from your heart, you must first know your heart. What made your heart go va-va-voom at eighteen is not the same thing that makes your heart race at forty. The heart is always circulating blood throughout the body. You are a constant work in progress. Neutrality is for the dead, the ideas you encounter daily, shift you one way or the other. Oxygen-depleted blood enters the right side of the heart and exits through the left full of oxygen. Yet, the heart sits fixed in the chest cavity between your two lungs. Who you are at your core and the ideas which circulate in your mind will seep from your pen, whether black, blue, red, or green.

To become you, you must find you. Remember when you isolated your baby’s cry in a room full of crying infants or picked out a friend’s laughter in a noisy coffee bar? This is the magic of bonding, of spending hours with someone you love, you! You hear your cry and understand your pain. Healthy self-preoccupation may mean that you are the last to hear office gossip because your internal dialogue is louder and juicier. You are an active participant in the internal narrative of your life, listening, taking notes, sharing feedback, and steering the conversation.

Experimenting within boundaries may cushion failure on the way to discovery. I wrote poetry and gave drama a stint, before I settled on prose. Second chances are about reinventing yourself. You can gift yourself one anytime. If self-acceptance comes before change perhaps change has a better chance of stamping itself on you because your need is raw like desire.

It takes courage to be yourself for when you finally meet yourself, you may not like who you are. When children unwrap gifts at Christmas, they look past their gift to ask others, “What did you get?” The value of the gift received grows or diminishes in comparison to what others received or how others perceive what they received. You also play this game. It is hard not to compare, after all, there is no tall without short. But you can learn to “uncompare,” that is, measure your good against your better, and aim for the best.

The high price of being you is the risk of being misunderstood or rejected. But even in that, there is value to be harnessed. The world isn’t tolerant of plastic bottles that don’t fit in the general assembly plant. Did you know it costs time and effort to create special assembly plants? You put in the time. You put in the effort. Give yourself the gift of you before you offer the world the gift of you. Then, whatever happens, the ground upon which you place your feet will hold you up.

©Timi Yeseibo 2014

Image credit: stick figures from Microsoft

Statistically Speaking

April 27, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 88 Comments

I am drawn to my WordPress stats page at least once every day although the stats do not tell me things I am curious about like how old my readers are. I know a twelve-year-old girl who reads my blog occasionally and a man of fifty-one, who claims to have read everything on my blog. Are the rest of my readers older or younger? My stats do not also tell me if I have crossed gender barriers with my pen. Who reads my post more, men or women?

I know no one in Brazil and Azerbaijan is a place I must locate on a map, yet my words have gone where my legs could not go. My words have travelled over Congo, a place I visited in Wilbur Smith’s The Dark of the Sun, and touched down in the United Arab Emirates. At least one person in every continent, in 105 countries, has viewed my blog.

I have heard it said that Nigerians don’t read, and that the average Nigerian’s appetite for literature lies in entertainment (Nollywood gossip), politics, and religion. I think I have done my part to debunk that claim. My highest blog views are from Nigeria, closely followed by the United Kingdom and the United States. Mind you, nearly 5,000 views in a country of 150 million people is a drop in the ocean, but I’ll take that drop, thank you!

What brings people who I have never met to my blog? I’d like to think that although I don’t know what gnaws on your mind at night, my words do. More likely, search engine robots pull you to my blog when you search for words like Akpos or Body Magic. If Akpos is unique to Nigeria, then majority of the seventy percent of viewers from Europe and The Americas are Nigerians. It makes sense as my Naija experiences colour my metaphors, making me feel proud that I’m also exporting Naija culture to non-Nigerians.

Was it my smiling Gravatar or a comment I left on another blog that brought you here? If so, I’m never changing that photo! If Facebook brought you here, I am not surprised for people share my posts on Facebook more than on any other social media platform.

I wonder if you stay after you land on my blog or if you leave, bookmark the page, and return later. If you stay, what do you like to read most? When I read a book, I try to find someone I know or myself in its pages. Is the protagonist’s failure like mine or is his success worth aspiring to? Does he walk with a limp so I can catch up with him?

I think the best stories are about the human condition, which would explain why stories about my or another’s insecurities served with wit, are the most viewed, most shared, most commented, and most liked posts on this blog. Posts like The Body Magic, I am not Looking for Love, I am going to Work, The Measure of a Man, Any Comments, and Six Degrees of Separation. Perhaps vulnerability exposes authenticity that makes you stay beyond the polished prose.

Now I know what drives traffic to my blog, do I write another Akpos post? Now I know which posts attract the most views, comments, likes, and shares, do I stop writing posts like, Grow Up Mikey and Our National Pastime, because they performed poorly at the box office?

I cannot confine myself to the prison of writing for stats; my mind is bigger than that. However, I realise that my stats are my friends and they are relevant to the degree that I can make right inferences, which affect my writing and ultimately enhance your reading pleasure. So please fill in the gaps and tell me what my stats page won’t: who are you, what brought you here, and what will keep you coming back?

©Timi Yeseibo 2014

Image credit: illustration from Microsoft

I Do

April 20, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 61 Comments

Some people believe that after they’ve met The One, they could never develop feelings for another. I think that if we are blindfolded we may be unable to distinguish touch from touch. This is not an argument against monogamy, but for focus.

In his book Outliers, The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell says that hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning¹. In making the point that excellence requires a critical minimum level of practice, he says ten thousand hours is the magic number that researchers have agreed on for true expertise². That’s an awful amount of focus.

Livelytwist and I have been married for a year and as much as she has pleasured me past our honeymoon weekend of 2,000 views, family, friends, work, hobbies, books, TV, social media, and a hundred other commitments compete for my attention. If I have achieved any kind of excellence in this marriage, it is because I rarely let anything come between Livelytwist and me.

Our marriage has not been without its challenges. Although I spend hours conjuring word pictures to process big ideas, promoting these ideas beyond my small circle tasks me. Learning how to ‘shout’ on Twitter and Facebook does not excite me. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.³

I remember that at twelve or thirteen, my mum gave me the talk.

“You’ve started your period. From now on, if a boy touches you like this,” she tapped my arm, “you’ll get pregnant!”

I did not take her words to heart. But the next day, as I played tag with the kids on my street, the horror of how many times I could get pregnant weighed on my heart. At dinnertime, I watched the boys run to their homes while I trudged to mine, sure that my stomach had already started swelling. I stopped playing tag after that.

My mother had successfully sold me her abstinence formula, which I bought until I turned sixteen and the boys came to play tag in droves. Only then did she change her marketing strategy.

Where I come from, we call every carbonated drink Coke. Such is the brand dominance Coca-Cola enjoys, and yet the company still spends millions on advertising. I realise that I must first write posts that resonate with readers, before I figure out how to get them to read it, and then be ready to change when my methods age.

At the same time, I do not want to be that guy at the airport, who you ask, “What do you do?” and he answers, “I’m in sales, and you?” Then while your lips are opening, he tells you about his eBooks, his tenor rising, rising, dropping, rising, rising, as he shoves a Kindle in your face. You cannot get a word in edgeways, so you promise to buy at least one book and make a mental note to go for confession. When you throw the bookmark he gave you in the bin, all that remains from the encounter is the smell of musk.

The first indicator that someone outside my close circle was anticipating my blog post came a few months after I started blogging.

Lively, how far? It’s 2 p.m. here and we’ve been waiting all day for your blog post.

This email from a reader via my contact form proved that my walk was louder than any talk I could have given for he had noticed my Sunday-Sunday consistency. It changed the game for me. I shovelled out my doubts about blogging and said, “I do” to Livelytwist.

All of you who share my posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and by word-of-mouth, are my connectors to the rest of the world. Your referrals are fresh like 8 a.m. doughnuts and relevant like Google. You helped me stay faithful to Livelytwist. At every crossroad, you lifted the lamp of love, and I saw in your face, the road that I should take.

Thank you.

©Timi Yeseibo 2014

Six Degrees of Separation and Other Stories

April 13, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 92 Comments

On a scale of one to ten, I was born with a six in writing, just as you were born with a six, or seven, or eight in something. This means that even if I don’t develop myself as a writer, anything I write would be better than what most people write. But talent is not enough. It can be a beginning.

I believe in six degrees of separation, the version I have heard, that you are only five people away from any one you want to meet. I could meet Barrack Obama if I want to. My family knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody that knows Goodluck Jonathan. Goodluck Jonathan can lead me to Obama. In theory.

I put this man know man to good use when I tried to publish my manuscript traditionally in Nigeria. It helped. In theory. I got an audience with every publisher I wanted to meet. In those days, I wrote creative non-fiction and dreamt about a coffee-table-style book with rich photos, that readers could leisurely leaf through. Two things stood in my way: money and a photographer to team up with.

After I butted my head against the wall several times, I used six degrees of separation, again, to get the attention of glossies and weekend papers. I received some offers. Two conditions made me decline. The publications demanded exclusivity and wanted me to write free of charge.

“Are you crazy?” asked my cousin who was number four in this particular six degrees of separation.

“What exactly do I get from this arrangement?”

“This is Naija, shine ya eye well well! You’ll get a platform to build your reputation as a writer, and before long, they’ll be calling you for speaking engagements. Then you can charge like 100k per engagement,” her eyes shone as she giggled and clapped.

Should I have taken the offer? In 2008, Michael Birch sold Bebo to AOL for $850M. In 2010, AOL sold Bebo for less than $10M, as the story goes. Birch said, “Obviously, the timing was good for us and bad for AOL.”

Was the timing good for me? I only know two things. One, that although I had about two months’ worth of articles on my laptop, deep down, I feared that I could not write engaging articles week after week. Two, that if you don’t know who you are or what you’ve got, people will remould you until you cannot recognise your reflection.

Once, a mentor asked me to pay a token for advice. He said, “What is given too cheaply is often despised.” I have found that humility is not being the doormat others step on because you don’t know your value. It is knowing your value, but choosing to be a doormat anyway.

Some of my missed opportunities are like Halley’s Comet while others have prepared me better for this time. Some people ‘wait’ for opportunity as though opportunity is passive, like something that happens to you, as in the sentence, I was hit by a truck. At night, I look at the sky and believe there are spaces in the universe for us to fill. We cannot rule out what some call luck and others providence, but in a sense, we call opportunity by our preparedness.

As I tried to get a writing gig going, people would say, “Your articles read like a blog post. Why not start a blog?”

I chewed the idea and spat it out, for the same reason that I never wanted to start a business. I have no entrepreneurial bone in my body. I’m a nine to five girl jare. Share your vision and I will actualise it; but don’t ask me to come up with my own.

Four years later, many unpublished articles and short stories later, miffed that I found one grey eyelash while looking in the mirror, I wrote an article about getting older and posted it on my Facebook Timeline. The responses surprised me. Not just the likes or comments, but the call to start a blog.

I had come full circle. I wrestled with the thought that I was moving away from my dream of being traditionally published. In truth, I had buried that dream under a big box labelled life. My sister told me, “When you’re down, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

I started this blog with grit, a little knowledge, some research, plenty goodwill, confidence, trepidation, and a two-month content calendar.

One year later, this gift that chose me, feels like a solemn trust, like a platform to do my life’s work. When you read something and say it inspires you to do life better, I let my tears fall where they will.

©Timi Yeseibo 2014

Share Your Story

April 9, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 49 Comments

“So, you would have been blogging for a year now this April?”

“Uh huh.”

“Wow how time flies! You don’t sound very excited.”

“I am.”

“But?”

“Well, it’s not like it’s such a big deal, people have been blogging like forever.”

“True, but you’re not people.”

“I know.”

“Why don’t you write about it?”

“Me? It’s not like I won Olympic gold or something.”

“You’re too hard on yourself. You keep waiting until you arrive. Learn to celebrate small successes on the way. Life has peaks—”

“And valleys. Every peak is a valid point for celebration, blah, blah, blah. Okay, how should I do it?”

“Share your story, what you learnt, why you started blogging, that kind of thing. Your writing voice lends itself to the personal essay.”

“Really?”

“What’s wrong with you? Where is your confidence?”

“Don’t! I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I am your mentor. If you want a cuddle, go to your friends. If you want to kick ass, you come to me!”

“Alright. But it’s not like I made money blogging, what exactly do I want to tell—”

“You of all people should know that money isn’t the only index of success—”

“You didn’t just say that?”

“Of course it’s a biggie, but writers like us console ourselves it’s not. As I was saying, haven’t you found fulfilment? Didn’t you achieve some of your goals?”

“Well . . .”

“And what is it you say again on your blog? ‘We’re all doing life together.’ And the other one that makes people think you’re sooo deep? Aha, ‘Because life happens to all of us—’”

“You’re an idiot and your advice ain’t worth two cents.”

“You can always go to the mall and buy a Gucci bag to celebrate . . .”

I went to the mall. I didn’t buy a Gucci bag. Writing is so much cheaper.

For the rest of April, I’ll share about my experience blogging for a year because I feel proud of what we, you and I, have achieved on Livelytwist. I hope you’ll stick around. I hope you’ll locate yourself in my stories and maybe share parts of yours too. Thank you so much for your support.

Take lemons, make life, and then jump for joy!

Image credits:

Photo by Rob Gros: http://www.creationswap.com/media/3387

Any Comments? No, I think I’ll Pass.

April 6, 2014April 6, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 142 Comments

Dear Non-Commenter,

Today, the spotlight is on you! As I reflect on my blogging journey, I realise that engagement is a big part of the fun for me. Why have you decided to blow out my candles before the MC counts to three?

Following my informal survey, I’ve compiled a list of reasons why you don’t comment and given my tongue-in-cheek arguments against them. Find your excuse and tell me if your arguments are louder than mine are.

Reluctant Barry

You claim that you want to see what others are saying and where the conversation is going before you add your voice. In other words, you don’t want to be the first to comment. You surprise me. Are you incapable of independent thought? Monday to Friday, you make decisions like an entrepreneur without a board. Is it only when you come to Livelytwist that you cease being a pioneer?

Scared Molly

They told you the internet is a dangerous place and now you take everything you read with a pinch of salt. You worry that future employers are googling your name. You worry that when you become a presidential aspirant, a comment you left on Livelytwist can and will be used against you. Hmmm, what do we know for sure? Y2K didn’t happen and aliens are yet to take over our world. Unconvinced? Leave your comments with a grain of salt; call yourself Panteka Monleka, who cares?

Forgetful Harry

You were planning to, but you forgot. Committing things to your memory is like fetching water with a basket. No time like the present. Stop this minute and go to the comment box. Write about the sea or the prevalence of memory loss in Homo sapiens living in the Twitter Generation. You know what; don’t sweat it before you forget again. Just write, nice post, and know you have done your good deed for the week.

Ungrammatical Sally

My “grammar” intimidates you. You don’t want to sound like a fool. Really? Did I set an English exam for you? Do you not have spell check? Is it not true that since you began reading Livelytwist, your writing has improved? You’ve stolen a metaphor here and a paragraph there, basked in accolades, and didn’t mention my name. Meanwhile, you shared The Measure of a Man, with that boy who showed you pepper and when he didn’t say sorry, you read Happy New Love and rekindled hope. Yet, not a comment, not even one comment.

Invisible Cheerleader

Timi, you go girl! Oh yes, I can soar on the wings of your private messages and clinch the Nobel Prize for literature! You say although you do not comment, you’re supporting me from behind. Ah, I can manage my behind myself. Please move to the front. For your sake, I posed questions at the end of posts to foster engagement. You ignored the hint and sent me yet another BBM: Timi you go girl! Get ‘em tiger! Where did you find a smiley clothed in animal skin? Never mind that, just leave a comment please.

Livelytwist Unofficial Ambassador

“Lol, this was so funny, I’m in stitches. Y’all need to read this!!!” If you’d left this comment on my blog, this post would’ve been redundant. Instead, it was what you wrote as you shared my post on Facebook and Twitter, while counting the minutes until the end of the second service at your church. I am grateful that two people heeded your call. Did you know one of them left a comment? You’ve almost earned your badge. 140 characters or less gets a pass mark in my book. I’m waiting . . .

Tongue-tied Mary

You don’t know what to say. I get it, the post doesn’t move you. What of last week’s post and the week before that? Like seriously sixty-plus posts and you don’t have an opinion? In school, you must have been like that child who always whined when the teacher posed a question to him, “They’ve already said what I was going to say.” I allow that here. Simply reply someone’s comment and write, “True talk. You just took the words from my mouth!”

Naija Pally

You have promised to comment by God’s grace. Your one argument trumps my thousands. No network. Enough said. Scores, Livelytwist: zero, Naija Pally: one.

Non-commenter, I could go on, but hearing from you is more important.

Regards,

Livelytwist

P.s. faithful commenters are also invited to weigh in 🙂

Read about social media habits: men versus women

http://socialmediatoday.com/valerie-mellema/2231276/do-men-use-facebook-differently-women

http://newsfeed.time.com/2014/02/19/how-men-and-women-use-social-media-differently-in-one-graphic/

Photo credits:

Image credits: all people illustrations, animes, avatars, and vectors by Microsoft

In Transition

March 2, 2014 ~ livelytwist ~ 35 Comments

In transition.

The first time I read those words was when I was so little, time loomed so large, and my only care was how to fill stretches of time. Capitalised above a black and white photo of someone’s grandma, I understood the words meant she had died and gone to Heaven, which I simplified to mean, no one would see her again and finally, she could snuff that thing in the little tin she carried about in peace.

Of course, now that I’m grown, my ideas have changed. Life is a series of transitions and death is the final one or another in the series, depending on what you believe.

The quality of our transitions can make or break the next phase of our lives. If you tumbled into adolescence with pimples and a pitch that would not deepen even as each new year brought your peers’ baritone in sharper focus, if you could count the hair on your face and on your chest on four of your five fingers, then you’ve known the awkwardness of bad transitions.

And if at twenty-four, your scars from popping pimples lay hidden under a well-groomed beard, you could croon the words, smooth transition, and we would nod as though Sade were singing Smooth Operator.

In writing, transitions connect paragraphs and pull scattered thoughts together so they make sense. Transitional devices are words or phrases that writers use to cue readers in a certain direction. They are like warning signs: ahead, keep left. A word like nevertheless, prepares readers for a contradiction, while furthermore, warns readers that the writer isn’t done yet; and finally, lets readers know the end is “finally” in sight.

Nowhere is the value of good transitions more evident than when writing short stories, short blog posts, or short anything. Brevity constrains writers to bottle meaning in as few words as possible. Like archers, writers discard word after word, until they find the arrow that will hit the mark.

Transitioning between time periods, i.e. moving from the present to the past and then to the future, before relaxing in the present again, requires more than bow and arrow. A good writer must deploy the right tenses and should never leave home without his adverbs of time. When writing a short story, I think it is better to avoid skipping from present to past to future to past to present. I mean, haven’t we got only one life to live?

But, we don’t listen do we? We station the protagonist in the present, give him momentum, and teach him to fly. Just when our readers blame that small urinary incontinence on gripping stuff, the protagonist leaps back in time. Reaching for a flag, he falls in a rose bush instead, pricking our readers with needles of confusion.

Loyal readers crawl back through our written lines more than thrice to locate the protagonist. But when they pick up from where they left off, they are thrust into a futuristic time travel with no warning. Dizzy from the spatial challenge, they finally abandon plot. Those who cannot lie leave a comment behind: nice one, don’t keep it coming!

So, a long time ago, I tried to write poetry. I showed my masterpiece to a ~~great~~ ~~poet~~ teacher.

“You’ve done a half-decent job.”

“Half-decent?” My eyes widened at her audacity. She told me the truth when I asked for feedback. Who does that?

“Well, you could do better if . . .”

She rambled on about metres and stanzas, rhymes and verses. Her arms flailed like a musical conductor’s: a little alliteration, tenured cacophony, rising assonance, asinine onomatopoeia, and mindless personification. Spent, her arms dropped to her sides. Her eyes searched mine.

“Got it?”

“Uh huh,” I replied, “But, I want to write it like this,” I showed her my poem again.

“Timi?”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to write poetry?”

“Y – e – s . . .”

“You can break the rules after you’ve mastered them not before!”

If you read this to the end without losing me, kudos to me, I structured my transitions right. Now, go and work on yours, so I can read your story without crawling through the lines!

Images from Microsoft Corporation

Photo of Omari Hardwick courtesy: http://www.omarihardwick.com

Why I Write

September 29, 2013July 7, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 23 Comments

I write because I have something to say. I write with intention. I write to inform and to amuse. I write to inspire conviction that provokes movement, because words are not empty. I write because I can.

I do not write for fun. I watch romantic comedies for fun. I read a novel with a wicked plot for fun. I walk on the beach for fun. I cycle through the woody paths of the Veluwe for fun. I don’t write for fun, however writing can be so much fun.

I write because I like challenges, the challenge of taking something ordinary and giving it wings to fly like a kite in the wind. Watching it sail, I ooh and ah as its colours change. Then I ooh and ah again as I see through your eyes, the medley of colours in the comments you leave behind.

I write because I want you to read what I write. When people say that they write for themselves and not for others, and then publish the writing that they wrote for themselves on a blog for the world to see, the irony does not escape me. I write because it matters to me that you read what I write. If it did not matter to me, I would write in my diary.

I write because I enjoy reducing the tedious emails that nearly nobody reads and a few skim, to bullet points that everybody reads. I write because I love to k.i.s.s. (keep it so simple), and make up, that is, stretch a story to breaking point to test the limits of its elasticity. Snap! And start again.

I write to discover myself. As my thoughts change to words, I see who I have been, who I am becoming, and who I might be. I write because my interaction with the world makes sense when I draw it in word pictures. Blue means peace and green means fruit. If I could not write, I would paint. And if I could not paint, I would sing. I would croon ballads about the fact that I cannot write.

I write because I have time. I write because I make time. I write because I lose time when I write. Minutes tick and become hours and hours race into days. I write because it is easy for me to write. I write because I hear words and phrases in my mind. I write because I dream, lofty dreams about never-never land, perfect rag dolls, and vintage family portraits

I write because the gift chose me. I write because I discovered the gift when I wasn’t looking. I write because writing adds value to my life, turning my whispers into loud cries, enabling me to stand tall on crouched knees. I write because the gift continues to unfold with surprises in store.

Mostly, I write because I can. Why do you write?