The art of Patience

A good story comes from the heart. It is something relatable and inspires the writer to put the thought in black and white. Once in a while you get let down by those whom you had faith and expected would elate your spirits. This occurs when you tell a friend or someone close to critique what you have written, composed or intend to do. However, be on the go and never lose hope, in every endeavor there are two options; the first is failure and the other is success.

It took me a lot of soul searching before I ventured in this unrewarding and exciting pastime that is writing (you can even be a pilot or a rocket scientist). What I am sure of is that I have the drive that can never been watered down. It is something I like and as such, I have the obligation to continue pursuing it till that point in time where I will feel that I am no longer passionate enough to continue with it.

I stumbled upon writing in Primary school. Ever since, I have never looked back. I can authoritatively brag that I used to write some of the best compositions while in primary school. My mates would be appalled by my write-ups and they would try to copy my ideas much to the chagrin of tutors who found the essays a fake copy of what I had written but grossly unreadable. I am not bragging, if I was a pathetic writer it have obviously been manifested in these pieces. 

In high school, writing became my second love. I ended up adopting a culture of writing. But after high school I lost the drive to get a pen and paper and put my thoughts into black and white. This I can attribute to the fact that I thoroughly felt exhausted to the point where I did nothing constructive other than reading newspapers and occasional novels. 

My craving for reading however never died. At one point in time I read the bible from Genesis to Revelation. It was a project I did to kill idleness and since the hanker in me never wanted to be idle I decided to read the bible. I cannot precisely recall how long it took me, but I guess it was about two weeks of continuous reading. Currently I can’t reminisce what I read. Through reading I was able to rejuvenate my writing skills. But again nothing is as aggravating as having no avenue of relaying your artistic pieces. I became frustrated and dropped the dream.

I revived my flair for writing when I watched an epic inspiration on spoken word one Friday morning. In it they featured a Kenyatta University student who was so good that I wanted to venture in spoken word. The student was none other than Number 8. He is currently a business anchor plying his trade with one of the local television channels. I must confess that though there were other spoken word artists, his mastery of the skill did excite the nerves in me to write my own poems. And with that I decided to venture into the art of writing poems.

My first poem was a very simple poem. My First Odyssey. Though I had tried poetry in high school, I lost hope when prose writing became more appealing than writing a poem. I wrote the poem to commemorate the journey that I had started long ago having killed the dream. I did memorize the poem but never had an audience to perform to. I am not afraid of an audience since I have ever participated in drama as a leading actor in a play while in high school. 

Since then I have written hundreds of poems. At one time I read about a poet and an artist who talked about dedicating 10000 hours in a skill before you become proficient. I don’t know the amount of time I have dedicated in writing but I am sure in a few years time I will have accrued the time. What I have never done is however dedicating time to cram my pieces to be able to recite them in public. Through writing I discovered that writing poems is even more challenging than prose writing. Poetry is more about diction and brevity. Achieving that is usually not easy as it requires patience. I bet my poems are longer. But the kind of poetry I write does not follow the laid down rules of poetry. 

I once read from a well respected journo that writing is a thankless job. You never get recognized for the hours you put in thinking, writing and re-writing and editing your text. Fortunately enough, it’s a calling being a writer and not an obligation. Anyone who has been to primary school can write. The difference is, writing is usually demanding and one can take even a week in order to come up with a good and captivating write-up. 

I usually try to simplify what I write about as much as possible. It also encourages me to re-read my texts. But on most occasions I usually digress and end up writing on a totally different thing all together. But writing is different, you may decide to write about Kenya and end up composing something totally different. This piece is an example of the ramble I was talking about. I initially wanted to write about my time in nursery but look, I wrote about something I never expected I would. In the near future I hope to write a book about something incredible.

SITUONANE.