Guest Speaker –
Mark Kaigwa (Founder at Nendo - Strategy & Storytelling for Digital Africa)
Facilitated by Kitata
Makau– Senior lecturer at University of Nairobi
Two weeks ago
(Thursday, May 29), I attended a creative writing workshop convened by PAWA 254
at Royal City Hotel in Kisumu where participants were lectured by two guest
speakers (Kitata Makau, lecturer at University of Nairobi and Digital
Strategist Mark Kaigwa) on the fundamentals of creative writing and the state/future
of journalism in the wake of wide spread stand alone journalism made possible
by the internet and sporadic technological advancements that have challenged
the place of the traditional journalist. The participants included students
from top tertiary learning institutions in Kisumu County. It was the first time
PAWA 254 convened a workshop in this part of the country and having attended
some of their events in Nairobi, I knew exactly what kind of time I was going
to have (MAD FUN!) at the forum (as we’d
later decide to call it after amending the title from ‘workshop’ in order to
encourage more interaction and engagement with the participants).
Mr Kitata, the
first to present, took the participants through two hours of questioning their
rationale as writers and exploring fundamental questions as far as writing is
concerned including how stand alone journalism is changing the face of creative writing and journalism, writing as a
vocation vs as an avocation, inspiration in writing and content generation,
feelings vs objectivity and subjectivity in writing, rewriting your work before
releasing it, the writer’s environment, use of proper diction, symbolisms and
use of sophisticated language. He also explored how writers can enhance their productivity
by first discovering their personal voice and realizing whether and how writing
contributes to their personal development.
In summary, here
are a few pointers in enhancing your skills as a creative writer (of any kind)
according to Mr Kitata:
1. Prepare
an outline.
2. Assess
your readership.
3. Know
the place of jargon in your writing. Avoid ambiguity.
4. Simplicity
is the essence of profundity. Avoid using 3rd degree words. Use
first degree words.
5. Brevity.
Be brief and concise.
6. Avoid
wasting words (using windy phrases).
7. Write
in the active voice. Turn every passive into active voice where possible, for example,
‘The car was driven by Jane’ to ‘Jane drove the car’.
8. When
concluding, conclude.
9. Avoid
digression. Keep to the intended subject and keep to the principal line of
argument, plot or study.
10.Cut your anecdotes. The short,
amusing bits of your plot that were not initially planned for might come out as
contradicting the initial flow of events or confusing the reader if they are
not relevant.
11. Cut out negative sections as much as
possible. A writer appeals better if he conveys positive messages as opposed to
sharing your negativity.
 |
| The group of students from Maseno University with Mark Kaigwa after the forum |
During lunch break,
Mark Kaigwa joined me and my colleagues from Maseno University on our table and
listened to our heated debate about expecting metropolis towns and urban
centres to develop using the same model as those of capital cities, in this
case Kisumu vs Nairobi. I was on the receiving end of this debate antagonizing
this notion that Kisumu had to emulate the development patterns seen in Nairobi.
My colleagues insisted that Kisumu could only develop if it copy pasted the
development model used by Nairobi. Mark reserved his views on this debate but asked
all of us to justify our views as he listened, commented and asked questions.
The break was quite short but while heading back to the conference hall, he
agreed that emerging metropolis towns shouldn’t be expected to develop in the
same manner that established metropolises had done. The environment and other
factors differ and hence it is impossible to simply copy paste development
strategies though he also made it clear that he did not encourage complacency
in the part of leaders and development practitioners in these emerging
metropolises. I agreed.
After the break, he
conducted an interactive two hour humor filled presentation titled Is Journalism Dead? And Other Short Stories that
questioned the place of traditional reporter-in-the-field kind of journalism in
a world taken over by social media and technological advancements that have
eroded the importance of traditional journalism and publishing. Social media
has revolutionized news reporting by making real-time news updates more
available to everyone by anyone who can generate news content. He shared data
on social media use in Kenya and Africa and challenged participants to take up
blogging and other avenues of content generation for digital platforms.
Three days after
this forum, I initiated a bloggers association in my university. We are eleven days
old today! I am currently sourcing for content from the ten members who have
shown interest so far and we have also agreed on tentative activities to carry
out between now and end of July.
This blogpost was prepared by Ongere Churchill. Here is his personal blog.
CREDIT IS HEREBY GIVEN TO BOTH HIM AND OTHER FACILITATING MEMBERS OF B.A.M.U
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