Before The Birds
In which I tell you some fun facts about my Mcsweeny's story, "After the Birds".
Hello!
Welcome to my second newsletter for the year. I hope you haven't broken all your resolutions and 2020 goals. Rooting for you!
Last year, I published this nice story called After The Birds.You probably already know this. This year, I'm afraid I'll never be able to write any story this nice (my January goal is to disprove this). I've started and finished a few ‘okay’ stories since then, but they pale in comparison. I mean, I have my grievances with After the Birds, the things I absolutely hate about it, but I enjoyed every second of writing and rewriting it.
Death and reincarnation fascinate me. Someone once asked if I had a muse and I said, ‘Yes I do, it is death.’ Which is really dark when I think of it. But when I really, really think about it, a lot of my characters end up dying or facing a worse fate than death. So, there is some truth there. I've written about finding out about akudaya, the Yoruba idea of reincarnates who go elsewhere and start new lives. Here's one story where I start to explore akudaya, but never finish. In another story, I explore atunwaye. But nothing is as chilling as what I think I did in After the Birds. I can't remember when the idea came to me, but I remember that I started to write it in December 2018. I was using my iPhone SE and had just gotten my Yoga computer — which I promised myself was for writing stories exclusively. I'd also just finished reading Purple Hibiscus. I recommend that you read it every year if like me, you're a lover of good things in life. If you’re not already subscribed, you probably want to do that before you continue reading.
So a few fun facts about After the Birds.
#1
I modelled the character of Isaac (it wasn't originally Isaac; it was another biblical name) after one of my best friends who owns a tech company. When I sent a text to him saying, ‘I wrote a story using your name,’ adding ‘You die in it…’ as an afterthought, he said, ‘Ah God forbid.’ He's not religious, so I'd thought it was fine to tell him that. I eventually changed it to Isaac which was convenient because Arin had twins in the story. And didn't Isaac have twins in the Bible? Aye?
#2
The story about a roommate from law school who saw a bird fall and get caught on the clothesline actually happened when I was in law school. I stayed in a room with four lovely women I didn't always get along with. They were hyper religious and always had the wildest story. One day, a young lady who had failed the bar exam came to see my married (pregnant) roommate. My roommate saw her off after the visit. When she returned to the room, she was panting and anxious and went straight to her bunk to pray. After several minutes, she told us about the birds she had seen. Now I'm not exactly sure if it got caught on the clothesline, but I am sure she believed that the lady who visited her sent the bird to make her fail her exam. Or something.
#3
Hakeem is also real. Real name, real face (in my head). One of the loveliest men I know. Not saying what happened to him in the story happened to him in real life sha. (I use my friends too much sha.)
#4
I've never been pregnant, but I break pieces of onion crackers in tea or creamy coffee. This should be past tense. I was doing it a lot during the time I wrote the story.
#5
My parents have tall moringa trees in their yard. But it wasn't their trees that motivated the tall (possibly human) tree in this story. There's a huge tree in one of the buildings on Oba Dosumu, Ikeja GRA, next to my old office. That's the tree I was thinking about, but it's not a moringa tree and it doesn't have tiny leaves. I don't know what kind of tree it is.
#6
I don't find birds fascinating or anything. For a while during the time I was writing this story, I was at my parents house and noticed a lot of birds — by my bathroom window, by the window of my brother's room, etc. I did some extensive research about birds and welp. The first sentence of the story did come while I was in an Uber at night. A police did flash his torchlight at us. I did wonder if there was a dead body in the car.
#7
I'm the one with a terrible playlist. I'm the one who would listen to Niniola’s “Dola” and then Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water”.
Last year, I worked on an interesting story around corporal punishment in secondary school and someone died in it. I don't talk to the neighbour I modeled the protagonist after, so I feel guilty when I see her. I hope it finds a home soon. I'm also currently working on some dark themes with male protagonists because I often limit myself to writing about women or from women's perspectives.
My strengths are fiction and creative nonfiction, but this year, I'm going to try my hands at proper essays that don't focus on self. I'm excited about this. Send me tips and useful guides if you have any. Also if you have any questions about my story, After the Birds, respond or hit me up on Twitter.
PSA: I call it a nice story, and that's only because Claire Boyle was an amazing and patient editor. She also didn't push to italicise Yoruba words.
Ope's Reads.
I'm still reading Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, but if I'm being honest, I haven't done much reading this week. A Modern Marriage is definitely the best thing I read this week. The second best thing was Vera's story on how her marriage ended. The writing was so great and the story so scandalous. I would steal a little bit of it and write it as fiction, but Nollywood did that 500 times already. This on why talking too much is bad (yikes for me who needs to learn how to speak and hold conversations more — promises not to go overboard). Sarah Manyika, a writer and editor I stan hard, wrote this about Pastor Evans who was at the forefront of fighting against the oppression in Zim. You know what this CNF reminded me of? How we can be lucky sometimes. The bacteria inside the author's daughter doesn't kill her or even cause her to be admitted in a hospital, but it almost kills her daughter's friend.
Every time I remember that my aunty died in December, which is literally every second, I wonder when my grief will end. But this beautiful essay in the New Yorker tells us we're never really done with grief. Be sure to read it and this Zikoko story.
Till the next Thoughts Day!
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