urbanwasanii

As a writer, I cut my teeth on the internet a space where as far as writing goes, the dabbler meets the hobbyist and the MFA backed craftsmanship meets raw talent. The internet: a veritable patch pourri of style and form; a babel of trained and untrained voices; a cacophony of the phony know-it-alls outshouting of the too-smart-for-TV pundits; the only place in the wide world where genius shares both a podium and accolades with mediocrity.

The internet allowed those of us who had read a painfully low number of books; who knew not enough of anything to be branded experts, to earn plaudits, brag-rights and grow global audiences just by spewing the odd platitude here and there within a string of, mostly wrongly ordered, prepositions, conjunctions, subjects, verbs and objects.

As the profile rose for most of us, our inchoate rants begun to catch the hawk-eyed editorial eyes of the mainstream media and publishing houses, and we were torn between falling into and being consumed by their embrace or maintaining our creative licences and forging our still shoddy version of online reportage and narrative forms into a distinct genre.

Of course as with the best things in life, it was not an all-or-nothing situation. There was a place, no doubt, for the traditional forms of writing and that we were being invited into that space meant that its gate-keepers knew we could make it there too. We just had to make a few adjustments to the lazy way we wrote: shift points of view, create a semblance of objectivity when that was called upon and at times work within an editorial philosophy not because we subscribed to it but because we had bills to pay. Some of us took it, others refused to. They that refused insisted that they had to pander to a higher art form, that they couldn’t sell-out to big media and its editorial shenanigans. I do not know if they know something I do not know, but I knowing what side my bread was buttered and having thrown my lot with the gods of capital can only wish that life treats them well.

It was never all-or-nothing, I said, right? We had an opportunity to write in a structured way and get published while doing all our experimental work online and drawing divergent audiences for both. Also the internet as a frontier in publishing had been thrown wide open and therefore those of us who could be convinced to author online columns, publish fiction and creative non-fiction- written in the traditional styles for online literary journals- found ourselves cast in the same pages, albeit digital, with our favourite authors of all time. But when I went to my bar in the village, still no one listened to me because they still didn’t know who I wrote for… because all the writers they knew were those who wrote for the dailies. Trouble with the internet: no one will ever happen on your story while unwrapping their nyama choma. It is no small wonder then that when I wear my I AM FAMOUS ONLINE t-shirt, only those people who know me can read the cockiness. And with all the vacuity of my online scribbles, I am just a Paris Hilton without the sex video.

But everyday, everyday I try to find new spaces, spaces such as this blog- on the internet to throw my random rants into and in my small way sneak my way into the global conversation.