Ifeoma Okoye is a veteran writer who has won seven literary awards. She has written short stories, children’s books and novels. She began her journey as a published fiction writer with the publication of her teenage novel ‘The Village Boy’. Her latest book, ‘Go for Gold With Your Writing’ is her first nonfiction work. Bookshelf had a chat with her.
Bookshelf: Your latest book titled ‘Go for Gold with Your Writing’, published in 2017 is different from anything you have ever written. What was it like working on the book and how would you say it has been received?
Ifeoma Okoye: ‘Go for Gold With Your Writing’ is my major non-fiction work. It took me about three long years to write. I spent ages looking for authentic sentences to illustrate important points about sentence construction. By authentic sentences I mean sentences from books, newspapers, magazines, journals, manuals, reports, and so on. These example sentences, as I call them, will serve the readers of the book as models.
The book is doing well. Many people see the need for ‘Go for Gold With Your Writing’, especially at this time that the standard of writing in Nigeria is falling.
Bookshelf: Approach to literary writing has changed, especially with the coming of the internet age. How do you view this change and how has this influenced writing ‘Go for Gold with Your Writing’, if at all?
Okoye: Many things, including the internet, have both advantages and disadvantages, and one disadvantage of an aspect of the internet is that it reduces the number of hours we spend these days reading books. Most of our undergraduates spend more time making calls, texting, browsing and chatting than they do reading books, and reading well-written books, according to research, helps people improve their communication skills.
I decided to write ‘Go for Gold With Your Writing’ because of the poor writing skills of a high percentage of our undergraduates. Most of the undergraduates I taught writing not long ago had very little or no knowledge at all of the fundamentals of sentence construction. Sentences are very important in writing because most of the things we write, essays, reports, reviews, articles, academic papers and letters, consist of sentences. First, we choose what to say, and next we choose how to say it, and how to say it involves writing sentences. The style of our sentences contributes to the quality of our writing because well-written sentences help in raising the overall quality of our writing.
Bookshelf: Creating gripping sentences in any literary work goes a long way in strengthening it and your book shows, step-by-step, how to construct basic sentences. What approach did you use in doing this?
Okoye: My book shows anyone interested in improving their writing how to write what I call gold-winning sentences. These are well-constructed sentences that contribute immensely to raising the quality of writing. They are error-free, clear, concise and varied. The book uses what is known as the sentence combining approach to help its readers write gold winning sentences. Sentence combining is the technique of combining two or more short sentences to form one sentence, usually a longer and more complex one.
First, I introduce the reader to what we call a basic sentence, that is, a sentence that has only the parts it must have for it to pass as a sentence. Basic sentences are the building blocks of writing, the backbone of any English sentence and the foundation of the longer and more complicated sentences we use in our writing. Next, I show the reader the techniques of adding more information to the basic sentence using modification, subordination, coordination and so on. The end is a mature and effective sentence, the type we find in the works of experienced and mature writers.
Bookshelf: How many books have you written so far?
Okoye: I have written four adult novels, a collection of nine short stories on widowhood, three adult short stories published in different anthologies, two young adult novels, and eight children’s books. Most of these, including ‘Behind the Clouds’, ‘Men Without Ears’, ‘Village Boy’, ‘Only Bread for Eze’ and ‘Waiting for a Son’, a short story, have won prizes. Some of my works have been translated into different languages, including French, Russian, Spanish, Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Swahili, Ndebele, and Shona.
Bookshelf: How did you start writing, generally?
Okoye: I started writing as a teenager when I was made the editor of our college magazine and I had to write something to encourage other students to do the same. I began my journey as a published fiction writer with the publication of my teenage novel ‘Village Boy’ by Macmillan Nigeria. The book won the publishers’ Winner’s Prize. This was followed by the publication of my three story books for young children, ‘Only Bread for Eze’, ‘No School for Eze’, and ‘No Supper for Eze’ by Fourth Dimension Publishers. ‘Only Bread for Eze’ won a prize at the Ife International Book Fair shortly after it was published.
Two years later, my story books for young children, ‘Eme Goes to School’ and ‘The Adventures of Tulu the Monkey’ were published by Flora Nwapa’s publishing company, Tana Press. My adult and young adult’s novels followed later.
Bookshelf: In 2013, you released a novel ‘The Fourth World’, which dwells on poverty. Some Critics have argued that Nigerian writers sometimes use poverty porn to gain international appeal. What’s your opinion about that and why did you choose to write such a story?
Okoye: ‘Anger towards human suffering is not only appropriate; it’s the catalyst for change,’ writes Bob Gass in ‘The Word for Today’, 19 April, 2013. I write about the deprived people, people who are victims of greed, injustice, corruption, exploitation, discrimination, and bad government, in order to make the world aware of them and in order to solicit for some sort of help for them.
As Professor Emenyonu, an eminent Professor of Literature, rightly points out in his Foreword to ‘The Fourth World’, ‘The novel is set in Enugu…but Enugu is only a microcosm of the universal world of the poor found everywhere on earth. It is the world of voiceless humanity, the ignored and despised found in rich and poor countries, in the free world as in autocratic regimes, under democratic and in authoritarian governments’. These words from the eminent Professor of Literature show that poverty is found everywhere in the world. It is a world problem and should be dealt with by all the countries of the world.
Bookshelf: You have written books for both children and adults. How do you view the development of children’s literature in Nigeria? Do you think it’s receiving the attention it deserves?
Okoye: Not many books for young children are being published in Nigeria these days, unfortunately. It was not always like this. I remember the days when publishers like Macmillan used book prizes to encourage writers to write books for children. I remember vividly and with nostalgia the Pacesetter prizes and the Winners Prizes. My teenage novel, ‘Village Boy’, won one of their literary prizes. I also remember how Nigeria used the National Festival of Arts and Culture outfit to encourage writers to write for children. As I said in a paper I presented at a conference some years ago, the love of reading should be inculcated in children at an early age, for it is unlikely that people who did not read books when they were children would suddenly become avid readers as adults. To encourage children to read, we must provide them with good children’s books and we must make the books affordable for them.
Bookshelf: Which of your books would you say challenged you the most while working on it?
Okoye: I found ‘Go for Gold With Your Writing’, my first non-fiction, the most challenging work. It took me three long years to write. I decided from the outset that in presenting, illustrating and discussing the points I make in the book about sentence construction I would use what I call authentic sentences instead of sentences made up by me. By authentic sentences I mean sentences taken from published materials: books, newspapers, journals, academic papers, reviews, and so on. Finding the appropriate authentic sentences to use was the most stressful and time-consuming thing about writing the book. I had to read a lot of material in the process.
Bookshelf: What do you do when you are not writing?
Okoye: I fill my days with activities. I like to keep myself busy. I play the keyboard. I work in my vegetable and flower gardens. I do Sudoku and crosswords. I go for a walk and I visit people. I read a lot.
