Zaynab Alkali Quotes

I believe in the English saying that ‘No one ever kicks a dead dog’. I must be doing something worth talking about. Criticism, negative, or positive serves as a platform for my intellectual growth. In time, the ‘Mazauni gonin rawa’ will come to realize that strength and weakness have nothing to do with gender, they are personality traits. Society simply assigned weakness for women, perhaps based on physic.

In the mid-eighties, I was “discovered” by Prof. Stuart Brown, a Briton, and an English lecturer at the Bayero University, Kano. He had come across an excerpt of a story I was attempting to write. He was highly impressed by what he had read and quickly assured me that I was a writer in the making. Not only did he encourage me to write, he exposed my work to the international literary scene, and made it possible for the first edition of “The Stillborn” to be published by Longman Harlow U.K.

My library is next door to my home office for easy access, and it is arranged in an order of priority.

She knew education is the master key to opportunities for a better life. Education opens doors and gives an individual option in life.

Ideas come from a lot of sources, experiences of friends, colleagues, neighbors, self and even strangers. However, my greatest source of gathering ideas is from listening to people talk about themselves, or about others, especially at public gatherings, weddings, naming ceremonies, funerals and the market place. A lot of ideas are also gathered at home among family members. The secret is to be a good listener, not talker.

Writing in Nigeria is not a job at all, because a job pays. Writing at home does not. I certainly cannot remember the last time I heard from my publishers. Between the publishers and the book pirates a creative writer in Nigeria will have to have a better reason for writing. For me, writing is therapeutic. I find emotional and psychological healings in it. The act of writing has always been my life-line.

The time-factor. I often wish there are more hours in a day. When a writer is holding, rather tightly, to a demanding job, such as teaching, raising a family and fulfilling certain social obligations, writing can easily take a backbench.

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien was the book I read last. The book reflects a world moving toward a certain direction, powered by both good and evil. It is a story of an entire universe in serious conflict and impending danger. The story says, this is also your world and you are not alone in it. It is just that we may not be conscious of the presence of the “others.”

Simple question, but difficult answer. At the age of eight, I literally held a hoe in my hands. Two plots of land were carved out for me from my mother’s land, one for okra, the other for groundnuts. I helped my mother pay my school fees. Many people would find this hard to believe. I am still holding a hoe, (in a sense). Hard work runs through my blood. It does not kill, but laziness does. If I were to write about myself I would have hundreds of titles, maybe a title for every page.

I teach, interact with students on daily basis, and supervise their theses. I create time for family members. I do not set a daily writing goal. It does not work for me that way. I realized also that I needed to be sober to write convincingly. I cannot write when I am excessively happy. Some days are simply blank. Often I would write when travelling, or at night when sleep escapes.

My inability to express myself well in spoken words. Perhaps this too may have been part of my training, not to be outspoken. I find spoken words unreliable, because once the words are out in the open, it is impossible to retrieve and edit them. I, therefore, discovered early in life, that writing is my best medium of self expression and a valuable tool of communication. This started with letter writing and graduated into fiction writing. In my days, letter writing was a beautiful form of communication. Courtship was elegantly done by the exchange of letters.

The hope that somewhere, somehow, someone may have benefitted from my ideas makes me feel I have made my little contribution to humanity. In addition to that, the national and international recognition is simply great.

Writing in Nigeria is not a job, because it never pays.

When I read a book, I look out for the message the author is trying to pass across to the reader. Does the work contain wisdom? Have I learnt anything from it? I also look out for entertainment. Have I been sufficiently entertained? I believe strongly that apart from imparting knowledge to the reader, a writer should entertain the reader, because reading should be a joyous experience.

I do not have a special time, or place for reading or writing. Whenever and wherever I feel the urge to write, I write, using my small note book to capture passing ideas from within me, and scenes from the outside.