FAUX WRITERS

So the time has come when I have to tread carefully because I could very well fall within this category, that of the faux writer.
Faux writers are those meandering people who are always writing a book. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been writing a book for a few years now (10 at last count), but the difference between a person who genuinely wants to write a book and a faux writer is like the difference between a cat and a Jaguar. One is domesticated and lazy who uses writing as a excuse for not doing anything useful with their life and the other is a hustler who will eat you in heartbeat.
Faux writers use writing as an excuse for getting out of bed at all hours, because they are ‘thinking’ and then spend the rest of time postulating on how ‘life is unfair to creative sorts’. Duh! We all know that, that is why all real writers get a job until they can afford to live the life of Danielle Steel luxury or at least Chimamanda Adichie.
Even the most creative of writers in order not to be another excuse of a human person freelances as a writer for many productions in this here Nigeria. They hustle to make a living writing for magazines and more importantly, they actually turn out pieces of work that could be considered…………. Well written!

Spotting a Faux Writer

• The faux writer is most likely the person you will find in any pseudo intellectual gathering, they are the ones whose noisy utterances about justification of artistry and creative writing bores everybody else to death, because they don’t have a creative bone in their body, they are just spouting the drivel they read on the internet.
• The faux writer is the person that tries to oppress you with Shakespeare, quoting random lines from Romeo and Juliet (you so know that they got this from the movies and not the original, but the Baz Luhrmann edition), but when you ask them about the concept of a black general in Othello and the racial undertones that exists they are stumped. When you ask them what they know about A Winter’s Tale they show you their gormless side.
• Faux writers believe that if the book was not written in the last twenty years it is not worth acknowledgment.
• They venerate Chinua Achebe but have not read Things Fall Apart other than when they were forced to ingest it as students.
• They know Wole Soyinka brought the fraternity called the Pirates to University of Ibadan but do not know that this was not as a cult, but as a fraternity of brotherhood which has since been bastardised by small minded, slightly evil and also jobless people.
• They think Chimamanda Adichie is the last word in modern writing. Girl is good, but she is not the only well received modern writer from Nigeria much less Africa.

Avoiding Faux Writers

The faux writers are easy enough to spot and because they are not as plentiful as the other fauxs you can almost always find them grouped together lamenting the narrow mindedness of a society that does not appreciate their genius (boo freaking hoo).
To avoid them follow these simple steps.
• Do not go to any wannabe intellectual gathering, that is their home. This is the only place where dumber people than them hold them in esteem. This is not to say avoid poetry readings, libraries or bookstores just make sure they are not ones that make themselves out to be holier than thou!
• If you start a conversation with somebody that moves to writing and the person tell you they are taking a creative writing course because it ‘truly conveys the meaning of artistry to me’, cut them off, or else you are bound to listen to some balderdash about’ a hundred ways to write I am hungry’!
• When you have someone whose whole life is listed in the following way on Facebook ‘ a creative spirit who seeks intellectual enlightenment and creative expression through my writing’! BIG BIG faux writer.
• If despite all the above you are still unable to spot the faux writer and you are stuck, there is only one thing for it, bring out the big guns and ask this rather simple but complicated question ‘who is Paulo Coelho?’. I know it’s a simple question but sometimes as they say the simplest question is the most difficult.
• By the way Paulo Coelho is a fantastic Portuguese writer, who wrote the Alchemist.