Jennifer Ochieng'

Here is to us writers and poets, we are the lovers, the players, the dreamers. We are the starving artists that the world cannot do without. Sometimes, we are the losers but still we write because we believe in the value of words. We believe in the Heart, Depth and Soul of humanity. Sometimes it is a lost cause but we believe anyway, and so we scribble. And when we run out of ink, we get a new pen. When we run out of words, we create new ones and sneak them up on our readers, or the Oxford English Dictionary like William Shakespeare (who coined words like frugal and phrases like cold comfort). I’ve been told that I parenthesize a lot but it is a flaw I have accepted, I think you should too.

I scribble in the street when a thought hits me, on a bus while going to work, when sitting on a park bench, when having lunch with friends, when stuck in traffic. I carry my notebook around like the world depends on it, scribbling words that wouldn’t make sense to anyone at first glance. There are the disjointed lines in page one, another stream of thoughts in the mid-pages, some more random ones in the last pages. Sometimes these thoughts begin from the end because there are times you think about the ending of a story or just the middle part of it and then you start to craft the story to get to the beginning. Sure, sometimes the thoughts don’t make sense to you either. But you give it time to develop, you go around in circles, back and forth, back and forth like a pendulum (yeah, it’s like the world is spinning, like you are going crazy) until you find the unity in your thoughts. Chaotic mind, simplified thoughts, and that, ladies and gentlemen is the burden of every writer.

Join me on my WordPress blog Heart, Depth and Soul. You won't be disappointed, I promise!!!