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149 Uju Asika | Narrative Non-Fiction Author, Blogger and Screenwriter
413 Plays2 years ago
Narrative non-fiction author, blogger, screenwriter and former journalist, Uju Asika joins us this episode to talk about her non-fiction works, why she wanted to focus on writing about her experiences with raising boys and how her friend submitted her first book proposal without her knowing!
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Transcript
Challenges in Writing
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, a spicy question.
00:00:02
Speaker
I love it.
00:00:02
Speaker
Because the writing is sort of everything, right?
00:00:04
Speaker
Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this.
00:00:11
Speaker
So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
Introducing Uju Sika
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:17
Speaker
With me on this episode is author, blogger, screenwriter, creative consultant, former journalist and poet Ujo Sika.
00:00:26
Speaker
Hello, welcome to the podcast.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:28
Speaker
I sound like one of those sort of crazy people who don't know what they're doing in life.
00:00:38
Speaker
I guess that is pretty much me.
00:00:39
Speaker
You've done so many different things.
00:00:41
Speaker
I would say that you're having kind of read up about you a bit online.
00:00:45
Speaker
It does seem like you have always gravitated towards writing and kind of storytelling in various different
Uju's Storytelling Journey
00:00:53
Speaker
mediums.
00:00:53
Speaker
And that has just kind of evolved as you've gone on.
00:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, completely.
00:00:58
Speaker
I mean, I've always wanted to write.
00:01:00
Speaker
I was having a chat with my son who's 17, and so he's doing his A-levels, and he's really struggling with what to do at uni.
00:01:08
Speaker
And then he was saying to me, you know, it's so much easier for you because you already knew what you wanted to do.
00:01:13
Speaker
And I studied English.
00:01:17
Speaker
I wasn't that sure about what I wanted to do at uni, but I did know that I wanted to write, and I knew that from when I was a young child.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:25
Speaker
It's always good to have a vague direction at least where you're headed, especially when you're young.
00:01:31
Speaker
I remember trying to choose something to do at university and just thinking, well, I don't know what I want to do.
00:01:35
Speaker
I'm only 18.
00:01:36
Speaker
Why would I know what I want to do?
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's just, when you think about it, it's wild.
00:01:41
Speaker
It's like, let me make these decisions that are crucial for the rest of my life when I'm a 17-year-old and haven't quite figured out what I'm doing with my next day.
Raising Boys Who Do Better
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:53
Speaker
Well, let's get onto you.
00:01:55
Speaker
And I like to often start these with the kind of the latest publication.
00:02:00
Speaker
And your latest thing is the book, Raising Boys Who Do Better, A Hopeful Guide for a New Generation.
00:02:08
Speaker
I'd love if you could tell us a bit about it.
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:11
Speaker
So this is a work of narrative nonfiction.
00:02:17
Speaker
also kind of a guidebook, but not a very prescriptive guidebook around raising boys in this new world where boys have a lot of expectations and a lot that they need to hold themselves accountable for.
00:02:34
Speaker
So I wrote this book because obviously I've got two sons.
00:02:38
Speaker
They're teenagers now.
00:02:39
Speaker
I've also got a stepson in his 20s.
00:02:43
Speaker
And yeah, I've been asking myself for quite a while, like, have I done enough as a mother to raise the kind of boys who will become the kind of men that I would want them to be?
00:02:55
Speaker
And yeah, so hopefully it's a useful guide for parents, educators, caregivers, anyone who's interested in the future of masculinity.
Self-Discovery Through Writing
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:05
Speaker
Having, you know, raised boys of your own, does writing something like this down, kind of getting a bit academic with it, does it kind of make you think, oh, I did that.
00:03:16
Speaker
And it's like, not something you consciously thought about.
00:03:18
Speaker
You were like, oh, I did that.
00:03:18
Speaker
And that's actually a good thing.
00:03:19
Speaker
Or it's like, oh, maybe I should have done that.
00:03:21
Speaker
But I wasn't, I didn't know at the time.
00:03:24
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:03:25
Speaker
I mean, it was like, I think writing the book, first of all, it's quite a personal book.
00:03:30
Speaker
So I used a lot of my experiences and
00:03:34
Speaker
stories of my sons.
00:03:35
Speaker
I tried not to make it too personal or too sensitive around them.
00:03:40
Speaker
But yeah, there's a lot of self-examination.
00:03:43
Speaker
And I think that's a really crucial element of this whole thing is that we all need to really look at the way we've been raised, the ideas that we've kind of held for, well, for centuries around what it is to be a man, what it is to be a boy,
00:04:01
Speaker
how boys are supposed to achieve, behave, you know, dominate, control, all of these kind of weird narratives.
00:04:08
Speaker
So it was really interesting for me to kind of look at how I brought up my boys.
00:04:12
Speaker
And yeah, there were some moments I thought, yeah, excellent.
00:04:16
Speaker
High five, would you?
00:04:18
Speaker
There are other things I'm like, uh-oh.
00:04:21
Speaker
I should have gone a little bit differently then.
00:04:25
Speaker
So yeah, it's an interesting one for sure.
00:04:28
Speaker
Yeah, a bit of a journey of self-discovery for you in many ways as well.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, 100%.
00:04:34
Speaker
And it's not, I wouldn't have said it's like a literal sequel, but you previously have a book called Bringing Up Race.
00:04:44
Speaker
Is this sort of a continuation on that?
00:04:46
Speaker
Is that also narrative nonfiction?
00:04:49
Speaker
It is, yes.
00:04:50
Speaker
And yeah, exactly.
00:04:51
Speaker
It's not a sequel, but it's definitely a continuation of something I'm really passionate about, which is changing the story for the next generation.
From Nonfiction to Fiction Writing
00:05:02
Speaker
So all of these, like I mentioned before, these sort of external and internal narratives we have around huge ideas and huge concepts such as race or masculinity, thinking about how we can do things a little bit differently and hopefully a lot better.
00:05:23
Speaker
But yeah, again, and with a lot of grace as well for that journey.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:30
Speaker
So this podcast, this podcast a lot of the time is weighted towards fiction and fiction writers.
00:05:37
Speaker
So it's great to have a nonfiction person on.
00:05:39
Speaker
I'm kind of interested to ask, when you kind of, when you signed these deals with the publishers, did you have a literary agent before you signed these deals?
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:05:52
Speaker
So I got an agent before Bringing Up Race.
00:05:56
Speaker
That was my first book.
00:05:57
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:58
Speaker
And yeah, so she's been my agent through, I've got three books now and she's, yeah, she's still my agent.
00:06:04
Speaker
She's fab.
00:06:05
Speaker
And that's Rachel Mills, right?
00:06:07
Speaker
Rachel Mills, yes.
00:06:09
Speaker
So was it through a submission process?
00:06:11
Speaker
Did you submit to a group of agents with this kind of nonfiction pitch or were you approached because of things like your blog and journalism stuff?
00:06:20
Speaker
Yeah, well, actually my sort of journey to publication is quite a quirky one because I had a relative of mine who
00:06:27
Speaker
had said to me, oh, I need to write a book about race and bringing up my boys in this sort of prejudiced world.
00:06:36
Speaker
And I was very, very resistant to that.
00:06:38
Speaker
Like I did not want to write a book about race.
00:06:40
Speaker
I didn't want to write any kind of book around this.
00:06:44
Speaker
So she went ahead and she sent queries to agents sort of as me saying, oh, this is me.
00:06:54
Speaker
I've got this book idea.
00:06:55
Speaker
would you like to see a proposal?
00:06:58
Speaker
And so several agents got back and go, yeah, we'd be interested to see a proposal.
00:07:02
Speaker
And then she told me, you've got these agents who are interested in seeing a proposal.
00:07:07
Speaker
So then I'm like, hmm, do I want to write a proposal?
00:07:11
Speaker
Do I want to write this book?
00:07:12
Speaker
Can I even write a book on something this huge?
00:07:16
Speaker
And it was like a real kind of
00:07:19
Speaker
I had to overcome a lot of blocks to decide to sit down.
00:07:22
Speaker
So then when I sat down to write the proposal, I actually discovered I had a ton of stuff to say.
00:07:27
Speaker
And then my agent, she got back to me literally the next day, offering me representation.
00:07:35
Speaker
And then I actually had a few agents who were interested, who I met.
00:07:41
Speaker
But I think Rachel was the one that I just kind of gelled with immediately.
00:07:45
Speaker
Wow, that's interesting.
00:07:50
Speaker
I think in some people's minds, it's kind of their dream that someone else does all of their submission processes for them.
00:07:56
Speaker
It's a difficult thing to do, but at the same time, it's kind of like,
00:08:00
Speaker
You're treading a thin line there.
NaNoWriMo and Advisory Role
00:08:02
Speaker
Yes, very, very thin.
00:08:04
Speaker
Impersonally than someone else.
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:07
Speaker
Mentioned it a little bit earlier, but you have been writing in various different mediums for a long time prior to this in journalism, obviously with your very successful blog, Babes About Town.
00:08:22
Speaker
Was Bringing Up Race the first sort of full-length book thing that you'd ever kind of tried to do?
00:08:31
Speaker
Oh, no, definitely not.
00:08:32
Speaker
It's not the first one that I've tried to do.
00:08:35
Speaker
I've written, I mean, I wrote like sort of years and years ago, I wrote this, like a novel, which I've never really, I submitted it a couple of places.
00:08:45
Speaker
And actually, because it's a novel set in mostly Nigeria, and I did have a Nigerian publisher that was interested at the time, but then it kind of, you know, we didn't take it any further.
00:08:57
Speaker
And yes, I hadn't written anything for a while.
00:09:00
Speaker
And then in 2018, I did the National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:07
Speaker
I don't know if you know that challenge, but yeah, the sort of writer novel in 30 days challenge.
00:09:12
Speaker
And I won.
00:09:14
Speaker
I did it.
00:09:15
Speaker
I completed it.
00:09:16
Speaker
So I managed to write something like 90,000 words in three weeks.
00:09:20
Speaker
So it was insane.
00:09:22
Speaker
But I always credit that for then being able to write
00:09:27
Speaker
bringing up race, which had nothing to do with the novel.
00:09:30
Speaker
I think by then I had gotten over this sort of hump of, can I write a whole book?
00:09:35
Speaker
Am I capable of, you know, stringing more than 50,000 words together?
00:09:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:43
Speaker
That's really interesting.
00:09:44
Speaker
So you, you actually, and I'm guessing when you say novel, that was fiction.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, fiction.
00:09:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:50
Speaker
So you actually sort of do have aspirations to do fiction, but you have ended up doing nonfiction stuff.
00:09:57
Speaker
Do you want to do fiction at some point in the future?
00:10:00
Speaker
Definitely.
00:10:01
Speaker
Definitely.
00:10:02
Speaker
It's something I do have ideas that I'm playing with.
00:10:04
Speaker
So yeah,
Public Speaking and Mentorship
00:10:06
Speaker
we'll see.
00:10:07
Speaker
Would you want to do it on like similar themes to what the nonfiction is on?
00:10:11
Speaker
Or would it be sort of completely different stuff?
00:10:15
Speaker
It's a mix.
00:10:16
Speaker
There's some ideas that I have that are
00:10:19
Speaker
similarly around, you know, the same kind of issues or some of the same concerns.
00:10:24
Speaker
And then some ideas I have are just completely like speculative and wild.
00:10:30
Speaker
That's good.
00:10:30
Speaker
It's good to have a range.
00:10:35
Speaker
That's good.
00:10:35
Speaker
It's good to have a range.
00:10:36
Speaker
I like to play.
00:10:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:38
Speaker
But of course, we've mentioned, you've got, you've actually got three published books and we've mentioned the Raising Boys Who Do Better and Bringing Up Race.
00:10:45
Speaker
A World for Me and You, which is a children's book.
00:10:50
Speaker
Would you classify that as fiction?
00:10:53
Speaker
Or is it again, a narrative nonfiction kind of thing?
00:10:55
Speaker
It's actually, it's nonfiction, but I don't know.
00:11:00
Speaker
I mean, people with children's books is an interesting one because there's the nonfiction side and that can be like a,
00:11:08
Speaker
instructional or a guidebook or, you know, something like, you know, what is a planet?
00:11:17
Speaker
Whereas, yeah, A World for Me and You is, it is nonfiction, but it does have a kind of fictional element to it in terms of, you know, I'm really getting children to kind of imagine what the world might look like if we didn't have diversity, you know, if we didn't have inclusion.
00:11:38
Speaker
And so, yeah, it's, it's, I guess it sits between fiction and nonfiction.
00:11:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:46
Speaker
It's like a fictional nonfiction.
00:11:49
Speaker
I love it.
00:11:51
Speaker
We just invented a new category.
00:11:54
Speaker
Fictional nonfiction.
00:11:55
Speaker
I'm going to sound, I'm going to sound even madder now.
00:11:58
Speaker
Like, oh, look, a fictional nonfiction writer.
00:12:04
Speaker
Fiction author.
00:12:06
Speaker
You mentioned NaNoWriMo.
00:12:07
Speaker
I wanted to ask because am I right in thinking that you're on the NaNoWriMo advisory board?
00:12:14
Speaker
I am.
00:12:15
Speaker
Yes.
00:12:16
Speaker
I mean, how exciting.
00:12:17
Speaker
What does that mean?
00:12:18
Speaker
What does that entail?
00:12:20
Speaker
Well, it doesn't, you know, but I don't have to like go to board meetings or anything like that.
00:12:24
Speaker
But what it is, is that, so having won NaNoWriMo and then I think I had written for the blog as well after Bringing Up Race came out.
00:12:33
Speaker
And then they approached me and they said, would I like to be kind of like a mentor for, they do something in April.
00:12:41
Speaker
It's like a mini NaNoWriMo called Camp NaNoWriMo.
00:12:46
Speaker
So they asked me to be a counselor in which I would sort of write, basically written, but offer writing advice to all the people who are doing Camp NaNoWriMo.
00:12:58
Speaker
And then I also took part in like a, you know, like a workshop kind of thing, which happened online because we're all still in the pandemic at the time.
00:13:07
Speaker
And yeah, having done that, having been a camp and a RIMO counselor, then they invited me to be on the advisory board.
00:13:13
Speaker
So every now and then I sort of, you know, offer pep talks and that kind of stuff.
00:13:18
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:13:19
Speaker
It's a sort of volunteer that they can call you up if they want like a public speaker or something like that.
00:13:25
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:13:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:27
Speaker
And you do quite a lot of public speaking.
00:13:30
Speaker
I do.
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:31
Speaker
A lot of that has come about after bringing up race.
00:13:35
Speaker
So now I do quite a bit of speaking around, you know, anti-racist parenting, intersectionality, diversity, inclusion, all of that.
00:13:47
Speaker
And I've also done some speaking now around raising boys, obviously.
Writing Process and Genres
00:13:52
Speaker
I saw on your website that you are launching something called Uju Writers Space.
00:13:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:59
Speaker
Is this like you've, you've gotten really into the mentoring and the kind of teachering and the instruction side of things through NaNoWriMo and doing your public speaking.
00:14:08
Speaker
Is that kind of what this has resulted in?
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:11
Speaker
I mean, I've always, um, wanted to, you know, I do, I've always mentored other writers in different ways.
00:14:18
Speaker
You know, I used to back when, um,
00:14:21
Speaker
I lived in the States.
00:14:22
Speaker
I was a mentor with an organization called Girls Right Now, who I also did something with quite recently.
00:14:29
Speaker
They have a Friday night salon and they invite writers to do a kind of workshop and reading.
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, and I've done sort of workshops, creative workshops, like as a blogger, you know, things like how to write a blog.
00:14:46
Speaker
So I wanted to start this.
00:14:48
Speaker
I have a lot of people asking me as well, asking me, how do I write a book?
00:14:55
Speaker
Or why do I begin?
00:14:56
Speaker
Or how do I just write in general?
00:14:58
Speaker
So I thought, okay, I'll create something like a space.
00:15:01
Speaker
And the consultancy make it a little bit more formalized than people just sending me an email saying, can I have 45 minutes of your time?
00:15:09
Speaker
Just a DM, yeah.
00:15:16
Speaker
So what's going to be, it's in progress at the moment.
00:15:20
Speaker
There's like a waiting list you can join through the website.
00:15:23
Speaker
Yes.
00:15:23
Speaker
What's it going to be?
00:15:24
Speaker
What are you going to have on the writing space?
00:15:26
Speaker
So the plan is just to have like a mix of just co-writing.
00:15:31
Speaker
So I quite like this, you know, get together and write, whether it's online or in person.
00:15:37
Speaker
And then I will also run some like workshops, but not like hardcore workshops where we're
00:15:45
Speaker
taking people's work apart bit by bit.
00:15:48
Speaker
They're just kind of like quite gentle, but instructive workshops on a variety of writing because, you know, obviously I've done so many different types of writing.
00:15:59
Speaker
And then also, you know, one-to-one mentoring for people who want to go a little bit deeper.
00:16:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:07
Speaker
That sounds good.
00:16:08
Speaker
It's kind of like building a community, but a sort of not in the way that you're not sort of pushing everyone to be like, you've got to do these things and publish stuff.
00:16:17
Speaker
It's quite a relaxed kind of like, this is just writing and we'll see where it goes.
00:16:20
Speaker
Exactly.
00:16:21
Speaker
Exactly.
Collaborative Screenwriting
00:16:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:23
Speaker
Amazing.
00:16:24
Speaker
Before we get into the kind of final bits of the episode, I'd love to ask about your own writing.
00:16:30
Speaker
You've written fiction, you've written narrative nonfiction, you've written children's.
00:16:35
Speaker
When you start writing a book, where do you start?
00:16:39
Speaker
Are you someone that has everything planned out and mapped out?
00:16:41
Speaker
Or do you just kind of sit down and start writing something and kind of go where the words take you?
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think it really depends.
00:16:50
Speaker
Sometimes with the nonfiction books,
00:16:53
Speaker
obviously you have to put together a proposal before you actually start writing.
00:16:59
Speaker
And that's really, really helpful, especially with the topics that I was writing about.
00:17:02
Speaker
I was like, I need to have some, some kind of outline, some kind of direction.
00:17:08
Speaker
Even though obviously you can completely veer off your proposal, but in general, once like, you know, your agent and your publishers have bought into this is what the book is going to look like, then you're pretty much going in that direction.
00:17:20
Speaker
But,
00:17:22
Speaker
Otherwise, let's say for with a poem, sometimes it just arrives fully formed.
00:17:29
Speaker
And sometimes it's just a line or a couple of sentences or a word or something that just sparks an idea.
00:17:39
Speaker
And then it continues to build.
00:17:42
Speaker
And I've had poems that I've gone back to years later and thought, oh, I can actually turn this into a poem now.
00:17:47
Speaker
I knew it was going to be a poem, but it didn't seem to work back then.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah, and then in terms of, I mean, obviously I've done screenwriting as well.
00:17:55
Speaker
So with screenwriting, again, you know, I was writing for TV shows.
00:18:00
Speaker
And again, you have to sit down, you have to workshop, you have to map out the outline of what the story is going to look like.
00:18:08
Speaker
You know, so there's a lot of plotting involved.
00:18:11
Speaker
But I find that even with the plotting, you know, you can give like five different screenwriters the same templates.
Editorial Processes: Publishing vs. Journalism
00:18:19
Speaker
and you're going to get a very, very different looking script depending on who's written it.
00:18:23
Speaker
So there's a lot of leeway that you have.
00:18:27
Speaker
There's a lot of creativity.
00:18:28
Speaker
So I don't really, you know, there's always a sort of debate about, you know, are you a plotter or are you a pantser or whatever?
00:18:36
Speaker
And I think that either way allows for a lot of room, a lot of wiggle room and a lot of space for creativity.
00:18:46
Speaker
Yeah, 100%.
00:18:47
Speaker
And when it comes to screenwriting, I don't know too much about screenwriting, but is it more of a sort of writing by committee kind of thing?
00:18:55
Speaker
There's usually multiple people involved.
00:18:58
Speaker
Yeah, completely.
00:18:59
Speaker
I mean, so again, I've written for TV shows and yeah, it would be like sitting in the writer's room or doing a workshop together or, you know, obviously I was writing for shows that were in Nigeria.
00:19:14
Speaker
So a lot of the time I'm here,
00:19:16
Speaker
So doing stuff online and there's a lot of back and forth and it's very, very collaborative, which I really enjoy.
00:19:23
Speaker
I really enjoy that mix, that mix of like sitting together, plotting out the various storylines and then you go off by yourself and you write your script.
00:19:34
Speaker
And then even after that, there's so much back and forth in the editing process.
00:19:39
Speaker
So yeah, I really enjoyed it.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:42
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:43
Speaker
With that kind of experience, when you come to work with an editor on a book, you must be very kind of relaxed about the kind of critique and editorial part of that, the notes and the back and forth there.
00:19:56
Speaker
Yes.
00:19:56
Speaker
I mean, one thing I will say is that the, I'm always saying the publishing world is just so much nicer and calmer.
00:20:06
Speaker
Like the first notes, she's a good friend of mine now, but the, um,
00:20:11
Speaker
She was head writer on the first show that I wrote for.
00:20:16
Speaker
And the first notes that she would send me on my scripts, I would have to go and lie down in a darkened room and contemplate my life for quite a while before I could get back to it.
00:20:30
Speaker
So whereas with my publishing, you know, there's such kind notes, it's very sort of suggestive, like, oh, maybe you would like to do this, or perhaps, whereas on the screenwriting notes, like, no.
00:20:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:45
Speaker
This won't work.
00:20:46
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:46
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:47
Speaker
I've heard that's similar to journalism.
00:20:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:20:51
Speaker
It's to do with the turnaround time as well.
00:20:53
Speaker
It's the turnaround time.
00:20:54
Speaker
Nobody has time for all of that niceties.
00:20:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:58
Speaker
You just got to get it done.
00:20:59
Speaker
You just got to get it done.
00:21:00
Speaker
You just got to get it out.
00:21:02
Speaker
And I think it's really useful because it made me a lot less precious about my writing.
00:21:08
Speaker
I think because I started, I always say poetry was my first love.
00:21:11
Speaker
And, you know, I used to like write, obviously as a teenager in my journals and write poems and,
00:21:17
Speaker
You know, I was really protective of my work and my poems were like my sacred thing and nobody could touch my work.
00:21:25
Speaker
And then you get into journalism and you're like, oh, okay.
00:21:30
Speaker
I guess you're just going to rip that to shreds.
00:21:32
Speaker
All right, that's fine.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:35
Speaker
That's definitely a trend I've had with the journalists who have also become authors that I've spoken to on this podcast.
00:21:42
Speaker
They're all very thick-skinned because they're like, oh yeah, editorial and publishing is so charming and friendly compared to editorial and journalism.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah, completely.
00:21:51
Speaker
And then I've, you know, I've done editing work myself and I have to hold myself back depending on who
Role of Editors
00:21:57
Speaker
it is.
00:21:57
Speaker
Like if it's someone who has worked in journalism or screenwriting, then it's fine.
00:22:02
Speaker
But if they haven't, they're just like, what have you done?
00:22:06
Speaker
You have to be very careful.
00:22:08
Speaker
I guess it's a really unsung skill of editors within the kind of publishing that they, the kind of reading the people and knowing how far or how kind of gentle they have to be with the kind of way they phrase stuff because you want to get the best out of the author.
00:22:25
Speaker
So that's, I guess it's a really, it's a really important skill to have.
00:22:28
Speaker
It's very important and not everyone has it, but I'm really grateful for the, I'm really grateful for the editors that I've worked with that have that skill.
Desert Island Book: 'Beloved'
00:22:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:38
Speaker
Well, that brings us onto the, uh, what is always the final question, uh, of, of the episode, uh, which is, Uju, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book would you want it to be?
00:22:53
Speaker
Yeah, such a tough question.
00:22:55
Speaker
I hate this question.
00:22:57
Speaker
I'm like, um, I think I'm going to have to choose Beloved by Toni Morrison.
00:23:04
Speaker
which is a book that I haven't actually read in years, but it's still one of my favorite books.
00:23:10
Speaker
I loved it so much that I wrote my dissertation on it when I studied at uni.
00:23:18
Speaker
And again, it's not even, I'm not even sure it's my favorite book of Toni Morrison's.
00:23:24
Speaker
So that's why I was struggling.
00:23:25
Speaker
I was thinking, what book would I have?
00:23:30
Speaker
But I think that's, I just think that's her masterpiece.
00:23:34
Speaker
Also, I think that it's a book that, you know, when I read it, it not only did it move me so much emotionally, but the way she uses language and, you know, the way she portrays like her characters, it was just mind blowing.
00:23:54
Speaker
And I think that that book will always have the capacity to surprise me and enchant me and,
00:24:02
Speaker
keep me gripped when I'm on that desert island with nobody else.
00:24:07
Speaker
Amazing.
00:24:08
Speaker
I tell you what, in my experience at least, if you have managed to still love and enjoy a book after studying it in an academic way, like you've written a dissertation on this book, then that book must have a real kind of hold over you, like a real special place in your heart.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah, completely.
00:24:28
Speaker
Every book I ever studied, I think I ended up hating.
00:24:32
Speaker
So who knows, who knows.
00:24:35
Speaker
And then there's some books where I read when I was, I was at school with people who in different classes had studied different books or in different years.
00:24:43
Speaker
And I remember knowing that they were studying that book and then having read one of them was The Picture of Dorian Gray.
00:24:49
Speaker
And I only read it when I was in my 20s.
00:24:50
Speaker
And I'm so glad that I didn't study that book because I thought it was amazing.
00:24:55
Speaker
I thought it was brilliant when I read it later on.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:58
Speaker
You're so right, you know, about all the books that, I mean, for me, I think it was Great Expectations, which I reread, you know, having studied it.
00:25:07
Speaker
I studied it at school and I just thought, what is this?
00:25:12
Speaker
What is my life?
00:25:13
Speaker
Why are we having to do this?
00:25:16
Speaker
And then reading it again, I said, oh, this is a good book.
00:25:21
Speaker
Now I get it.
00:25:23
Speaker
I don't know why.
00:25:24
Speaker
Why is it that school just ruins so many books for you?
Closing Remarks
00:25:29
Speaker
I guess it's like the pressure and the way it's done and like hyper analyzing everything.
00:25:34
Speaker
It's like, okay, we read this chapter.
00:25:36
Speaker
Now we have to hyper analyze it.
00:25:37
Speaker
And I'm like, but we're ruining the flow of the story.
00:25:41
Speaker
Now I don't even want to get onto the next chapter because I'm so done with this chapter.
00:25:45
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:25:47
Speaker
It's all of it.
00:25:47
Speaker
It's the whole thing.
00:25:49
Speaker
Anyway, thank you so much, Uju, for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your books and everything you're working on, the writing stuff and the writer's space.
00:26:00
Speaker
It sounds like it's going to be a really cool community that you're going to build there.
00:26:03
Speaker
It's been awesome chatting with you.
00:26:05
Speaker
And you.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yeah, I've really enjoyed it.
00:26:07
Speaker
And for anyone wanting to keep up with what Uju is doing, you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram at babesabouttown.
00:26:14
Speaker
You can find her blog at www.babesabouttown.com or you can follow her writing and author stuff on ujuaseka.com.
00:26:24
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
00:26:28
Speaker
You can support the show on Patreon and for more Bookish Chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:26:33
Speaker
Thanks again to Uju and thanks to everyone listening.
00:26:36
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.
00:26:37
Speaker
you