Chigozie Obioma

How did you become a writer?

I think that I grew up around books, but that wasn’t what made me a writer at first. I became a writer by serendipity. That is, by first listening to stories being told orally by my parents. Then I found that, after a while, by closing my eyes all the time and listening to these stories that the landscape of my imagination had been propped open. I fell in love with storytelling and when, one day, after I had become older I asked that my Dad tell me a story and he gave me a book instead, I became a voracious reader. Once I read that book he gave me, I discovered that the best story he’d told me had been from that book, and thus, I began to long to be a writer—one who writes stories himself. So, it began with a desire to emulate what I was reading and to see those writers of those stories as models. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

I love the works of Amos Tutuola, especially the first African novel in English, The Palm Wine Drinkard. Since Nigeria was once a British child, I had relative easy access to the works of British masters like Shakespeare, Milton, and many others whom I loved. But amongst this gallery of faces, I found extreme delight in Thomas Hardy, William Golding, and Virginia Woolf, whose prose still feels like a miracle. But most of all, I found a stronger affinity with the works of African writers, and these writers had strong impressions on me as a child: Chinua Achebe, for Arrow of God, a harrowing, sweeping novel; Wole Soyinka, for The Trials of Brother Jero; Cyprian Ekwensi, for An African Night’s Entertainment; Camara Laye, for The African Child, and D. O. Fagunwa, for Ògbójú Ọdẹ nínú Igbó Irúnmalẹ̀, which I read in its original Yoruba version. And lastly, I devoured and was fascinated with mythology, the Greek myths. I read Homer’s Odyssey at age fourteen, over the course of three months because the library at my school could not let me take it out. And these days, I admire the works of Arundhati Roy, Kazuo Ishiguro, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, and James Baldwin.

When and where do you write?

I write best after waking up, first thing in the mornings. I usually write in my base-level office at my house. I write by hand, with a yellow lamp or candle light to simulate being alone, locked away somewhere with just me and the paper and pen, thinking of remote locations and the imaginary worlds I’m trying to bring to life.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a novel set in the 1960s Nigeria about brotherhood (similar to my first novel, The Fishermen). Only this time, the characters are separated and they go in search of each other. I’m very excited about the novel.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I think my lack of a satisfying answer to this question might come from my lack of understanding of the question itself. I sometimes have things that take my mind off writing—issues of life mostly, like the birth of a child, moments of sadness or anxiety. But once I’m able to bring myself back to a better place of mind, I often find myself writing well again. So, for me, “writer’s block” isn’t often an issue of not knowing what or how to write, but just being human and unable to write because of pressures of life.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

How to revise. I often trusted in the power of my early vision as realized on the page. But a good teacher of mine, Nicholas Delbanco especially, showed me that I should learn to be patient with my work. Let it breathe. Move away from it and learn how to read it. You have written it as a creator, the originator of the ideas. Now, the trick is to learn how to read it as a dispassionate reader. If you can do that, if you can achieve a fusion of writer and reader in one, and manifest this fusion on the page, I think you will create something truly substantive.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Do other things, make yourself into a full human being first. Write only if you must, if not, train yourself in doing something else. But if you must write, then read well first. Again, this is if you must write. In writing, don’t fall into groupthink. Don’t—never—submit to fads. Don’t let what is in vogue decide what or how you write. Don’t write towards an agenda or to “change” the world: that is propaganda and political punditry, not the stuff of fiction. Finally, write what is honest to you, and even if it may feel as if it isn’t shiny at first, it will endure. Believe me.