Dumebi Ezar Ehigiator is a writer, teacher, librarian and she is currently pursuing a doctorate degree at the centre for Educational Media Resource studies, University of Ibadan. She is the author of The Spider's Web, the inventive and unconventionally rendered tale of a handful of Nigerian women who suffer physical and emotional abuse from men and the society in general.
In an interview with Ms. Ehigiator discussed writing, self-publishing domestic violence, feminism, African literature among other things.
An early love for books and African literature
As a child I grew up with books. I love the Famous Five, Nancy Drew, Secret Seven; in fact I’m a great fan of Enid Blyton. I also love books written by the late Professor Chinua Achebe, especially Things Fall Apart.
I grew up on classic Nigerian children’s books like Chike and the River, Eze Goes to School, An African Night Entertainment, The Drummer Boy, Sugar Girl, and so on. I don’t have to tell you that when I reread Sugar Girl, the pleasure was not recoverable. What I did like was the idea of a little girl going on a crazy adventure all on her own, and of course, with her dog. That’s a rather uncommon scenario in African children’s stories. But then why does the bad person have to be an old woman, accused and ostracized for being a witch? Seems to me an unfortunate but pretty typical representation of women outcasts in many of the stories I heard and read as a child: the image of the childless and widowed old witch living in a haunted hut in some corner of a forest.
I also remember reading One week One Trouble, The Marriage of Anansewa, Bottled Leopard, The Lion and The Jewel and the Concubine too.
As an adult, I love books by Wole Soyinka, Flora Nwapa, Ngozi Adichie, Chinua Achebe, Jeffrey Archer, Danille Steele, Sidney Sheldon, Dan Brown, Stephen King, and Jackie Collins.
Pursuing writing as a career
The purpose of writing, for me, has always been to have a career. I want to connect with readers, to share what I hope are books of escape and hope, and to grow into a more seasoned and skilled author, so I can better serve my readers.
Passionate about women, feminism and eradicating domestic violence.
First of all ‘Abuse’ (domestic violence) is the overriding theme of my novel 'The Spider's Web', both self-directed and the physical and emotional abuse from others.
To grasp the full reality of domestic abuse it must be approached, like a piece of sculpture, from multiple vantage points. No set of bare statistics, let alone the flat sound bites our society has come to call news, can capture its complexity: "Woman Knifed by Estranged Husband." "Lovers' Spat Ends Tragically." "Ex-Boyfriend Shoots Mom, Kids." We shudder, then quickly turn our attention elsewhere. As we avert our eyes, we assure ourselves that these dreadful events have no relevance to our lives.
However, while ignoring the average Nigerian woman who goes through all of this, i hope the many voices in this book will convince you that these stories belong to all of us.
On Her book The Spider's Web
I told the story of several women in the book. Some were victims of domestic violence, escaped from their abusers, reclaimed their dignity, reconstructed their life, and rediscovered peace. Domestic violence doesn’t just happen "out there" somewhere. It happens in our town, in our neighborhood, on our street. It happens to women we see at work, the supermarket, the cinema, the church and even to girls in schools. Every woman who has left an abusive man—every woman who has yet to leave—will find encouragement and hope in the voices of these women who broke free.
The Spider’s Web is a beautiful story that you will not want to miss.
Why her book cover is different
I definitely wanted to have input into the cover’s design, and my publisher facilitated and encouraged this input. I know the cover is not only a billboard for the book, but, in a sense, the first page of the story, because it is here that the book can communicate a little of the style and mood of the tale inside, so I didn’t joke with it.
I wanted my book cover to ‘speak’ and my publisher was very helpful. I related what I saw in my mind’s eye and she interpreted to the designers. We spent weeks trawling through images and designs sent it until we finally got the model that totally fit the bill: a woman (representing other women) caught in a web (of abuse). Perfect.
Why self-publishing is better.
Many authors who were in traditional publishing and are now in self-publishing talk about how painful it was to have no control over their own material. To have a cover or title they hated be imposed on them, or forced to make editorial choices they didn’t agree with. As an indie, you can work with freelancers of your choice, and you can choose the ultimate look and feel of your product. This can be a pro or a con depending on how the book ends up, but as an indie, you can also change it – decide to re-title, re-cover, and re-publish your books. Beware, though, this is not the solution to fix editorial problems or shoddy releases!
Indie (self) publishing is not the only solution, but if you don’t get that big break because the mainstream publishers are only publishing a select number of books, and yours doesn’t happen to be what they’re looking for, then submitting your work to a small press, or publishing your books yourself, may be your best option. In fact, for some authors, even if a mainstream publisher is interested, indie publishing may still be the route you prefer to take.
Hardest thing about writing?
For me the hardest thing is writing the beginning of the book. There’s just so much to juggle in the beginning of the book: I need to write something awesome enough to hook your attention, something that introduces the characters in a memorable and characteristic way, something that sets the tone, sets the stage, and sets up the conflict–all while trying to find my own feet within the unique tone and voice of the story. It often takes me until the end of the first quarter of the story to really get my feet under me. My family and friends know by now that I’m extra grumpy during that part of the process!
The next hardest thing about writing a book is to have utmost patience to sit each day and reproduce novel creativity.
How to get through the dreaded writer’s block?
I think the first step in dealing with writer's block involves looking at that "block" and understanding precisely what it is. Often it's fear of failure — the desire to write something terrific, and the corresponding knowledge that the words on the page will be, at least initially, mediocre. There are different species of writer's block. Most of the time, it hits because I'm writing more than I'm reading, that's the simplest to solve—take three days off and read a book, or work that's inspiring—that reminds me why I wanted to be a writer in the first place. If I don’t want to read, I start cooking, and sometimes during the process random thoughts fill my head and suddenly, a good idea appears like a slap on my face.
Fantastic advice for aspiring writers
You just have to believe in your work and keep writing. The success is simply a by-product of any passionate and hard work you do. Writers often have frail writer-egos. I have one. If you’re a writer, you probably have one. We write stuff that we think is good and then we submit it and pray that someone writes back and says, “YOU ARE THE BEST WRITER OF ALL TIME EVER,” but of course they write back and say, “Sorry, not for us” (or, more likely, they don’t write back at all). When that happens, it can feel like anyone who’s ever said that your writing was good was lying and you should just quit.
Here’s the thing: You sent in something that wasn’t right for their publication. That doesn’t mean you aren’t good, but it does mean you need to learn more. It means that you have to figure out how to make your writing fit. It means you have to stop writing the kind of stuff you always write that always gets rejected. Try a different approach. Keep trying something different until someone, somewhere, says, “OK!”, and then when they do keep doing that thing. It doesn’t mean you will have to abandon everything you like about your writing, but it does mean that the way you personally like to write the most may not be the way that will pay the bills. If you want to pay the bills, you will need to be okay with this.
Then, getting something published kind of feels like winning the lottery. You finally did it, and now you can ride off into the sunset with your frail writer-ego and live happily ever after. Except you can’t. You still have to write. You’re still going to have people tell you your submission isn’t for them, you’re still going to have to learn more about how to become a better, more publishable writer, and you’re still going to feel like you’re a failure who should just quit already.
Keep going. Keep going until you get something else published, and then keep going and write something else, and keep doing that until you are old and gray.
That said, I ‘m quite happy with how the book turned out, and I hope people will find it a beautiful read. The process wasn’t too strenuous and I had fun writing! As a bonus, it was a great experience to get my knowledge onto paper (real, physical paper!) and learn about the process of writing and publishing a book.
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