met the world famous myne whitman, blogger and author, at the GCLF this week. she moderated two panel discussions, one on the impact of social media on the publishing industry, and a "meet the author" session with acclaimed writers helon habila, zainab jallo and adaobi tricia nwaubani.
throughout the festival, myne showed herself to be a smart, savvy and outspoken writer/blogger. i admired the tenacity with which she utilized the web to market her self-published work, a heart to mend. she read books, articles, and blogs on social media, and grew her audience of subscribers from 1 to 400.
a handful of folks have asked why i don't publicize this blog more than i do. i certainly have read tons about how to do that, but i suppose a part of me has never fully embraced the online sphere, will always see it as a somewhat fickle enterprise. but if it were a dollars and cents matter, ie, publicizing my blog was equivalent to selling books, i'm sure i could muster the motivation.
at any rate, bought a copy of her book and can't wait to dig in. naija bloggers unite! --AL.
i write under a pen name because it frees me to be a little more honest than i would be if i were writing under my real name. i am never really so worried about what so-and-so might think about me writing such-and-such because, in a sense, it isn't my real self writing, but someone else. i can just say what i think and not have to deal with any personal consequences.
in actuality, i am far more reserved in reality than i am on this blog. but in using a pen name, i can assume a persona closer to the person i aspire to be. it's at once emboldening and freeing and i recommend everybody use a fake name at least once in your life (when i order takeout, they know me as maya or celeste or zara -- none of which is my real name ;).
now, specifically why i write under 'alligator legs' is because it is (was?) the title of the novel i'm working on. it also was a nickname i had as a kid with a case of childhood eczema that was the itchiest, scaliest thing you've ever seen.
not only does using this name now allow me to reclaim those memories, but also to claim myself as a writer/artist rewriting and recreating herself. i think when the novel comes out, and my films etc, i will also use a pen name. my real name and all it signifies just seems too outdated for this new self i am fashioning.
(shout out to abagond, whom i just discovered online today, for inspiring this blog post! for more info on my novel, visit: Why Alligator Legs?)
in actuality, i am far more reserved in reality than i am on this blog. but in using a pen name, i can assume a persona closer to the person i aspire to be. it's at once emboldening and freeing and i recommend everybody use a fake name at least once in your life (when i order takeout, they know me as maya or celeste or zara -- none of which is my real name ;).
now, specifically why i write under 'alligator legs' is because it is (was?) the title of the novel i'm working on. it also was a nickname i had as a kid with a case of childhood eczema that was the itchiest, scaliest thing you've ever seen.
not only does using this name now allow me to reclaim those memories, but also to claim myself as a writer/artist rewriting and recreating herself. i think when the novel comes out, and my films etc, i will also use a pen name. my real name and all it signifies just seems too outdated for this new self i am fashioning.
(shout out to abagond, whom i just discovered online today, for inspiring this blog post! for more info on my novel, visit: Why Alligator Legs?)
Pleased as punch that my (virtual) friend AlooFaa finally decided to grace us with a post. And it's hilarious! Man. If I went back to the kind of blogging I used to do, about relationships and such, I would have y'all rolling on the floor. But I'll leave the dirty work to someone else. --AL.
my fellow naija writer/director esosa edosomwan has a great blog, raw girl in a toxic world, about her lifestyle as a raw foodist. i am not fully raw, but i've been walking my vegetarian-aspiring-to-rawness path for almost 15 years now, culminating with about a full year or so eating a 65% raw food diet. i have since fallen way off the raw food bandwagon, though i am trying to get back on it. it's not as hard to do in nyc as you might think with all the farmer's markets around the city, a healthy dose of elbow grease to cut up all those veggies and a rabid love of sushi. the thing i miss most about it, apart from my figure back then, is how wonderful my body felt when i was eating clean-burning fuel. though naija food can be some of the most delicious in the world, it can also be extremely fattening. my mom all but cut palm oil out of the kitchen when we were growing up and i think i took it a lot further than that. i will definitely still have the occasional akara, puff puff and the like, but i will not touch certain things.
it's really rare to find another raw naija, which is not the real reason esosa and i became friends, but it's a nice perk. she's got a film coming out, brooklyn shakara, starring gbenga akinnagbe (from The Wire), who is also now incidentally a brooklyn resident. (and if you poke around on vimeo you can watch esosa's going home and see a little cameo of me doing a floor stretch.)
