By Amaka Abayomi & Tare Youdeowei,

Following the review of her book, Everything Good will Come, by students from nine secondary schools, where they highlighted; stand up for what you believe in, have faith, women’s right to education, bravery, equity, karma among others, as what they learnt of from the book, the author, Sefi Atta, advised students to become something in life before they write, in other to garner experiences to write about.

The winner of the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize For Literature in Africa, gave the advice during an interactive session with students at Total’s 2nd Book Reading Event, where students from Eric Moore Secondary School, Aguda Community Secondary School, Caleb International College, Holy Child College, Rainbow College, Command Day Secondary School, Ikeja and Canterbury International High School were gathered with the aim of encouraging them to cultivate the habit of reading.

Entertaining questions from students, Seffi Atta who was an accountant for 10 years before she began to write at 33 said; “If you don’t go to school, you don’t get a job, you don’t live conventional lives, you can’t be a writer, what would you write about? I say this because being a lawyer, accountant, doctor, etc brings you in contact with everyday people. If you become a writer, they are the people you will write about. I don’t hang around many writers, I find regular people a lot more interesting to talk to.”

On her inspiration to write, Atta said; “It is about history for me. As much as history is taught in schools, I don’t think our recent history is taught in schools. Imagine what is taught are the empires, rather than what happened in the early 60s and 70s. What is important for me is to record the time that I remember.

“I am chronicler of my time, it is always about going back in time, recording those things I am scared people might forget. People of my generation became anything but writers, and for me it was terrifying that my entire generation could die out and there would be no one to record what actually happened.

“Hopefully, by reading the book you can go back to those years way before you were born and have some ideas about what it was like to live in Lagos at that time.”

On dealing with writer’s block, the 52 year old writer said; “I don’t have writer’s block when writing fiction. People do, I always feel there must be a reason for it, maybe fear. It has got nothing to do with writing, it goes deeper than that. The only time I suffer from writer’s block is when I have to write an essay or when I have to write about myself. I can’t write about myself because I don’t want to hurt anybody I know. The only way I know how to write is honestly and if I do that, I will hurt someone.”

Stating that feminism does not mean hating men, Sefi declared; “I am a feminist; it means I am pro women. This doesn’t mean I hate men or don’t want men to progress, it just means I take a special interest in women’s and girls’ rights. People often confuse the word with man-hating and that’s not really what it is about.”

“I am pro men as well. I am not a feminist writer because I don’t allow any ideology to interfere with my story telling. For instance, even though I do believe in God, I have written about characters that don’t. I have written about characters who are sexist, it doesn’t really matter; I have to respect them as characters not whatever it is that guides me.”