Sly Edaghese

The Black President Sly Edaghese

After I wrote my fourth novel two years ago, I toldmyself I was hanging the pen. The reason was that Ithought I had written all that I needed to write, as faras book-writing was concerned, and then face otherthings. Besides that, and I don't know if this is thesame with other writers, I find no joy in writing. Writing, to me, is a tedious exercise; it tasks my brainand wearies my flesh. Whether this has to do with the fact that the Englishlanguage is not, as they say, my mother tongue, Idon't know; but I wish to say here that it takes memuch time and effort to come up with a good andflawless sentence. It's not unusual for me to spend awhole day trying to fix or rephrase a sentence Iconsider defective. And it's equally not unusual, too, for me to wake up from sleep in the middle of thenight or to switch off my car in the middle of the roadto put down a useful idea or a story line or a goodsentence that flashes across my mind. All this, to abusy man like me, I must confess, is weariness of theflesh. However, the consolation I have is that whenever anyof my books gets eventually published, it enjoys widereadership, especially among the youths who, invariably, are my target audience