Writer, the Engineer

Attention Kenyan creative writers// We need to talk:

If you ever went on strike, would anyone ever notice? What is your worth? Perspective: Today the writers' guild in the US just averted a writer's strike. In 2007 creative writers in the US went on strike for 100 days. It cost the industry $200 billion in losses. The studios probably thought they could bring in other lean & hungry writers to replace the professionals. After all, the industry always has struggling artists willing to intern for free. But you can't have an intern pilot a commercial flight.

Serious creative writing is complex and demanding and time-consuming. Anything short of that will produce a shabby and mediocre industry plagued with silliness and theft of other people's creative material. In Kenya, we need to move away from this mediocrity, one interrupted by very few bursts of genius. Not because we lack genius writers, but that they are underdeveloped. Kenyan creative writers need to understand this:

1. Know how to write on demand (work when the industry demands a product).

2. Master the different structures and genres of storytelling (know your engine models).

3. Research your content as intensely as an engineer runs experiments in their lab. Writers in vibrant industries spend grueling hours in research and consultation in order to write the medical, court or political dramas that keep our adrenaline pumping (enjoy the intense process of discovery).

4. Understand the history and philosophy storytelling so you can reinvent it-- dithyrambic hymns to script, passion plays to Shakespeare, orature to Soyinka... (go to school and learn how quality engines were made).

5. Understand audience psyche by doing productions over and over. Great writers' stories fail many times in pilot runs and stage premieres before the product becomes a hit (test the engine many times over).

PS: Those of you that do the comedy improvs assume it does not need writing (reason they get silly). In fact, the art of improvisation requires the most intense on-demand form of scripting where the writer makes changes on the spot everyday 24-7 during the creative process till opening night, and the actors roll with the punches adapting to every new change. Now you know.

Remember, as creative artists, you are the conscience of the nation. If you put out mediocrity and borrowed art, that's what the world sees of Kenya- a people with a mediocre and borrowed mind.