Steemit found me : a tale of fortune

Dear Steemians

I signed up a while ago but never quite came around to doing a proper introduction. But during the course of the one month plus I have been on the platform, I have come across amazing content both created and curated, by equally amazing people.

My Background

My name is Uche Osita James and I got to know about Steemit from Facebook. But I wasn’t convinced until @gunneresq gave me a plethora of reasons to. He assured me that the platform was not fraudulent but that it requires a lot of hard work and complete dedication. I have come to learn firsthand what this means, and now believe him completely.

I am from the South Eastern Part of Nigeria, from Enugu state precisely where the roads run across hills and the sun sets in between.

Source

I was born into a family of eight and happen to be the sixth child. I am 21 this year and a law graduate from the University of Nigeria. I am of average height but possess very tall goals.

My Career

I am a law graduate going to law school this year. But honestly, law can be boring sometimes.

So, most times when I am not studying, or reading a good book, or having a good argument, I write.

It helps me clarify my thoughts, and quite frankly it is thrilling to see my imagined characters come to life and interact with each other.

I think I have digressed. What was I saying again? Yes, yes, my career. I recently concluded an internship this summer with two prestigious law firms in Lagos; Ikeyi & Arifayan and G.Elias& Co. It was one hell of a learning experience and I hope to work in either of those places some day. I hope you don’t mind that I don’t want to bore you with the details of that experience.

Anyway, I have become more useful to myself and the society through the inspiration of some of the partners and the associates I met at those firms; I in consequence now do pro bono research work on legal issues for interested persons. So, you can connect with me on Linkedin @UcheOsita.

My Writing

When I was younger, I was always lonely. I had seven sisters and was unable to adapt completely to all their habits. While they gossiped and did what they were prone to do, I sat silent in the balcony and read. There I first I discovered the powerful descriptions of Ernest Hemmingway, the strong expressions of William Faulkner, the dandy writings of Virginia Wolf, the firm truthfulness of Leo Tolstoy, the vague philosophies of T.S Elliot, and even the “proverbial” prowess of Chinua Achebe.

But then, my first trial at writing failed utterly. It was a hastened effort, fueled by the desire to replicate J.K Rowling (one of my heroes). I only also knew that it failed because my sisters praised it so much, I found their tone suspect. If a work was good, it is good. No other emphasis was needed, except critical reviews and perhaps literary appraisal. My other attempts spanned across my years in college. Here is one that I got reposted by Writersnetwork on Mirakee.

I started with fiction, and then I delved into poetry for a while. When I found out that poetry was not really working, I decided to focus on fiction. Though from time to time, a stubborn part of me would push me to try poetry again, here is one of the results of such a trial.

At first all I wanted to do was write, then for people to read my works – at all. But then, I soon started to nurse the notion so being published. I sent out a couple of works to many literary magazines, and then the journey truly began.
The first mail came in a week later, it read;

Dear Uche,
We received you work but are sorry that we cannot proceed with your work “Shades of red” at this time. We wish you luck finding a home for it elsewhere.

We look forward to reading your work again in the future.

Kind Regards,
Martha (This name is fictional, such emails are usually confidential).

I was broken.

But after the fifth, the sixth, the seventh and even the tenth rejection email, I was getting used to the feeling of not been good enough, of never ever having my writing valued by others.

At some point, I stopped writing entirely.
I read mostly, and diverted my attention more to African Literature. I also joined a literary club. It was there I truly understood that the first duty of every true writer was to the story, and never the audience. I understood that getting rejected doesn’t mean that a person was not good enough but only that an editor with often very particular tastes, found the story unfitting.

I started writing again and got some of my works published. Here is a link to my first short story published in an international online literary magazine Everything Happens For Good (You can also visit my page from time to time to read my flash fiction stories).

Leadership Positions

Currently I am the founder of the Okike Prize for literature. A literary prize targeted at rewarding literary excellence in the three genres of literature to student writers, across all Universities in Nigeria. We have successfully completed our first edition of the prize; we received over 500 submissions from more than 5o different Universities in Nigeria. For more details of the prize, kindly check out our website [Okike prize] (https://okikeprize.wordpress.com) . We are working towards rewarding new African voices, and giving people a platform for their stories to be heard and shared. We are however a non-profit organization and will in the future engage in crowd funding on this platform, to aid our cause.

I was the president of the Nwokike Literary Club. After many years of dedication I was elected president of the club. And under my administration, I facilitated the publication of the Fifth Literary Journal and organized the first send forth ceremony in the history of the club.

I was also the Editor – in –chief of our faculty magazine and a member of the Editorial board of [Lionspot] (http://www.lionspot.com) for many years.

Friends

I have been greatly supported on this platform by posts that helped me change my perspectives, and equally instill - the habit of patience and hardwork. I thank @oguchukwu for his many insightful posts, @gunneresq and @yvon for making me a believer and @buterdaniel for bugging me till I decided to write this post. I also thank @tojukkaka for his equally insightful posts.

Special thanks to @ned and Dan larimer for creating this platform that has given millions of people a platform for their stories to he heard and rewarded.

Expectations

I have many goals, probably too many to exhaust in a single post. But one of them is to learn, grow and improve as much as I can, while also contributing to the ultimate development of this wonderful platform.

I Thank you all for taking the time to read my introduction. It is an honor to steem along side you guys.

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