When Nana Elikem, a Facebook acquaintance I greatly admire for his writing dexterity sought to inquire from other writers the effort they put in finding suitable titles for their literary works, I immediately followed it, wanting to be notified whenever someone commented, just to find out what the others thought. I was particularly drawn to the post because finding suitable titles for my works always pose great challenges for me every week when I write. See, I always broadcast my articles first via Whatsapp without the titles every Sunday or Monday evening, and I follow it up by sharing on Facebook, signing off with #SundayNightMusing – still without a title. And as if stringing fitting words that aptly convey my thoughts isn’t a challenge, the real one begins when I have to send it for publishing on online news portals. I sometimes end up sending the article to them on the ensuing Tuesday because I usually have to subject myself to some rigorous mental torture, if you like. I even sometimes have to solicit titles from recipients of My Musings who also dabble in the art (like I did for this one). Quite recently, “Broken Hair-ted” was a title I got from a very good friend when I wrote about my ‘baldness’ – this, and many others.
When I reminisced last week how school prefects were chosen back in my elementary school whiles on the Volta River, I received interesting comments on social media – particularly Whatsapp which were generally very positive, especially when I concluded by saying that there were no ‘lessons’ in that piece, rather encouraging readers to send me whatever lessons they found in there. Then the ‘rigorous mental torture’ began. I typed as title, the first thing that came to mind when I opened the document to read again for inspiration for the umpteenth time – My Musing: The Wonder Of The Volta Lake. I decided to go with that because the Volta River (not Lake, as I was later schooled) triggered the recollection of those memories. “Had I not been lost in its wonder, and subsequently brought back to reality by the chatterbox party to the conversation which was going on a few meters away from me, how could I have written about it?, I mentally argued , hence the title.
The first few e-mails I received made me realize I had done a poor job with the title, albeit producing a ‘great content’. The lowest point last Monday was when some readers sent mails that subtly suggested I had engaged in ‘literary fraud’ – successfully ‘deceiving’ them into reading my article with a title that suggested I was going to talk about nature, only to completely digress at the second paragraph and write about “elementary school elections”. Not even the very uplifting comments from other writers on social media who read the post (without the title) could raise that point a notch higher. I replied each one of those e-mails apologizing to my readers for the ‘deceit’ – albeit unintentional.
And the trolling ace investigative journalist and my senior in the art, Manasseh Azure had to endure last week when he was ‘NanaKwamed’ fed into the lessons I drew from my experience earlier in the week. Now, I gathered from credible social media commentators that one of the first people to comment on his post was Mr. Yoofi Grant, the CEO of Ghana Investment Promotion Council, drawing his attention to the alleged inaccuracy in his post which took the African leaders for attending the summit in a European country to the cleaners. Readers will recall it was his attempt at replying Facebook Idol Nana Kwame with another WAEC Essay (as another ‘troller’ called it) that irked even more people. Would the former’s social media account have gone on an ‘automatic blocking’ spree if he had ignored the latter? I do not know for a fact, but the lashim) would certainly have died down about two days after and would have gone back to talking about how President Mugabe needs to resign. And wait oo…did you also realize his response also migrated the discussion from the conference of African CEOs held in Geneva to one where he (Manasseh) amongst other things ‘boasted’ of his charity works? Is that one too a response???[Steups!]
Dear reader, the point was reiterated to me through my own experience described above and that of Manasseh that we are mortals and fallible – we can’t always get it right – we are not Jollof! Our actions and inactions in moments when we falter go a long way in building bridges or walls in the future. Let us apologize for them, let us learn from them, let us re-strategize and let us come back with a back – in whatever field we play.
And as the week has already started, let us continue to enjoy the fruitfulness it promises and may God richly bless you.
More Vim…Let’s Go…
The writer is a chartered accountant and a freelance writer. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Click here to read other articles he’s authored.
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