Budding writers will soar in Nigeria – Ify Tony-Monye

Bookshelf: How did you start writing? Ify Tony-Monye: I read a lot, and, thanks to my mother, this reading culture was nurtured at a very early stage. She had a huge trunk filled with books and magazines of all sorts – Peter & Jane series, Famous Five, Secret Seven, Pacesetters, Barbara Cartland, and a host […]

Bookshelf: How did you start writing?
Ify Tony-Monye: I read a lot, and, thanks to my mother, this reading culture was nurtured at a very early stage. She had a huge trunk filled with books and magazines of all sorts – Peter & Jane series, Famous Five, Secret Seven, Pacesetters, Barbara Cartland, and a host of others. I started writing short stories as a hobby since early childhood, though only members of my family ever got to read them. With age and maturity, I eventually delved into more serious writing.

Bookshelf: Did you have any formal training in creative writing?
Tony-Monye: None whatsoever.

Bookshelf: Under what genre would you classify your work?
Tony-Monye: ‘What Goes Around’ is a work of fiction and I would classify it as romantic-tragedy. I chose this amongst others because life’s not always about happily ever after. There is a mean and painful side to it and that needs to be explored and exposed.

Bookshelf: At what point did you decide you were going to write ‘What Goes Around’?   
Tony-Monye: The idea to write the novel took deep root a few years ago. But I didn’t just pick up my pen and start writing continuously. I encountered writers block severally – sometimes for many months on end, and whenever that happened, I’d pack up and wait for the light bulb to come on in my head again, however long it took for that to happen.

Bookshelf: How did you go about developing your characters?
Tony-Monye: I had to decide what I wanted to write about, how I wanted the story to start and end, who the major players would be, and then set the ball in motion. Many minor characters were necessary, however, as the story developed, to lend credibility and reality to the tale. I needed strong characters and weaker ones to complete the picture, just the way it is in real life.

Bookshelf: The title gives an impression of payback. What inspired it?
Tony-Monye: I got inspiration for the title from life’s daily foibles. Many people think they can do just about anything to their fellow human beings and go scot-free. There are consequences for every action we take. The nature and timing of these consequences is the million dollar question, but they’ll surely come to pass. There’s no escaping it.

Bookshelf: Did you map out the story before embarking on the project? How did the pieces all come together?
Tony-Monye: To be candid, I never wanted the arrangement of the plot for ‘What Goes Around’ to be linear. Nothing spoils a book like predictability. I wanted to create suspense and intrigue from start to finish, and, by His special grace, I think I achieved that. I had a ‘skeleton’ of the book, you know, exactly what I wanted each chapter to be about. As the story progressed, I found myself moving, say, chapter six to become chapter 10, and then bringing chapter 10 to the four. That was the most interesting part of the writing for me, and I must confess that I’m quite pleased with the way the pieces all came together.

Bookshelf: Four hundred and fifty-nine pages is quite something, particularly for a debut. How long did it take to write the book?
Tony-Monye: Yes, 459 pages is quite a lot for a debut novel, but you see, I particularly like reading big books and the more voluminous a novel is, the better for me. As such, I wrote the kind of book I like reading. As for how long it took to put the book together, I’d say about six months for the first draft, after which came the reading, re-reading, tweaking, discarding sections, spell-checking and so on. Getting it perfect and almost error-free took a lot longer than it did to write the first draft.

Bookshelf: You painted a typical picture of what may be described as a mother in-law versus daughter in-law tussle for supremacy. Why did you choose such a theme?
Tony-Monye: It’s not really a tussle for supremacy between the two individuals, but rather the lack of respect for boundaries that exist in interpersonal relationships, and knowing where to draw the line. I tried to bring the unchecked excesses of an overbearing mother to the limelight, a challenge, if truth be told, faced by many women in the African society.

Bookshelf: Chizo and Difu are an example of couples who suffer extended family interference. What do you hope to achieve through this work?
Tony-Monye: Someone asked me if I intentionally chose to write a didactic book, and the answer was yes. By letting people into the lives of Chizo and Difu, I hope to show many couples facing the same challenges that they are not alone. I have great optimism that lessons will be learned and things done differently should some find themselves in that same situation.

Bookshelf: Writers in Nigeria are hardly a self-sufficient class, and then there’s the cliché that Nigerians don’t read. How do you view the prospects of upcoming writers, yourself inclusive?
Tony-Monye: I will not sing the same song of doom and gloom that has been going on for a long time about our reading culture. Is it easy for an upcoming writer to get a publisher to read and accept to publish their manuscript? No. Should that difficulty deter a budding writer from putting pen to paper, or fingers to the keyboard? Again, no it shouldn’t, because a good product sells itself. Hundreds of copies of ‘What Goes Around’ have been sold just within a short space of three months in the market, and it is still selling. I have a positive attitude towards the prospects for budding writers in Nigeria.

Bookshelf: Assuming you are to stay indoors for a week. What five books will you stay in with?
Tony-Monye: They would be ‘Cain and Abel’ by Jeffrey Archer; ‘Digital Fortress’ by Dan Brown; ‘Kaleidoscope’ by Danielle Steel; ‘The Last Juror’ by John Grisham and ‘Half of A Yellow Sun’ by Chimamanda Adichie.

Bookshelf: What do you do aside writing?
Tony-Monye: I work in the health sector helping people living with HIV/AIDS access medicare to improve the quality of their lives.

Bookshelf: What are you working on at the moment?
Tony-Monye: I’m working on the skeleton for my next novel.