Aiwanose Odafen
In Conversation
This week we spoke to Aiwanose Odafen about life as a published author, where she finds inspiration and her systematic writing process.
Interviewed by Zulaikhah Agoro.
ZA: When did this whole writing thing start? When was the seed planted? What was the special thing about writing that captured you at that stage?
AO: It all started during my MBA. I made a friend in the same apartment complex who was going through a very difficult and abusive marriage that I couldn’t get her to leave. At about the same time, a family member was also going through a similar situation. It really angered me just how many women were in similar positions and just how pressured they felt by society to remain in these situations to maintain the status quo.
It might sound rather strange to say, but writing gave me peace. I felt so much clarity while writing that I knew I couldn’t stop. It was something I needed to do for my sanity, an outlet of sorts.
ZA: It sounds like your writing is directly informed by real-life experience because in 2022, you released your first novel ‘Tomorrow I Become A Woman’, a story centered around a woman trapped in an abusive marriage. As a debut author, what was the journey to publication?
AO: The journey was crazy and surreal. When I started writing, I had no idea how the industry worked, I just knew I had a story I wanted to tell, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to pursue publication initially. It took me about two and a half years to finish the first draft, and well over a year after that to edit it into something decent. I always talk about how I Googled “How to Get Published” when my draft was done because it’s true.
ZA: Haha, Google always has the answer. Sticking with Tomorrow I Become A Woman, how did the solid reception of that first book influence your writing process for Book #2, We Were Girls Once? What did its success mean to you?
AO: I started working on We Were Girls Once before Tomorrow I Become A Woman was released. I love reading author interviews and I’d read so much about how difficult it is to write the next book from other authors, so I started working on this while we were running through edits for the first. I want to say, I’m really grateful for the reception and just how much word-of-mouth has helped put it out there, but the writers were right - publishing completely changes how you look at your writing. I edited We Were Girls Once through most of last year and the end of 2022, and I had to actively put Tomorrow I Become A Woman out of my mind. Some days I miss the naivete and clarity of thought I had before publication.
ZA: That journey really came full-circle because you are now one of the authors giving interviews! I’d like to talk about We Were Girls Once, not just as a sequel but in the broader context of its own narrative. Why did you choose to explore this particular path? What inspired you to write this story?
AO: As I was writing the draft for Tomorrow I Become A Woman in 2017, I knew I wanted to tell the stories of Uju, Ada and Chinelo’s daughters as I got to know the characters, but had no idea exactly what the story would be. I would scribble down ideas and interesting conversations over the years. Then at the end of 2020, it became much clearer what I wanted to say. I was eager to explore trauma and its different offshoots, how it manifests under multivariate circumstances, but most importantly, I wanted to explore the lottery of birth. I already had a good idea of Ego as a character from the first book, but Zina was the wild card, and the clarity on Eriife’s character came after the October 2020 events in Nigeria.
ZA: In a recent review published by Isele Magazine, We Were Girls Once is said to “... demand a conversation about how we collectively have been hurt and the ways in which we hurt others.” They point to one of the things I genuinely appreciate about this book which is how cyclical trauma and healing are explored. Why was it important for you to highlight that in the story?
AO: Thank you, that’s very kind! The characters in Tomorrow I Become A Woman were loosely based on real people, and I’d seen the trauma of their parents’ choices and circumstances affect them significantly. I remember watching a mental health documentary some years back, and someone on it said we all walk around with some form of trauma or the other. How we deal with our trauma and how we let it play through our lives largely depends on us. I knew I had to write about this through the lens of three completely different women, to let the reader feel and question their own trauma and how they’ve dealt with it. It’s why we see Zina and her sisters who are in pretty much the same circumstances choose different paths. Most never pursue healing and it’s just passed down continuously until someone says it’s enough. It’s crazy, but it’s life.
ZA: It’s like they say, the water that boils the egg also cooks the potato, I hope I’m saying that analogy right. The point is the same experience can do different things to different people. Moving on to the technical side of the work, can you talk us through your writing process? What does it look like in a practical sense, and how do you balance it with your daily life?
AO: I’m an obsessive writer. When an idea comes to mind, I have to first write it down and draw a map. So I tend to have notes scattered (now just notes app or google docs) with a list of ideas as they come for the project. I also fill the notes with lots of links to pictures that inspire the project or general research; I can spend weeks or months researching alone. Once I feel I have a good grasp of the story I want to tell, I go through the list and start to craft an outline. My outlines are very detailed, some longer than 40 pages.
How it works is, first, I have a skeleton, then I begin to fill it in chapter by chapter, and sometimes even scene by scene. This is to confirm to myself that I do want to tell the story and that I know what I’m writing about to a decent extent, then I open a blank Google Doc and start writing. I write chronologically, if I get an idea for a later chapter, I add it to my outline because most likely, by the time I get to that part of the novel, the story or character might have changed so much that that the idea might be inconsequential to the course of the story.
I admire people that can write scattered chunks, it would literally do my head in.
ZA: This is the first time I have actually heard a heavy plotter describe their process. I am in awe of you. Next question, what does the future look like for Aiwanose the author? What are you working on now, if you can talk about it?
AO: I’m currently working on a project that’s completely different from my last two and so it’s been a bit of a challenge. It’s dystopian fiction but was inspired by some experiences I had with religious extremism when I was younger, particularly during my undergrad years. I’ve always wanted to write about it, and now I have the chance.
I can’t say much more than that but it’s an exciting challenge, having been working on it for a few months now. I don’t want to limit myself as a writer, I hope to explore and to push my writing beyond its comfort zone and I think this is the right project to do that. I have so many more stories I want to tell, I hope I get the chance to tell them.
ZA: We can’t wait to read all those stories. Finally, if you could give one piece of advice to aspiring authors, what would it be?
AO: I would say keep at it. It sounds like rather mundane advice, but I can tell you that the only way to improve as a writer is to write. My first draft left much to be desired and I’m not even ashamed to say so, yours probably will be too. Only way is to keep going.
Also, never let anyone tell you that you’re too ambitious or it’s impossible. Trust me when I say, anything is possible.
Aiwanose Odafen spent a better part of her life wanting to become an economist, an accountant, then an entrepreneur before she discovered her love for writing. She has contributed to published non-fiction works and participated in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus Trust Writing Workshop. She was longlisted for the 2020 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize and holds a postgraduate degree from the University of Oxford. When she's not writing, she's cheering for Manchester United or watching dramas. Her debut novel Tomorrow I Become a Woman was published in 2022.
You can read an excerpt of her new novel, We Were Girls Once here.
