WHERE IS MY INKPOT?

By Dode Sescri

WORDS TO ELATE

Third Agenda

Copyright © 2016 DODE®

No part of this book should be redistributed without prior permission from the author, both in print, portable digital format and online.

Disclaimer

All readers are welcome to challenge the contents of this book, and should process them with their uttermost intellectual capabilities before they can assess them for reference purposes because they are largely a work of the author’s own Personal Opinions.

Some stories given as examples in this book do not represent Factual or historical events but have been used fictitiously to bring out the literal aspects of discussions and also demonstrate the author’s intended thoughts and ideas exemplarily. Do not take them too seriously.

This book is stacked up with numerous mini chapters the author refers to as inscriptions. Each inscription stands for each idea or topic of discussion.

You will also find some non-English words, the author has used them only for the sake of enhancing description. They are not a result of typo.

Table of Contents

Contention.

Inscription-1-The Power of the pen.

Inscription-2-goodwill girl.

Inscription-3-The expressionist.

Inscription-4-Red ink on paper.

Inscription-5-blurred beginnings

Inscription-6-predictor

Inscription-7-Paper boy.

Inscription-8-Critics driveway.

Inscription-9-hungry shelves.

Inscription-10-bookworms never quit.

Inscription-11-Building the plot gametes.

Inscription-12-Doctor Quill The master of all Scribes.

Inscription-13-thriller tried.

Inscription-14-nothing new.

Inscription-15-stuck in the middle.

Inscription-16-end of character.

Inscription-17-the true value of texts.

Inscription-18-A twist to the story

Inscription-19-minimising distraction.

Inscription-20-calling the biographer

Inscription-21-Poetry the best way of expression

Inscription-22-One more paragraph.

Inscription-23-The plague of plagiarism.

Inscription-24-The sad story of slavery.

Inscription-25-ink lies.

Inscription-26-Talking to grownups.

Inscription-27-memory boosters.

Inscription-28-The Evolution of Communication

Inscription-29-The Evolution of Story Telling

Inscription-30-Literary Categories Worth Considering

Final Clause

Footnotes.

Contention.

What is the meaning of creative writing? a creative writer doesn't have to worry about what to put onto paper and what not to from the beginning, right from the start you don't have to worry about anything, just pour onto paper whatever comes to the mind, all thoughts and feelings, then later on when the document is full & overflowing with tons of information, then you can consider cutting off the unwanted parts & sections you feel are irrelevant for the kind of information you are delivering in the narrative.

Inscription-1-The Power of the pen.

In the pen is where my strength lies, I can't do anything else, I can't dig, I can't run, I can't drive a truck etc. it is where all my strength lies. The most wonderful experience about writing is that you get to talk to people you have never met, and probably never will.

An author who has mastered the pen can write basically about anything known to man, of great things that happened, greater things that are happening now and the greatest things that are yet to come. For as long as they have seen a glimpse of the future and have dug deep into history.

That’s the good thing about being a writer, even people who have no shining face to brag of can scribble up an interesting story for others to enjoy. The great miracle of publishing is that books can take you places you have never been. And interact with people you have never met.

Words behind bars.

I asked Jeremy a former freedom fighter and human rights activist about his writing experience, he was locked up after being accused of inciting violent campaigns by the sitting government officials of his country, "you were able to release three titles in a row, how did you manage to do that? Especially behind bars?"

In his reply he said, "boy, when I am in my quiet cell, I can travel a thousand miles away, its good thing that they have restricted my movement so that my manuscripts can reach out to hundreds of thousands out there, you know what Mike, when I am trapped between these four walls, it's like I can reach the four corners of the earth with this pen of mine, there is nothing powerful like it."

I know of many other guys who wrote countless articles and published numerous books while still behind bars, should I find myself locked up one day, I too shall continue to write there, even while lying on a hospital bed, I shall scribble down a few things when left alone.

All those years Jeremy has spent locked away from the society, all his hours spent in a small dark room with very little you can do with the body except with the mind, but because the mind and the body never walk together, his thoughts travelled many miles to meet readers in the outside world, he speaks to them just the way he would do to a friend next door.

When I am on the corridor, the mind is in the books, and when in the study room, it's in the rest bench, if you want to be very emotionally closer to the reader you probably have to position yourself in a place far away from their present residency. The farther apart the authors and the readers, the closer the relationship between them is likely to be, and the stronger the emotional bond between them becomes.

“With the stroke of my pen I shall conquer nations while am still right here behind bars,” he said enthusiastically.

Inscription-2-goodwill girl.

Once a young lady decided to go on a journey to see her favourite author, she had been reading his books for many years and now she decided it's time to meet him. She boarded a train to port Klein's, a small-town downhill, on arrival she went to the station’s waiting room where she had expected to meet him.

As she walked along the corridor, an elderly man crept towards her from her left side. "Hello young lady" he says, "are you the one I've been expecting?" "Where is Sir Charles Supamatt?" she asks, “oh! He's standing right next to you in fact he's the one speaking to you right now,’’ says the old man, with a broad smile on his face. Mr Supamatt is toothless, he has got only one tooth located in the front part of his lower jaw, despite this he continually smiled happily, this shocks the girl so much that she draws herself back in astonishment with her hands covering her mouth, more shockingly the old man laughs out loudly producing sharp piercing sounds similar to those made by bats in the cold of the night, she couldn't shake the hand he extended to her. "sorry sir for overreacting this way, I just remembered there's something I've forgotten on the train, let me go check it out, I will be back in a minute," with that excuse she eludes the old man and quickly ran off, boarded the train and went back home.

"I didn’t know Sire Supamatt had only one tooth," she sobs with her hands on her cheeks and elbows propped to her lap, "I didn’t know, I thought he was a handsome young man," at that moment I almost screamed myself to shame, in front of a very potent author.’’ For days and weeks on she could recall the events of that memorable meeting.

‘’For that clear reason, now I could never allow a reader to see me especially if it is a lady,’’ says Mr Supamatt unto himself, ‘’even if they insist, I will tell her…I am sorry madam, I know you like my novels, but I will not let you look at me, I was milking my cows one day when I accidentally pinched it a bit too hard, it hit my jaws with one of its hooves and knocked out all my teeth, now I have got no teeth, how are we going to be able to laugh together at the café if I have got no teeth?" I was walking my race horse down the valley one afternoon when a hawk appeared out of nowhere and scratched one of my eyes out, how are you going to be able to look at me when I have got a part of my face covered with a patch like that of a pirate?

I am sorry madam I would not let you look at me, if I let you, your screams of shock from disbelief will send me into hiding, I will not risk the shame of it.

You should know that there is nothing physically attractive about me that you would desire,” said the equally stunned author, “but contrary to that, you know that I like all my readers very much, if there is something you wanted to say, please tell me now, before I leave.”

Oh! did you really love my books? Why are you acting this way, or maybe you were just faking all those gestures, all those kind words you said to me were all faked.

Inscription-3-The expressionist.

The best place people can express themselves fully without any external hindrances is through pen and paper, its where you can pour in your thoughts, feelings, fears, desires, beliefs, all that comes to the mind. It is only through writing that I can pour in my anger, resentment, excitement, doubts and so on.

If thoughts and ideas could be wrapped into boxes and then sent to others like parcels and gifts, then we would understand one another much better, but because of the fact that we need to carefully convert them into words for conveyance purposes makes them loose their complete meaning, because words are very difficult to find. Things are hard to describe, it would have been better if we could put them in people's heads directly.

Wordbook or picture book

In a picture book words are so diminished they have little to no meaning, pictures however speak for themselves. So, in a picture book there is no need to use lots of words because the pictures are doing a lot of talking already, but in a wordbook, there is also no need to use pictures because all your description work is already done by the texts.

I try to use a few words to say many things. There are others who use many words but say the same thing as I have done. Remember we have no visual aid to help in our description words are our only weapon at hand. Ye can become a wordsmith if ye desire and wish it so.

But for the time being, we are at war with words, our only weapon here is words, like a warrior who goes to battle with no body armour or shield to protect their body. No visual aid to assist in description so for that reason, we are not going to use any graphics in this book, so don’t expect to see any fabulous graphical presentations.

Layman’s Language

We have a great desire to make ourselves easy to be understood so that someone who is on Solomon Islands can get you clearly if not relate with your words.

A while ago, Maurice, a friend of mine told me this tale, he had this to say, “once in our final year in compulsory education, a professor who was also a motivational speaker came to talk us into joining his college, he was one of the finest electrical engineers I have ever met. His speech made electrical engineering sound so interesting that after clearing our studies, we all wanted to pursue electrical engineering as a career path, when there are people who make you hate something there are others who make you like it.

Here is the first professor I have met that did not put too much jargon in his speech, he spoke a layman's language, and that’s exactly what we have been searching for, a guy who will teach us fools everything we need to know.’’

“Think like a professor and speak like a clown, so that we the ordinary folk will pay you our full attention,” my old friend Jimmy taught me that.

He is a great professor who speaks the language of the people, after he is done talking, people have nothing to add on, his words are fast paced, and always straight to the point, he never beats about the bush, you never know, which is the next nail he is going to hit on the head. His presentation makes it clear to everyone that there is no big secret to great professionalism, everything he presents to you in its full context, in a way that is clear as day.

Inscription-4-Red ink on paper.

Drowned in a flood of words.

I hear a tale that Some adventurous fellows had been wondering the desert for quite a while, after several days of painful search for water, one sees a small thatched cottage, he rushes to the scene, then luckily he finds a jerry can half full of water hanging on the side of the wall, he helps himself with some drink, his two other companions join him on the wall and they too get to drink, and accidentally spilled some of it onto the ground, they gulped in more water until they could take in no more, it was becoming too much to bear, Velman climbs up to the rooftop where he finds a two feet wide and five feet high open tank with fresh water flowing in from the windmill’s pumps, "well I should cool myself & my burning skin with this pool, a once in a lifetime opportunity," his friends also decided to join him, they both dive into the tank.

When the owner arrived and found the strangers in his tank, he was infuriated and also terrified, some he could not see their faces for they were partly immersed into the water with only their feet visibly dangling in the air, he at once went into the house and came back with a rifle, as he was about to blow up the aliens, they shouted back, screaming for mercy, “please stop, don’t shoot,” they said, “we did not mean to muddy your drinking water, it’s just that we were so thirsty and so dehydrated we could not think properly, we thought the quickest way to cool our burning bodies was to throw ourselves into the tank, please understand, we will pay you whatever damage we have done to you.”

Readers have been roaming the world wide web & local libraries for long hours, now completely tired and thirsty they stumble onto our weblog or bookshelf, our responsibility now is to give them a drink, you shall therefore be obliged to flood them with more and more information, till they ask you to stop as it becomes too much to bear, we give someone a drink only when they are thirsty so we wait until they ask a question. Make every word matter…

When to take the pen

I grab my pen only when I am very emotional, when I feel nothing, I write nothing, I often look out for feelings like joy, sorrow, hopelessness, despair, delight, flashback, things that make your mind wonder away far and wide, now that’s the best time you should take it down on ink and paper.

Before I can pick up a pen to scribble down a few things, I make sure I put some sad music to play in the background for a little while, it draws in the mood I need to focus on my feelings, my deep thoughts, and some of my greatest desires, my most important dreams, the wildest of my imaginations.

The excitement is transmitted from the mind to the body, then to the hands and the pen, it then finally drops down onto the page with the ink. if an author doesn’t enjoy writing his/her work then neither will the reader enjoy reading that piece of work.

If you feel detached from your work while writing your book, then readers are going to feel detached from your story while reading that same book, if you are deeply absorbed into the themes while scribbling it down, readers are likewise going to get absorbed in your subject. It’s the same energy that is being transferred from one place to another.

Inscription-5-blurred beginnings

At the beginning of your penning expedition, you don’t even know what you are doing or about to say, you find yourself doodling in your notebook, in your diary and on old newspapers

Creative doodles.

It's surprising to see how children creatively doodle on the desk and exam table when the examination is tough, they should put their creativity onto a paper not doodle it out on the desk. Jim is a funny kid, when he's given loose leaf papers by his teacher to write an essay, he turns them aside, his eyes get glazed with boredom, he finds himself scribbling on the table, the giant blank papers seem to scare off the little interest he had in writing. His friend Mark likewise had a paper torn from a shorthand notebook, seemingly the one he is trying to squeeze a four-page worth of content onto.

Strange things happen when you give teenagers blank foolscaps to write their creative compositions on, if you give them one paper, they quickly fill that up and ask for another and another and another, if you hand them two, they fill up nearly all the pages, if you give them three they struggle to fill up one, if you give them five or more foolscaps they barely fill up one, this basically means that the more papers you give them the less of the composition they are going to write, since the blank pages appear somehow discouraging and intimidating to them. It greatly diminishes their creativity, their imaginative spirit quickly fades away.

Break the barrier by getting started.

We got started by raising the steps, then ideas were flowing in like a waterfall. Nothing is straining like having ideas blocked, held behind by a difficulty in finding the right way to start. Your thoughts and ideas are like a large volume of fresh water held back by a dam, it accumulates, stagnates and loses its freshness. It goes nowhere, we broke the barriers as soon as we became aware of our boggy backyard and we got immediate results, the rivers of cool fresh waters flowed once again, the momentum shall return once more. We had to let go of all the boggy stuff.

When choosing topics, titles & subjects of discussion, we chose plants & nurseries which are easy to water, I mean something you can easily fill with content.

It's a wise action to take when a scribe keeps their inkpot and quill close by so that as soon as the birds of paradise begin to nest, they can immediately start putting detailed descriptions of each colour onto a scroll or a piece of paper, ideas come across easily and so quickly evaporate if they are not utilised properly. That’s why I need to pick my pen and paper and start right away, the machine may take too long to respond allowing my exciting thoughts to evaporate away, the lowest kind of experience I could ever wish to find myself in.

Struggling to write a boring article is like trying to light a camp fire using wet matches and twigs, you have to struggle very hard in the first few minutes, you keep striking and striking the few matches you have left hoping it will light, if you give up easily then the possibility of having a cold worthless camping night becomes a reality, but if you continue the struggle a little longer the matchstick may unexpectedly spark, a few dry twigs may catch fire, burn off moist from others, soon you will have an enormous fire, something bigger, brighter and wormer than you had expected, everything else will just bring itself into place, more wood, more pots, will come on their own, all you need to do is to keep striking. Sometimes you have to wait long enough before the flame starts to burn.

Inscription-6-predictor

It's not wise thing for a reader to keep trying to predict what the story is likely to turn out in the end, otherwise they'll lose interest if the story starts to turn out the way they have prophesied the plot to be, such people would never finish a book, its certain that they are not reading for pleasure but rather doing a research of the backstory, studying the author through his/her words and interjections, as if they have been sent to make an enquiry, these are the fellows that buy books for others to read. When they begin a book, let’s say a few chapters into the reading, they begin to lament that the story is boring, if it’s a very interesting story, they'll stop it halfway and return it over to the shelves, ‘’this looks like a fun thing to go through,’’ they say, “I shall come for it later on when I am energetic enough,” they open a research paper in the bid to learn something new only to find themselves arguing with the author, “you should have written better paragraphs,” they say, ‘’your writing is quiet poor I see.’’ Readers should not try to predict the story but should simply enjoy what has been made available to them.

Some readers try to be smart by predicting the possible outcome of a play, and end up losing interest, the scribe never wished you to critic it from the start otherwise you will not enjoy the show. My favourite film genres being history and adventure.

Please don’t take into account how clumsy my writing is, all I desired was for you to simply get the message therein. Try to forget my childish talk.

Inscription-7-Paper boy.

Sometimes back in primary school, (about fourth grade), Madame Lusack gave me a letter to take home to my parents, along the way I happen to meet Jimmy my best friend. Then I made the paper airplane with the letter and played with it around the compound, we went under old buildings, crawled through worn out tyres, climbed trees and did all kinds of crazy kids’ stuff, soon we realised it was getting dark, so we decided to rush home.

Sometime later, she met my mother and I saw them discussing one afternoon. At once I knew it was something serous because their faces indicated plainly that something was not right, few minutes later I was called in and asked to testify before them, to reveal where I had hidden the document. I thought hard trying to imagine what they were trying to say, after a few minutes of hard thinking I finally was able to remember, “Oh! It's that piece of paper you gave me a while ago? It was on the tree, I couldn’t get it out so jimmy and I decided to go home when we couldn't reach it even with the longest stick!'' I exclaimed.

“you see he is lying again,'' interrupted miss Lusack to my mother in a deep stern voice, ‘’this is how they have been lying to me all along, just tell us where you hid it and we shall go and find it. How does a letter get onto a tree in the first place?'' I had no answer. I made several more attempts to explain it correctly to them, ''you see madam, it flew into the tree and got stuck between the leaves…'' when I could not convince them any further, I gave up and hung my head in shame, and said unto myself, if only I knew how important that piece of paper was, if only I knew, then I wouldn't be having this trouble now.

Inscription-8-Critics driveway.

Too much critical thinking in a creative environment slows down progress and brings the engine of imagination to a grinding halt. Critics become more of an editor than a contributor, they start editing their work even before writing begins.

If you were to close your eyes for a moment to become an explorer, like that youngster who ties a piece of clothing across their eyes then walks around blindly, slowly he moves from one location of the house to the other, his other senses are amplified, he touches the walls and follows it along, crawls on the floor following the rough patterns on a carpet, everything he touches, feels, hears, smells, appears strange to him, what does it feel like to explore your house with your eyes closed? The most enjoyable way we made discoveries about our world was through blind explorations.

We became like those silly adventurers who walked aimlessly not knowing where they are going or what they are doing. Like a small baby who utters their first words without thinking, they only get to learn later on after growing up that they had been saying the wrong things.

Whatever boils up in the mind, we must pour it into pages of the book with red ink on paper, just the way it is, because we can always edit it at a later time.

We write now then edit later. There are more editors at the publishing world than there are contributors. We make sure we are the producer not an editor who's waiting for a manuscript.

Inscription-9-hungry shelves.

The book collector

My shelves are always hungry for more books, always thirsty for more words. Your habit of acquiring new books through transfers of ownership is like going through a chronology of projects, once a project is completed, you have no obligation but to venture into another one, and another and another… when the library is filled to capacity with all requirements attained you are then ready to get down to work, you just have to wait for time to stroll past by.

After a while, a new group of titles appears out of nowhere, subjects that suddenly become very popular, then you have to resume your collection work once again. you find yourself in a bizarre situation whereby the books you have been collecting are no longer needed or have become obsolete, then you have to keep searching for more, the searching never ends.

Growing up in a library lets one to believe that the solutions to all problems are in books, it leads someone to continue digging deeper and deeper into books.

I would prefer to use a small-town library than a big city depository that has zillions of shelves, fancy elevators and high-tech management systems. The huge size of the premise itself would serve as a distraction to me, the small library though having old dusty outdated books feels more comfortable and reliable, and you get personal attention whenever you might need one.

Too much space happens to be scarier than tiny little extra-minute space.

You cannot become a writer if you are not a reader, you can only write words you have read, just the same way nobody can become a motivational speaker if they are not good listeners. As the popular adage puts it. No person can become a prolific author if they are not avid readers themselves.

The researcher

I used to do a lot of research about subjects that interested me, topics on science, mechanical engineering, astronomy, archaeology, medicine, just anything I could find interesting I would study, I didn’t do it for the sake of becoming an expert in those fields one day but just for the fun of it, a librarian once rebuked me for not following the books’ catalogue and roaming freely across text-book shelves picking books as I go, but the issue of following the catalogue, that’s not me, I was just looking for something interesting no matter which book profession I got it from.

The research project itself should be the source of our excitements, if one draws amusement from an external source like music in the background and fairly idle talk, I am afraid we will not enjoy doing our work which will in turn bore our readers to death, leaving many things undiscovered or unfinished is not our thing. From today on I believe I will make good use of my library, no more buying books for others to read.

Throughout our research projects at the Margaret thatcher library, we came across two fellows who read extensively, they went through everything they found on the shelves, in the drawers and magazines at the reception, we kept wondering what was up with these fellows, could there be something stirring up these guys? We later found out that one of them was a columnist at

the daily newspaper & a weekly magazine and the other became the famous author of an award-winning comedy title, "who's on the bridge,” this was five years later.

Inscription-10-bookworms never quit.

Some students were asked by their supervisors to help their friends out, especially those whose grades were a bit wanting, they said unto them, “please help your friends, you seem to be very good in many academic subjects, so why don’t you join hands and work out a way to deal with this mess,” our first choice is to try to inspire them because it's through inspiration that a youngster starts to work on his/her goals, we recommended to them the works of some old time favourite playwrights. To study them carefully and from them acquire every piece of information they need, to our surprise, they throw hands up in the air and walk away. “Hash! Don’t tell us any of that, we didn’t ask you to give us a lecture about how we should choose our careers, go away with your worthless speech.” Then they inform you of people who didn’t study well in college but are successful in life, students who dropped out of school and still did things that amaze the world.

“Aahmm… I see, so you want all of us to drop out of school and loiter in the streets, ah! Is that what you want us to do? Some of us are becoming more furious, you know maybe those people did drop out because of reasons that are beyond their control, unavoidable circumstances, if you shall wilfully throw away your education, a gift that many young people around the world dream of but never get it, then I hope you are going to strike it rich somewhere, if not, then I tell you sorry in advance. Not everybody is that lucky, for me I stick to my books, and to books I have been connected to all these years, even if I should grow old and die studying, then let it be so.”

One reason that young man was so valiantly anti-academic was simply because he had never read good books, if only he could find exciting plays, ancient tales and wise sayings crafted by the elders of long ago, then he will surely understand how much he is missing out… So much that I do not have the words to describe. Until he finds that out by himself, there is no way we can help this youngster, no kind of persuasion nor amount of advice will he pay attention to, he believes that people who continue to read books after they have completed their education are silly hogs who wear themselves out by reading irrelevant information, filling their minds with tons of junk. The day he will humble himself and take a look at an old dusty encyclopaedia then shall he discover treasures hidden therein?

Is it not through books we find instructions & guidance to a new field, solutions to a complex problem, comfort in times of difficulty, encouragement, and all kinds of help?

We gather together and discuss the matter, and we concluded they don’t want help so why not let them go their own way? no student nor person can make me hate books no matter how vile they speak of them. ‘’For me,’’ says Jerry Kingston, "I am married to books" no one can tell me something about it, "books and I are two things that will never part ways," no matter what.

Books give me comfort, in the lonely of loneliest times they cheer you up, they tell you never to quit easily in life, they are better than my best friends. My library and I are two things that will never part ways. Bookworms never quit, they chew all the pages till when there is no shred of paper left.

I heard of an old man who loved reading stories so much that he died holding a story book, that previous night he had one of his grandchildren read to him a story from one of the chapters, he had gone halfway when he had to rest, then he said to one of them, “thank you very much my child, you shall read to me the other remaining part tomorrow,” a day which never came.

I would wish to continue writing even into old age, when my hands are too weak to hold a pen that’s when I will stop, self-sustainability of an author is a good reward for their hard work, but the greatest reward is the joy of doing it, nothing pleasures them more than that, I will continue to write even if I get nothing out of it, I will still proceed, early medieval and many century BC authors never profited from their writing but they continued to do so, why? Because their self-drive was so great and excitement so strong that nothing could have stopped them, what does taking a pen and scribbling a few words on a piece of paper cost you anyway? Nothing. Only time, of which you might have plenty to kill.

Inscription-11-Building the plot gametes.

When building the plot, we first have to separate the masculine from the feminine features of the story. Develop each one independently to reach full maturity then combine the two to form a perfect blend. Such a writing therefore becomes suitable for all ages and sects. otherwise you will attract only a given gender sect and limit your readership. A text that targets readers from both ends always has a combination of the two.

It is very easy to distinguish a printed text whether it was produced by a masculine or feminine author, some works attract only one category while there are those works which can be enjoyed by everyone from both sides, no matter how well words may be phrased and sentences carefully structured you will often hear the authors voice echoing from behind the pages amplified numerous times. It doesn’t matter whether an editor is targeting the masculine or the feminine readers, what makes the difference is the emphasis placed forth by the contributor or scribe. The masculine prowess often has rigid structure, everything flowing in one straight path with high walls on both sides for non-interference. And everything facing the principals focus right ahead, every incident in the story revolves around this one ultimate goal, some kind of final destination, themes of logical structures, order, assessment, dominate the writing.

Feminine prowess on the other hand adopts a much more fluid structure, different events bumbled together in one whole net and taking place at the same time, there are so many things happening at once, if I may say. Themes of suspense, adventure, romance & mystery often dominate and many at times the root story fades away into oblivion. Let's say basically some work has no solid theme or any one particular spotlight you can focus on and follow all the way to the end, instead when we read some works, you will always find yourself going in circles.

When you pick up a piece of text and start going through, by just reading the first chapter gives you all the details of the contributor, whether he's masculine or feminine intent, the voice speaks out loud from the back of the pages, their age at the time of writing, places they have lived in and things they have ever done are all but clues to those mysterious contributors. You can very easily tell whether the voice behind the text is masculine or feminine.

A teacher once collected essays of his class and went through them, he then picked at random two of the essays from the bundle, the teacher read the essays of the two children Bennie and Jenny who were sitting in front and perused through them carefully. He then noticed something remarkably unusual, Bennie had brilliant ideas, great stories to craft, his only problem, he didn’t know how to communicate his ideas, he is facing difficulty putting those great concepts into words, words which have been very scarce to find for this young fellow, he can’t even finish a single foolscap.

Jenny on the other hand moved at a lightning speed, when it came to scribbling, she writes reams in a single sitting and a bundle of notes in a day but her problem was that she could never come up with a concrete story that you could follow, she did jump from topic to topic and then came back again to brush up a few more things, in her exams she writes reams. Her work has no solid theme, there is nothing physical you could have attached to her ideas, there is plenty of inconsistency in her descriptions too, when you follow her writing chapter by chapter you find yourself going in circles.

After analysing the work of the two fellows intensely, the teacher had this to say to the other members of the class. “Listen to this trick my cute little bunnies, if you want to get good grades in your composition, I would like you to marry the work of these two authors, day dream like Bennie but write like Anne, this therefore becomes an author that has wild imaginations of Bennie but has the hands of Anne.”

Inscription-12-Doctor Quill The master of all Scribes.

When the scribe is given some space, if it's as huge as the palace or as small as the prison cell, they will always find a way to position themselves appropriately and let their imaginations wonder away, authors have no limit to what they can write or how far their minds can travel, I made this solemn promise to myself that inside my texts, I shall put in all my strengths and skills, I do it not for what I get out of it but for the mere fact that I enjoy doing it, a labour of love I believe.

Authors of the old were indeed marvellous, they gained nothing (financially) from their writing and publication yet they continued to do so, they worked tirelessly to have their work published and get it into the hands of the readers. The words they had put on papers were so precious that they'd sacrifice anything to ensure others get a chance to read them, unlike our modern-day authors who are motivated by financial profit, I am not entirely motivated by profit (I really think so). My main goal I believe is to share the message I have with others and in the process those fellows will toss me back a few cents in exchange for a satisfactory read.

Readership & subjects of interest change with time. For a reader to accept the contents of a text as genuinely fabulous, it must somehow reflect their way of thinking, understanding, knowledge & beliefs, so that when an author starts something the reader instantly replies back psychologically, saying, “oh well yeah, I was about to say the same thing,” in many cases the author is somehow forced to write from the readers point of view and not his/her own. Stories have to take the shape of popular beliefs, otherwise no one will ever want to touch or even look into your work. In early times when people were once very superstitious of the world around them, stories took the shape of mysterious adventures, fairy like creatures, visits to strange worlds etc., dominated the plot. Fast forward that to the modern world, there are many things going on around the planet that most people are not aware of or do not know anything about, conspiracy theorists therefore find a solid ground to establish and defend their arguments, as techno cities spring up so does techno books describing in details of how to live in those cities and many more marvellous tales of lives of dwellers in those cities.

Back then stories travelled by word of mouth from one person to another, that’s at-least how it was in many cultures and traditions across the world. The story also belonged to the whole community, not like now when every single tale is sold for a fortune, you pay lots of money just to listen to a silly story that an acquaintance could have told you for free.

Power to convince

A prominent author speaks this in his book, he tells his readers, ‘’don’t do this, don’t do that and their listeners believe because they are a living proof what they are saying, where we are going they are already reached, their lives and personal experiences are a perfect testament to the words they preach. It is enough evidence to make us believe that their words are worth listening to, but what about me? I am a nobody, who is going to find time to read my works anyway? Ahmnn….. "Let’s see what this pen can do."

With our little to no knowledge in that field we are planning to write about, we don’t need to be a professional singer to write about singing, as long as the message in our book sheds some light in their path or solve a problem, most people will not care much to find out whether you are really an expert in that field, we gather the necessary clout, then pull up as much evidence as we can to prove our words.

Author of children’s books.

The scribe has got to figure out how to get into the minds of the little ones,

As we all know it, mischievous children would actually think that they are being mistreated when they are punished for their mischief especially by somebody who is not their parent, with this in mind, the author goes ahead to create Pamela Ogres the mean and gruesome matron. She punishes every kid in the school in the most demeaning & dehumanising way imaginable, when she begins to fume with rage, no one can quench her anger, she overpowers every staff even the principal, she is bigger than the biggest person they have ever seen before, getting grabbed by her hands was something the kids dreaded, getting caught by her red watchful eyes or simply getting into trouble with her is everybody's nightmare.

Since we wanted to be loved by the children, we had to take their imagination and think like them, as it is said, find something to write that will answer their endless questions, they want to know about beautiful birds of paradise, trees, flowers and everything else around them, when scared, they want to hear some monster stories or some fancy weird scary creature. They won't enjoy it that much until you mention how Velman punched the hairy little men, a heroic mega fight I suppose, this is better applicable especially when we are targeting boys, girls on the other hand prefer to listen to stories that end in happily ever after weddings. Their young imaginations can't stop scanning the world for new and interesting tales.

Varied scribe

Authors do many things aside from writing, they come from all kinds of backgrounds, careers and professions, and go through daily upheavals just like everyone else, when others hear that you are an author, editor, analyst, scribe, or whatever, they imagine or should I say presume that you are lonely folk who spends his/her entire day caged in a container with a pen glued to your hands and scribbling graffiti onto a piece of paper day and night without having to lift your head for a minute, it's through day-today activities and social interactions that ideas often mushroom from, authorship is never about isolation.

Scribbling without end.

There is no end to writing. I do not like to read crap, I have therefore pledged never to give any of my readers crap.

A singer can sing any song, an artist can paint any picture, so does the author, he/she can write about anything, I mean from everything that exist around them, something can be extracted at least sometime in the course of their work and used in writing. As an author you have all the freedom to write about anything you can think of, never restrict yourself by choosing a topic first before proceeding to unfolding parts of your story.

An author never gets bored, everything in their day-today lives counts, and something is always picked, processed and used in a certain special way that fits into books. There is always some new inspiration every day, now and then you see something new, it gets digested, neutralised processed and used in a better way.

An author writes and writes and writes, there is no end to their work, I started writing in anno dominie, up to now I am still writing, I will still do it even when I reached Armagadea, I do not know when I will ever stop. It’s a sign of tremendous passion to see people with notebooks, carrying them around & going with them wherever they travel. A clear symbol of a budding author inside, should you use your shorthand yet?

Inscription-13-thriller tried.

Some silly fellow wanted to join the army before he can finish his history thriller, he was documenting about ancient torture devices which he would later convert into a story, but since the plot was not thrilling enough, he had to be in the army and witness a real torture, or go through one himself. He wanted to get the real experience so that he could truly bring out the feel of it, “I have to know exactly what it's like to be tortured, so that I can covert those heightened moments & emotions into words," he said, many people who heard him felt sorry for the poor kid. I don’t know how long he is going to last in the field, should he continue thinking this way, “look into my eyes kid," said an old veteran, "I have been into many battles, there is no fun in warfare, I tell you please withdraw your naive intentions and go back home to the comfort of your mansion, many of us you see here barely made it through, it was not by our own strength but by mere luck that we survived the ordeal while our friends were lost, let alone telling stories about our experiences. You can tell a story about a war you have experienced, but you should never go to war so that you can have a story to tell." he said firmly. Don’t do silly things, many of which could jeopardise your life simply to entertain your friends.

What about those people who had no experiences so far? What are they going to put into their pen and paper? One's personal life experiences aren't enough to create a strong story foundation, because life is too short to allow one to go through all the experiences they need to learn from, knowledge can be acquired through other people’s experiences as such.

Frankly I have never been a soldier myself, but I live near the barracks, so I have an idea of what it's like to be under brutal command, I will give a terrific account so that when people happen to read through my journal, they will think I am an ex-marine.

I can only talk of the things I have seen and heard over the barbed wire,

A real lieutenant would not be excited enough as I am to talk about things he went through in the military compound, especially the excruciating workload and constant excessive punishments even for very small mistakes, let alone find time to write a book about that. So am here, allow me to really explain how I sneaked through the barbed wire and caught few glimpses of the training inside the camp. An eyewitness testimony is always more sensible than claims from the mouth of the one who took part in spreading rumours of everything they think happened at the place.

Limitations of personal experiences.

Personal experiences are not enough to rely solely on in order to produce a written account, when our perfectly accurate story of our experience is over, what else do we have left? It might mean we need to go back outside, experience a different type of adventure before we can continue writing anything more.

It's very difficult for military commanders to give details of the combat experiences in their stories, some memories are so fresh and so gruesome that if they do, it might bring them to tears, no wonder the only person who can give a very terrific military account is a lieutenant who went only one mission and experienced very little suffering during his career, he therefore takes the stories of other combatants and tell them as if they were his own. This is the best story teller, when his comrades were actually being torn to pieces by shell fragments he was sleeping soundly at the basecamp, he only heard rumours that the battalion to the front had received heavy shelling while his own squad got no direct confrontation.

Inscription-14-nothing new.

There is nothing new under the lampshade, as it is said, you can only write what you have read, and speak only what you have heard before, everything seems to be a mix, new languages arise from old ones. Some are a blend of two or more other languages.

When someone asks you, where do these so-called Authors including you get their ideas of what to write from? Their minds never seem to run out of ideas to put into these little pieces of paper.’’ Then you should say this to them, “The clouds never run out of rain, they pour down billions of tons of water on dry earth each day but they never seem to dry out, they will never run out of water. The oceans will never be full even when all rivers flaw into them, water from springs, streams and rivers flows into the endless oceans but they will never be full.”

In reference to these examples, we mean that ideas & resources shall never be fully drained or completely exploited, readers will always have room for new books in their libraries, and even if they have tons of titles on their shelves there could be room for new insights that will always remain welcome. Creative thinkers will never run out of ideas nor stories to tell.

Inscription-15-stuck in the middle.

What do you do when you get stuck? For one to be able to do an efficient study or writing, their mind should be somewhere else, in all places conceivable in the world except the room in which they are in, be it in a study room, a library, whatever it is, if one's thoughts and attention are concentrated in that small area, then does the spirit of stagnation begin to crouch in.

there is a class of people who usually give this advice about progressing your work, saying that, "should you find yourself stuck somewhere in your plot, you should go outside, take a walk for a few minutes then come back later when your mind is at least refreshed, then can you be able to proceed with maximum efficiency," such is true to an extent, unfortunately not all conditions can provide such an opportunity, it could be raining outside heavily, in other seasons you could face the biting cold of the winter snow, where are you going to walk, your neighbourhood could be quite dangerous, many people remain indoors most of the time and venturing out too often is unthinkable, where are you going to walk? You could be living on the hundredth floor of a condo apartment or on the top of the tallest building in the world, going up and down your room itself is a very hectic task, where are you going to walk? It could be in the middle of the night when your work comes to a grinding halt, where are you going to walk, and you need to proceed with your scribbling anyway.

However, there are a few things I highly recommend you do and I assure you will produce results as soon as they are implemented…

When we put the work in the middle of all the other daily chores, you end up sacrificing time for other activities for the sake of your scribbling

If it’s a labour-less day with no other responsibilities to undertake except that of your scribbling, then go out, start another task, leave it half way, then come back to your scribbling, the thought of having another unfinished work waiting is enough to keep the mind active, creative, and efficient, "let me finish this one last sentence before I finish my laundry," ye says unto thyself, that one last sentence turns out to be a paragraph which becomes a chapter, it gets late into the night yet you are still jotting down one more sentence, the clothes you soaked in water late in the afternoon have stayed unattended for too long in the water, that dye begins to ooze into the wash bucket yet you are still clinging onto your one last sentence, it reaches a time when you have exhausted all your thoughts that there is nothing left to put down is when you have to abandon your scribbling and attend to other issues.

I don’t really know if you get the analogy. What I am trying to say here is that if you want to reduce procrastination or what is professionally referred to as Writer's block. Then in a given day or period of time, arrange your timetable in such a manner that your writing minutes come first or middle of your schedule, but never put them as the last thing of the day. The pressure to finish the penmanship quickly in order to attend to other equally important issues not only helps beat procrastination but also boosts one’s creative spirit, as there will be so many things running up and down your mind that you never miss anything to say using the pen and paper.

Inscription-16-end of character.

We have followed the characters a long way now, we have feared for their lives during their dangerous exploits, we felt their joyous as well as their sad moments, we defended them when they were facing unfair trial, cried with them at their times of great difficulty & sorrow for we too felt their pain. We even fell into the pits together when they were being thrown down into dungeons. This is the true gain of narratives. We continually walk with the character, and a part of you becomes the character themself.

When you are halfway through the story then a kid suddenly interrupts saying, ‘’hey how did it end?’’ as a direct result of getting bored following the plot? Then the story teller replies, "Just be patient a little longer we are not there yet, or do you want us to begin at the end?"

Inscription-17-the true value of texts.

True value of texts is priceless, receiving a copy of manuscript of a sailor’s many years of his adventurous voyages is like receiving a huge inheritance from someone who is not related to you. Its contents are so valuable you cannot afford to lose them, many years of gruesome probably decades shrank onto a piece of paper, and you get all that with just a few pennies, what a nice thing it is to get a lifetimes worth of work for just a few coins? what a joy to have biographies? How the records of many centuries and millennia with their detailed events are summed up into a simple book you can go through in just a week, you didn’t have to live that long in order to acquire that knowledge you need.

We travel with books without having to leave the comfort of our homes, with the author’s words and together with the protagonists we cross vast deserts enduring scorching heat, we then get to reach the oasis and rest under a cool shade of a palm tree, we wash our heads and our burning bodies with cool waters from the oasis pools, their burdens become our burdens, their enemies are our enemies, their fears become our fears, and their joys become our comfort.

It's such a wonderful thing to access someone's else whole life worth of work for just a few pennies, forty years of travel, adventure, discovery and recording perused through in less than four hours, for those that do not know yet the many treasures hidden in books, I feel sorry for them, I will not tell them anything, I will leave that to their own efforts & mindset, let them find that out for themselves. In some works, you can feel, taste and smell the feasts the author was invited to attend, right from where you are sitting, though the event took place a long time ago many thousands of kilometres away, it's all lingering out to you from the pages, when they start talking about struggling to eat unripe mangoes, my mouth begins to water with a sour taste, when they tried to stich one of their fellow traveller’s wounds who accidentally stepped on a bear trap, and were trying to do it with no anaesthetics, I begin to feel sorry for the poor guy, I begin to wish I was there to help others pin him to the ground and try to prevent him from moving too much or screaming too loudly.

Inscription-18-A twist to the story

Most at time you find yourself you have to twist a story a little for it to bring out the fictional aspects of a true story, real life situations that happen to be too harsh are diluted with tales that are somehow pleasing.

For instance, facts tell us that when you leave your lover or future queen behind for too long, she will be married by someone else and by the time you return she will be running around her garden happily with another man's children, fiction however tells us that if you return from a long treacherous journey, say you were among the few that survived, you will find your sweet heart still waiting for you in her family home.

Most often in popular narratives you find real life stories twisted to take a tone that is more acceptable and appealing to the reader, let's say there are two youngsters who are engaged and are about to wed in a few weeks' time, then something unexpected happens, a really unfortunate event appears out of the blue, the gentleman is then pulled out of his well-planned future, the peaceful & somehow prosperous life to undertake a commercial expedition, the town's merchants promise the crew with huge pay-checks if they manage to carry the goods across the oceans & bring them home safely, the gentleman sees this as an opportunity to pay for his expensive wedding, and the journey which is approximated to take less than six months from the beginning to the return time isn’t a big deal after all.

While they were sailing to their destination, their ship is caught in a violent storm, it is wrecked by the angry waves and more than half of the crew are lost, the surviving ones are rescued by a foreign ship which takes them to its country of origin, the survivors then remain stuck there on a lonely beachfront for a long time without any hope of ever returning to their home, they find no ship that’s willing to sail them back to their home country for free, some of them try to intermingle with the local people, they live a lowly life and take odd jobs to sustain themselves.

To the pretty girl back at home, her bright future has suddenly turned dull, she waits for many weeks yet she received no word of the ship, her weeks are now turning into months and months to years…

In real life, the girl won't have to wait any longer for some lover who promised to return then disappeared, you can't expect a girl to wait for that long, six years is eternity, you should expect her to get married as soon as possible and move on with her life.

But since this case of ours is a story, a fairy tale of sorts, we would like to make it as interesting as possible, we are therefore obliged to remove the saddening realities of life and replace them with sweet anecdotes, our story would then go like this….

"…the farm girl, the beautiful daughter of Harry Venlam waited and waited, she waited for many months for her fiancé to return, her family pressured her to get married to a tycoon in the local town but she vehemently refused to give in to their demands, many travellers came to her home giving her reports supported by witnesses that her fiancé was lost at sea, others told her that he had found another lover in a different country and has settled down with an alien girl, they told her that he is not coming back, but time and again the girl’s will was strong, she refused to believe them.

after six long years of waiting her fiancé finally arrived in a foreign ship that was glittering with jewels, he was now captain with more than five hundred crew men under his command, he had won the favour of a foreign noble who raised him to such high ranks, the young lovers then got to perform their magnificent wedding, she was glad that her patience had paid off, that her fiancé chose to return to her and not wonder away into the strange country chasing after foreign girls, the gentleman on the other hand is glad too that his bride to be chose to wait for those six long painful years for him, the Venlam family then moved in to their new dazzling mansion on the countryside where they lived happily ever after…"

Inscription-19-minimising distraction.

Distraction is one of the hardest challenges budding academics get when they are making their time out, so keeping the study environment lonely as possible is essential in maintaining one’s creative momentum. How can you let others interfere with your work if you know very well that there are people who can make you hate what you love the most, which is penning?

It's often best not to let anyone interfere with your work, letting anyone say or do something that may make you lose your morale will produce tragic results. If they are neither readers nor authors why should you let them interfere with your work or even bother you in the first place? “What are you doing?” Is the common question they often throw at you.

Silence and freedom from interruption are of uttermost importance, when the birds begin to nest, a family member comes in through the front door running noisily which scares them all away, something that sets you back to square one, even though they actually mean well, they pose a disruptive nature & attitude, in times of serious business as these it’s much better to work alone, the environment must not just be quiet, but absent of all other visual distractions caused by people either wilfully or unintentionally. For forms of artwork like painting, pottery. Etc. the crafter needs a peaceful time away from the noise and distractions caused by others.

If possible, it’s better to keep others from knowing what you are doing at all costs, let no one around you know that you are a scribe, let them learn that from someone else, maybe after they see you signing books at the venues will they really understand what you actually do in secret.

You often find that friends and family members who are not readers and neither authors interfere with your work, they belittle your efforts and badmouth your paragraphs, I wonder if there is anyone who can make significant progress around these people, “when I am busy fixing my own boat, I would rather be alone but if you need some companionship, lets meet later in the evening, we can chat all you want, please leave me in peace, just for now,” I would tell them.

Penmanship is a very intimate thing, we do not allow family members to interfere with our work. It’s best to keep your authorship a secret in case there are no other like-minded individuals in the house or else some of them may say or do something that will make you lose your morale, something that may completely kill your enthusiasm.

We have to find a quiet place where you can work for at least four hours without being interrupted, you certainly don’t want yourself to be constantly asked by your family members, “what are you doing? Please come over and help us move this sofa, and stop your doodling.”

Inscription-20-calling the biographer

Right now in my prime, when I am still up and down, working here and there, doing this and that, I do not actually need to approach any biographer to jot down a few things about me, or write a short biography myself, my life doesn’t have anything worth recording anyway, so why should others bother, to waste a lot of time reading stuff about me that wouldn’t help them in the long run.

The contents of a biography are limited to few exceptional moments when someone achieved extraordinary success or gone through very trying moments that ultimately shaped their lives into the future, all junk had to be unfortunately left out, you can't of course record everything about others, there's more crap that goes on in a hero's life each day than legendary achievements, so when people ask, “who are you, where did you come from, what are some of the things you did when you were young, or from the time you were born up to the time we met?" when they say that, they do so hoping that you might say something they had longed to hear, that you might tell a story which will give a clear reflection of what you are doing now, then make the connection.

In a biography you can easily put away your embarrassing stories while you keep those that you think contribute greatly to your career or profession safely intact.

In my autobiography, I will record only successful endeavours, and those memories that are pleasing to me I shall emphasise the most, but to the negative, embarrassing experiences and failures I can easily keep them away, if I am forced to include them in the account then I shall describe them roughly and move on to more important parts of the story.

If people were to write everything they have ever done in their autobiography then they could be giving their lives’ accurate accounts of their dirty little secrets to hunched mortals to read.

Inscription-21-Poetry the best way of expression

A famous astronaut was asked by a reporter on ground after landing from a space shuttle, "what does it feel like to be in space?" what does it look like, did you see any strange looking beings?

The astronaut then struggled to describe what he saw and felt there, since there is no feeling on earth that has similarity to what is in space, it was nearly impossible to tell, then he tells them this, “at launch, you are shaken hard, really hard, it is as if you are a toy then a kid puts you into a container and shakes you very hard, from side to side, then there is this crushing force that that squeezes you to your seat, almost flattening you out, but when you get to reach beyond the outer atmosphere deeper into space, the violence stops, then comes a calm, a long comforting calm, you have no feeling that you are in a moving object at all. Then slowly you start to see objects rise from their places on the table, everything both solid and liquid starts to float in mid-air including yourself, you stretch out your hands to reach for your pen floating nearby, then you accidentally knock it and therefore push it further away, you stretch out your hands to fly towards it, you move your hands up and down as if you are swimming in a thick viscous jelly, you use very little energy, but also move very very slowly.

I am sorry miss but I don’t have anything more to tell you on this, If you want to know more about space then I think you should hire a poet & take him there, he shall have better words to describe their experience for you, see ya in space…’’

Advantages of poetry.

When you are a known folk then your target gets to hear the insults you hurled at them, they'll easily find your farm, cripple your horse and burn down your entire ranch, but who can speak ill of a poet or attack him back? Or even know where to find them in the first place? Someone blurted out an idea, and now word is moving around in form of criticism of a popular elite fellow, you can see their works though but you can't fight them back.

I used to like poetry a lot back then, I picked dozens of poetry books from the libraries and often overstayed with them, costing me my pocket money in penalties, I love poetry written in three stories, especially a sad one, the ones that would make me cry, I would cherish them very much, sometimes I get mixed feelings of both joy and sorrow, when I go through some of them, or sometimes a feeling of emptiness and fullness at the same time.

Poetry and music are the twin sisters that comfort their baby brother, when he is left unattended all day, and cries out for milk, they sing him sweet lullabies, with their sweet voices they lull him to sleep, he snores a little longer until when help arrives, they prevent him from despair.

Inscription-22-One more paragraph.

Every night I struggle with this thought saying unto myself, let me just write one last sentence, one more paragraph before going to sleep, I end up staying awake till late into the night hoping to find that one last sentence to take down. When you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night just to finish an article you have started, with fairy tales coming as sweet dreams & horror stories scare you like nightmares, it depends on the genre picked by the article contributor, all come to you in one unison and all you have to do is to simply put them down in ink and paper.

Inscription-23-The plague of plagiarism.

I often invite free quote, not more than a few hundred words on your blog or website, or whatever place it is you write on, as long as you include the title of the book you picked the excerpt from, I have no problem with that, it forms a part of a free promotion tool for my titles, although some of my works often get plagiarised, when I get no credit at all it makes me burn with rage, as long as they do not threaten my publications, I have no trouble with it.

Anyone can quote anything and sayings from different people can sometimes turn out to be strikingly similar, "oh, boy, it turns out that we have the same way of thinking," is the saying you get from others when you find quotes that share similarity with yours is posted on their website.

Plagiarism though a common problem nowadays to works of many authors should not make them too stressful for it should not prevent them from continuing writing, they will mostly serve as a way to promote you without paying them a dime.

We should not be too stressed about plagiarism that might arise from our work to the extent where it prevents us from publishing our manuscripts, if some day in the future we find our work plagiarised by another scribe or editor who wittingly put their name as the real source or author of the work, idea, thought or phrase then instead of being annoyed by this, we should be glad that there are people who could love our work so much that they are tempted to steal a portion of the words and use it to spice their speech, we should then rejoice for they have magnified our words a hundred fold.

My real intention of putting words onto paper is for others to share my thoughts, I often ask myself, “are there people who share my way of thinking, are there people who feel the same way as I do?” My main reason was to get out my concerns to the public for the world to listen to. If there are people out there who are willing to do in on my behalf, then I am more than happy to let them steal my works.

Inscription-24-The sad story of slavery.

When I read stories about slavery my heart is torn apart, the stories are so painful and unbearable that the books themselves become unreadable, but slavery wasn’t like that before, in the most ancient of nations, slavery was a common practice, in fact you find slaves were part of the owners family, folks who cared for them as though they were their own blood relatives, when a child is born into a family of servants then he/she is regarded as a slave and the family in charge of them becomes the master. Some people who were living under good masters had better lives than those who were not slaves.

I have come across some ancient texts that revealed good relationship between the slaves and their masters, who had a strong bond and ran their homes by simple rules, there was a very thin line between the word servant and a slave, a servant works for a pay, and goes home to feed their families with the little pay they have gained, a slave on the other hand had nowhere to go to, and therefore works for the master’s family without any pay, but then all his needs and those of his children are taken care of by the owner, slave families lived across just near the owners home, when you are dirt poor and famine has struck the country hard, better be some rich fellow’s slave than to perish, an owner of many slaves has less food for himself because he has more mouths to feed.

If a slave wanders off into the desert, he/she will perish, for there is no life in the wilderness, better stay in the master’s house and get plenty of food and water to drink than to die out in the desert, all you need to do is help in taking care of their flock and their other property. There are stories of slaves that ran away from their masters in search of freedom, but nearly died from hunger and thirst in the Sahara, they therefore made up their minds to go back to their masters and beg them to let them stay. In an environment where the climate is so harsh, co-operation is key to survival, all people whether slave or master often put aside their quarrels and try to find a way to survive the harsh climate. When livestock starts dying from prolonged draughts, slaves and masters cuddle together at the corner of an oasis and try to cling on to life. At such circumstances there is often very little dispute between the slaves and their masters.

Owners would fiercely defend their slaves & protect them from abuse and exploitation from others even members of their own family, Like the slaves and servants of the great king of Timbuktu and the Sultans of Zanzibar, all treated their servants and slaves with nobility.

But when it comes to the transatlantic slave trade it’s a different story, a platoon of pirates swarmed across the seas, and travelled from ocean to ocean carrying humans like cargo, the large-scale exploitation of others made it impossible to treat them with any kind of care, then were sold off to cruel farmers, abusive owners…… and the stories of cruelty goes on.

Many of these slave traders were pagans, bandits who came from heathen nations, and have never comprehended how to rightfully treat a fellow human being, it is no wonder some of the experiences of these slaves were so vile that many people prefer not to raise those issues once again, they better remain as bad memories, a thing of the past. Nobody likes to talk about it nowadays. It came to our attention that many people from outside the tropics had no knowledge of what it's like to be a slave yourself, for those who were there, very few showed any kind of pity.

If people come across an article about slavery, they instantly become curious about it, some will quickly bring to mind the sad transatlantic slave trade of the last few centuries, so they quickly toss it aside, no one wants to read something that will cause them pain or heartbreak, slavery should be a none-issue in this twenty first century as for everyone’s knowledge.

Every budding author aspires to be a master of the quill someday. If we want to write about slavery then we better be cautious with our choice of words, if you bring up stories of masters who were cruel to their slaves then also remember that there were those who were very kind to them and treated them like a family, so as not to become too biased and deter our potential readers.

Inscription-25-ink lies.

The good thing about penning is that you don’t have to tell the truth all the time, readers don’t care much weather you are telling them the truth, lies or half-truths, as long as the motive of the writing remains solely for entertainment, they don’t mind that much, not unless you are claiming yourself to be the one speaking the real truth while all the others are saying nothing but garbage, then will they be obliged to check out the details, to confirm the facts and figures for themselves.

An anonymous author can say, “I met Lincoln and we discussed many important things at his dining table,” even though he was born long after Lincoln administration had passed, he can make all sort of claims and we don’t have a way to prove it otherwise, since we too are not of that era, we just have to accept things just as they say, no hullaballoo about it.

The good thing about being a distance author is that you can claim to be anyone, and still all your readers will believe you, I can claim to have been to Reagan’s council, yet I wasn’t even there during Reagan's administration, or claim to have been in the queen's courtyard while I wasn’t even born when the monarch was in power.

I can say, "I was with President Reagan, then I said this to him, son, if you continue to be soft and unwatchful you will not be president for long,"

I have never been to Washington, let alone meet the president himself, I can claim anything yet no one will disprove me, because none was witness to prove otherwise.

I can also claim that, ‘’I sailed across the red sea to Lebanon, trekked for months across the Arabian desert and happened to meet the great sheikh, he welcomed us to his palace, had a delicious meal, and after watching performance of a beautiful belly dance, we went to rest, we had a calm evening. Blah…blah...blah…’’ If there is no one alive who was with me at that place, then who can disprove me?

Inscription-26-Talking to grownups.

Who are you?

‘’Who are you to tell us what to do and what not to?’’ They ask you, “give us a good reason why we should follow your instructions. Who are you to teach us these things?’’

‘’I am a nobody, yes I understand that, but you need to listen to me,’’ you then vainly reply.

These fellows are grownups, we don’t want to sound like we are trying to drum our doctrines into them, if they were children then they would have been easier to teach, will they be willing to go back to class to listen to your lecture or will they wait eagerly to hear your words of wisdom? Will they gladly welcome your words as they respond to your commands saying, "Sir Yes sir?"

Pointing out something negative.

If we are going to point out a negative trait somewhere in our work, then we make sure it's something they can change, they can do something about that right professor?

We point out a real scenario, a solid living example somewhere near them. We let it be at least some distance away but within a viewing distance.

We know very well at the back of our heads that these are grown-ups, they will resist us if we sound like we are trying to teach them. All right then let’s tell them a story of our neighbours then they can pick whatever lessons they find from that text and apply it to their whatever level of need or understanding.

Speaking in such a direct way may suddenly spark an outrage and lead us to loose potential listeners. We make sure there is no drumming lessons for dummies, we just want to show them around the garden, say “we have just been in the garden more than we have been outside,” then ask, “Look, do you see a difference?”

We should always remember that no matter how brilliant our masterpiece is, not everyone will love it, you will always find those who give heart-breaking comments, even though your words are crystal clear as the waters of the blue lagoon, even though your ideas shine bright as the northern stars, even though your story is interesting as hearing a baby speak, there is somebody somewhere who will always oppose it no matter what, they will resist it by all means possible and with the use of all their strength.

Inscription-27-memory boosters.

The Geography tour,

A primary school teacher took his class to a geography tour to a famous natural wonder that is very close to their district, after their tour he asked them to write a short essay describing what they had experienced, how the tour was, what they enjoyed and what they wished they had seen, before they began to write the teacher asked the two students sitting right in front, Philip & Sarah to stand up and explain to others what exactly they are going to write about just before they begin.

Philip went ahead to describe the tedious journey, how they zigzagged in and out of the escarpments and mountainous terrain, the road meandered through, he fantasised how the place would be great spot to do some mountain biking, he fascinatingly talked about the larger variety of plants and animals they saw at the place, the great heard of wildlife that continually crossed the road right in front of them, and the list is endless. Now it was little Sarah's turn, "what are you going to say about the tour you went to yesterday?" Asked the teacher, "Nathaniel hit me with a binoculars when we were leaving the park’s cafeteria, and it really hurt," she said, "oh really? Sorry, I didn’t know about that, is that the only thing you remember?" asked the teacher now annoyed, "didn’t you see the things that were on the way, the large lily fields, the geese in the marshes, the… don’t you remember any of that?" "no" she replied, "then it's because you were up and down the bus throughout the entire journey," said the teacher, "you never seemed to be able to have settled at any moment, when I looked back I saw you standing in the middle of the bus and creating problems for others," he then turned to the other class members and said this to them, "next time I take you on a trip, you should not make noise with your friends, but instead remain in your seats calmly, if you do that then can you be able to remember every step of your trip just like the way Philip did, everything will sink in deep, this was an educational geography tour and not a picnic."

"When travelling on a bus don’t make too much noise," said the teacher, "so that what you have seen does not easily evaporate but sink deep instead like water in a well"

Inscription-28-The Evolution of Communication

Its hard to imagine that just a few decades ago, it was difficult for families to pass on information to one another in a manner that is elegant and concise. Humans beings have come a long way since the time they learn words to speak to one another. Even though our stone age cultures are regarded as primitive, they had developed complex languages they had used to communicate with one another. Honestly speaking stone age cultures were not that primitive, they had developed very advanced an complex societies with different members of the community partaking different roles to support the community, this is called division of labor and specialization, an environment where everyone performs different roles in the society based on their skills and physical or intellectual capacity. There were potters, farmers, blacksmiths, fishermen, herbalists, soldiers and many more categories, each one playing their own unique role based on their ability in order to support the community, there are many more things the prehistoric peoples did that have not been put into records nor ever taking credit for. There are several stages through which communication evolved from the ancients to our modern day societies. We shall discuss each one of them here below.

1.Beating of Drums

The ancient folks used the skins of killed animals, usually the domesticated ones to make drums, sometimes the skin of wild animals can be used to make drums but the best skins were those of domestic animals especially the cows goats and ship. Drum making was a very hectic process and it required several weeks if not months of preparation. After an animal is killed, lets say a cow. The skin is soaked in water for several days then removed, after being allowed to dry for a few minutes, the hairy hairs are scraped off so that only a smooth skin is left behind, the skin is then soaked in water for a few more days before it is removed again to dry, in the meantime, a huge tree trunk is chopped off from a tree then hollowed out to look like a barrel, once done, skilled artisans then carefully sow the skin of the cow onto the hollowed out tree trunk the put out in the sun to dry, it can be smeared with animal oils or whatever the oils that the artisans see fit. This is such that there are not cracks anywhere on the trunk, once done the drum is ready to entertain the community.

Different communities have different rhythms to which they beat their drums. So it's this difference in the style, size and pattern of drum beatings that different kinds of communication is passed on to the other members of the community. There are different shapes and sizes of drums that are made, short & wide drums make loud base sounds while long and narrow ones make high pitch sounds. Different styles of drum beatings are used for different occasions, like the

Planting Seasons

Harvest Seasons

welcoming newborns

wedding ceremony,

Death and Funeral Ceremonies,

Warning to your neighbors

War and strife.

Apart from just the usual roles of providing entertainment to the communities, drums have ended up serving a more useful and wider ranges of purposes in the everyday life of the ancients. And whenever you heard a drumbeat, there was always some kind of news around the corner, be it good or bad, people appreciated the importance of Drums.

2. Smoke and Fire Signals.

Another way the ancients used to communicate to one another was the use of smoke and fire signals. However this method of communication was only useful during the daytime when the sky Is clear and the wind is calm. The weather conditions have to be perfect for this kind of communication method to work. For example when its raining, the fires wont be able to burn properly to produce enough smoke to reach the skies. Communities living several miles away may not be able to see the smoke, and also, when the wind is blowing wildly, the smoke may not be able to rise properly into the skies to be seen from afar. Or when its partially cloudy, people won't be able to distinguish the smoke signal from the atmospheric clouds.

3. Horn Blowing

Another communication tool for the ancients was the use of horns for blowing. Horns which are hollowed out animal horns such as cows performed very important roles in the communications of the Past. Sometimes they were part and parcel of everyday celebrations, they were used alongside other forms of communication such as drumbeating. Drums and horns always went along with one another in the ancient past ceremonies. Big loud horns can he heard from many miles way and therefore proved to be an effective way of communication since messages could be passed immediately. Blowing a horn can be quite difficult at first but once you get the hang of it becomes a simple breeze. You need to have perfectly working lungs before you can think of blowing a horn, otherwise if you don’t, you may start having breathing Problems, because it takes a lot of air out of your lungs.

4. Messengers.

Messengers in the past were people who travelled long distances to deliver message directly to the recipient through the word of mouth. So the sender had to wait for days, weeks or even months before the message could reach the recipient and then back. Messengers chose different modes of transport depending on the urgency of the message, an urgent message especially one concerning danger may require a fast runner to take the message there as soon as possible. The messengers especially ones that travel long distances often used pack animals to deliver their messages, donkeys, camels and horses were the favorite choices. Horses were the fastest form of transport in the ancient world and therefore were used to relay the most urgent of messages. A horse can cover a distance that takes months to cover on foot in just a few days. Horses were however were quiet expensive and therefore remained the reserve of the rich, the poor man always had to used a donkey or send a runner.

5. Letter Writing

Writing evolved differently in different places across the world. The Egyptians invented hieroglyphics, a use of pictures to represent words, the Chinese had their own writing while the Sumerians had cuneiform, use of shapes in different formats to represent words. Even though writing was invented a very long time ago, it faced a lot of hurdles because the written word had to be delivered to the recipient through the help of a messenger or some kind of courier, so despite their early invention, technology was still very slow, it took days, weeks and even months for written Papyrus scrolls to travel from one destination to another. The industrial Revolution improved the delivery time of letters, the invention of cars, trains and plains means that letters can be now delivered to their destination on the same day. Yes, you just have to wait for a few hours and not days before your message could reach the required destination. Postal Services sprung up on almost every corner of the planet in the last two centuries as a result of the modern technologies.

6. E-Mail and Cell Phone

Perhaps the most revolutionary technology in communication is the invention of modern instant messaging services, when computers were being invented in the nineties. The world wide web emerged as a new communication tool. People from different parts of the world can communicate with one another instantly as if they are in the same room. There are a lot of instant messaging apps put there on the web these days, all you need to do is to log in to your account and start chatting right away.

7. Telephone

No one could have fathomed that just a few generations ago people will be communicating with one another instantly, for the most part of human history message communications were predefined to very slow means which we never realized it was a problem until when we invented much faster ways of doing the same. It’s the invention of the telegraph and the telephone that paved way for the invention of the internet and the creation of the world wide web. These technologies were unthinkable just a short while ago, yet we are here living through it. The current generation is growing up in a world where they are surrounded by technology which they often take for granted. Having a face to face live chat with your friends across the country is something that the new generation is living through.

Inscription-29-The Evolution of Story Telling

Right from the beginning of humanity walking the face of the earth, man has always tried to store information in retrievable forms, many people think that literature was invented a few hundred years ago during the industrial revolution, they think that it’s the romans, Greeks and Sumerians that invented writing. This may be true to some extent. The alphanumeric characters or the so-called ''Latin script'' that we use today was invented by the Phoenicians before it was later adapted by the Greeks then the romans. The Europeans mastered the script after a millennia of trial and error. Most languages of European origin that now dominate the world use Latin script, they encompass the most important languages in the world., if you look for instance languages like English, French Spanish and Portuguese, are among the most widely spoken languages in the world with billions of speakers in general. The Europeans managed to spread their cultures and traditions to the entire world through by then acts of colonization.

Lets take a look for example English. Although England is a small country located in a small island within the British isles, they managed to spread their language and culture to other countries through trade and colonization, Britain even though a relatively weak European power at the time managed to export it language through its powerful merchant ships. The British navy was like no other in the European theatre , therefore rivaling well established empires of the time like France and Spain. Their dominance. Their dominance of the seas enabled them to conquer land in almost every known continent in the world. Today billions of people ware fluent in English language, they either use it for official or purposes or speak it as their first language. People speak their own languages in their local communities but when it comes to official matters they use English. It was said that the sun never did set on the British empire, that's because they managed to put a foothold on every continent at its height the British empire controlled more than a quarter of the worlds total landmass.

Lets take a look at some older forms…

1. Oral Traditions

For thousands of years, storytelling has always been part and parcel of human life, for a significant proportion of human beginning folklore has been passed down from one generation to another by word of mouth. Every evening just after sunset, elders would gather the children around the fireplace to tell them stories of their ancestors. Storytelling was used as a pas time as well as an educational tool, some cultural values and norms were skillfully woven into the stories so that they can become important lessons for the children, learning them while still young molded them into the types of adults the elders want to see run their communities some day.

2. Religion

Folklore in Oral traditions has shaped religious beliefs in many parts of the world for millennia, the stories taught children the deities that their ancestors worshipped as well as the spirits that they paid tribute to. They prayed to these deities for provision and for protection, just before the growing season, the people would pray to their deities asking them to make their crops grow well so that there would be a bumper harvest and people would have plenty of food to eat. And after harvest some portions of the early harvest were offered as an offering to the deities as appeasement so that they can continue to provide abundance to the local community. These deities were usually a family of gods, so we would gladly say that they were mostly polytheists. Most ancient religions were polytheists. For example, the ancient Greeks adored a family of gods, like a modern world families, thee is the father, the mother, the children, brothers and sisters, cousins and other members of the extended family, there were also alliances and rivalries among those family members just as we have here on earth. A good example is when Zeus, the Ancient Greek god of thunder and Lightning banished his brother Poseidon into the underworld because of a sibling rivalry.

3. Record Keeping

Oral traditions provided a way of Record Keeping that was unprecedented at the time. The ancient People had very good memories and had to recite very long stories word by word and each child was therefore expected to do the same, folklore was the community's unrecorded treasure. It was everything the community needed to stay alive. Other than religious purposes it served the purpose of recording incidences of heroism and legends, very often a community will portray itself on the heroic side while conversely portraying the rival group as nothing but a bunch of cowards. The elders always made sure that the great battles were remembered for all time, even when there were only small victory against the enemy tribe, the narrators would always exaggerate incidences of their own victories and therefore it served as a tool of spreading the community's propaganda in the minds of the youth. The Greek mythology is a good example In this scenario. The Greek tales of the Iliad and the odyssey are a perfect example of oral traditional folk tales that later became written literature.

Oral tradition also helped in the preservation of other useful society skills such as preparation of certain foods, ingredients and specific uses, young people also learnt about may medicinal plants such as herbs and certain weeds. Through storytelling youngsters get to learn about the health benefits of a certain plant such that should anyone fall ill in the community then they will be in a position to provide a cure for their family members.

4.Rock Art and Pottery

For all forms of ancient ways of ancient stories, rock art remains the most enduring of them all, on some continents such as Europe and Africa, some rock art has been discovered that is tens of thousands years old. That’s much longer than our recorded history goes. In the caves of the mountains on some open rocks paintings of animals and humans have been found that tells many stories of the people long gone, people recorded their exploits of hunting wild animals, fishing in the rivers and lakes, gathering wild grain and some aspects of domestic life such as housekeeping. The ancient peoples used a mixture of plants residues to produce a variety of colors such as red and black which they smear onto the walls of the caves. But there is little humidity and little erosion due to exposure to the outside then the artwork can be preserved for many countless generations. In Australia Aboriginal art has been found on the rocks of the Australian outback depicting peoples and wild animals some of which are now extinct. They tell the stories of the average aboriginal way of life, how he went about his daily routine over ten thousand years ago. Aborigine peoples of Australia have lived on that continent for tens of thousands of years, and finding those pieces of that that are millennia old is an archeological treasure. Because of the unfortunate history of the past few centuries, the aborigine people of Australia have gone through a lot of hardship, the mass migration of European settlers into the continent a few centuries ago almost completely destroyed this ancient community. They brought with them deadly diseases that almost wiped out the natives because the indigenous peoples had not developed immunity to those diseases, there were also cruel white rulers that ordered extermination campaigns against the aborigines, they didn’t like their dark skin and therefore tried to wipe them out from the continent so that more land could be open for white farmers and settlers. So rock art and some carvings are invaluable treasures to the aborigines peoples. Because through them, they et to tell the story of Australia in their own words.

Another community that has left behind a lot of valuable rock art are the San Peoples of Southern Africa. This includes the modern day Peoples of Khoisan and the Khoikhoi. These are their actual names, though they are popular around the world as the ''Bushmen.'' there is no African tribe called Bushmen, they have their own languages, cultures, customs and traditions. The term ''Bushman'' was a derogative word used by the European settlers to refer to the San Peoples of southern Africa. Since they are hunters and gatherers and spend most of their time foraging in the bush for wild animals to kill and fruits to collect, the European explorers thought that the word bushman was the Best term that should be referred to them since they didn't know how to call them at the time. Yet that name has stuck to them to this very day, whenever the San People's go even within Africa itself, they often find themselves being referred to as the Bushmen.

Their ancient lifestyles as well as their current ones still living in the bush has been made popular by Hollywood films. Movies like ''Animals are beautiful People'' and ''The Gods must be crazy'' have given the Bushman Global Fame. Shot in the Deserts of Kalahari and Namib where the San Peoples currently call home, the films show the pristine nature of African Wilderness as well as a cohesive relationship between the San Peoples and their surroundings, they have developed complex languages which consist of a click Sound and some little whistling. Despite their subhuman portrayal in Hollywood films, the san people are among the most hospitable in the world, they share everything with one another even with strangers, they share their food and water. They are a kind gentle people that deserve to be treated with respect.

Incredible rock art has been found in the Kalahari and Namib deserts, these are areas that have been inhabited by the San People for millennia, according to the art engraved on the rocks and caves of the area, the Namib and the Kalahari used to be vast grassland savannahs thousands of years ago, there are depictions of the Big Game like the Giraffes, Elephants, buffaloes, antelope and some water animals like the hippos and crocodiles, Rock art found in the Sahara desert proves that the Sahara wasn’t a desert thousands of years ago but a vast green landscape full of wetlands, rivers and lakes, savannahs and some woodland. The presence of millennia old drawings of water animals like hippos and crocodiles proves that the landscape was once covered with rivers and lakes, full of all kinds of birds and land animals.

Same in Europe, some rock art paintings have recently been discovered that are many millennia old. There are drawings of long lost prehistoric ice age creatures that no longer exist today. They shine there on the walls like creatures frozen in time. They tell very old stories that are full of fun and adventure.

Rock art has served as a notebook to the changing times of the Planet. Creatures and cultures that are long extinct get to have a voice through the art that is now engraved onto the walls of the caves of the mountains and hills of the world. Their remote locations keeps them preserved for such a long time that they always remain hidden until when discovered at the right time, and put into their right places in the history museums.

Pottery is the other thing that had been used as a preservative of stories, legendary tales are written or drawn onto the walls of Cups, plates, Pots, Spoons and almost every other kitchen item in the home. Whenever there is a natural calamity that destroys the family home, these items often survive and get to live longer than their owners, they get to tell their stories to many different generations. A good example is the Greek pottery art that has filled the museums of many modern day colleges.

5.First Written Text.

Writing evolved independently in many different pasts of the world, civilizations evolved independently from one another in the last dozen millennia, most of these civilizations emerged from areas like, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Iraq, Ancient India and Ancient China.

A)Ancient Egypt

A special type of writing evolved in Ancient Egypt called hieroglyphs. This is the use of pictures to represent thoughts and ideas. Hieroglyphs can also be referred to s pictographic. The Egyptians invented this mode of writing several thousands of years ago, writing was used to serve both religious purposes as well as to record the daily activities of a community. The authors of Egypt were a special class of people whose job was to record everything they are required to, they were called the scribes. A scribe held very high position in the society because many people at the time could not read. They were directly under the command of the Pharaohs, they were used by the pharaohs to record their military exploits and spread their own royal propaganda.

B)Ancient China.

The Chinese also made their own writing techniques that were similar to those of the Egyptians but developed their own style, their alphabet often includes characters of simplified pictographic that translates to words at the end of the sentence. Developed in the Yangtze River valley, The Chinese alphabet has more than two thousand characters all of which you have to learn in order to read and write the language correctly. It is argued by some scholars that Chinese were the first people to invent the printing press more than a millennia before the German Gutenberg made his revolutionary invention. It was because of the complexity writing in Chinese characters that made it impossible for the printing revolution catch steam in china. Chinese language is not only hard in character writing but also word pronunciations.

C) Ancient Sumer

The ancient Sumer was a precursor to other ancient civilizations like the Assyrians, Babylonians then later Greeks and Romans. It developed in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys thousands of years ago. The Sumerians developed a system of writing called the cuneiform, which were simplified symbols to represent words and sounds. With the help of their scribes, they wrote on wet clay tablets which were later left out to dry in the sun or burnt in a furnace. The Sumerian royal libraries were always full of clay tablets. Records of all kinds filled the libraries ranging from religious, commercial, legal and entertainment purposes. The most famous surviving Sumerian tablet is the one that tells the Legend of Gilgamesh, it is a legend that has similar elements in other cultures around the world.

D) Ancient Phoenicia

The modern day Latin script is mostly of Phoenician origin, they resemble a lot most the languages we use today, ancient Phoenicians lived around the eastern Mediterranean where they had built a string of city states, their lives revolved around trade and their merchant ships were very famous around the region. They traded with many nations therefore spreading their cultures and traditions onto others, their trading expertise eventually brought them incredible wealth which they used to expand their maritime expeditions even further.

E) Ancient Greece

One of the civilizations to benefit from Phoenician culture was ancient Greece, the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added more characters, Greek literature later flourished after the expansion of their regional influence through the conquests made by alexander the great. When alexander died, he left a huge empire that was divided between his generals, the next few centuries of the Hellenistic period ensured the spread of Greek language, culture and populations to the neighboring states. A significant proportion of the civilized world is now speaking Greek and writhing in their language, many of which survive to this very day.

F) Ancient Rome

Most roman scholars admired ancient Greek culture that came before them. After they took over the Greek empire, the romans ensured that they retained as much as they could of ancient Greek culture and language, their Latin script was based of mostly Greek alphabet which they later modified to suit their own language. Romans had very deep respect for Greek civilizations, culture, language and religion, apart from literature, they adopted most of their technology in engineering, construction, sciences, philosophy and military technology. Latin continued to remain the dominant language in Europe many centuries after the collapse of the roman empire.

Inscription-30-Literary Categories Worth Considering

The list of categories once can choose to develop their story plot is quiet endless, literally every known topic in the world has a potential audience as long as the poet fully understands whom their target is, a yellow pages manual always appears to be a huge complicated piece of printout in the eyes of the untrained reader, but once you get the hang of it, yours hands sail across the pages like a yacht moving across a lagoon, its so straightforward.

Legal

No country can run smoothly without s properly working legal system. It’s the laws of the land that bind the nation together and keep everything in harmony with one another. If there are no laws in a country then anarchy will rule the land , we have seen in countries experiencing civil wars or some kind of internal strife. This leads to a breakdown of law and order that is followed by total anarchy. Life therefore becomes miserable for everybody else

Social Issues

Every society in the world has its own sets of social issues that should be properly addressed in a timely manner, if not then social cohesion that kept the community peaceful and happily living with one another completely shatters, there needs to be openness in the society so that people are freely able to express themselves and talk about their personal problems.

Crime

Honestly speaking, crime is everywhere in the world. There is not a single nation on this earth that doesn’t have criminals. Some countries have a higher crime rate than others, but what makes the difference is how the state responds to it, there are many factors in the society that lead to many levels of crime, things such as socioeconomic status of a community determines how frequent crimes such as robbery with violence or kidnappings are prevalent. The community's culture is also a great contributing factor on what happens to individuals when they grow up and lead their adult life. The world knows very well that having proper correctional facilities is the key to reducing the levels of crime in a particular region.

Literary

Every society in the world has it s own form of literature highly embedded into its cultural fabric. The communities history and traditions are preserved in the literature that is later passed down from one generation to another. Literature encompasses so many things in our lives other than keeping the world reminded of the good olden days. Every academic institution in the world was born out of literary enthusiasm.

World Wide Web

Invented a few decades ago by Tim Berners Lee , the world wide web has become part and parcel of our modern day lives, its very evident that we do everything today with the help of the internet, from doing shopping, learning, dating. Working etc. everything is now online. Nobody could have even imagined that life would change so drastically from the way it is today. Thanks to the earlier pioneers of the internet, we live a much better life today than we had several generations ago.

Family and friendship

Family is the smallest unit of a nation or community, when we are around family and friends we are always free to express ourselves in a way that is not normal with strangers. We all need loving family and friends to lean on their shoulders as we cry our pains out. Without family life would be very miserable as we know it.

Feminism

Feminism is a movement that shoed up a few decades ago and got very mixed reactions from the society. There are those that have fully embraced it while there are those that have completely rejected it. Feminists claim to be advocating for women's rights but sometimes the end up going beyond the bar. Feminists activists sometimes behave in a way that is very appalling to the members of the general public which has led them to be dismissed as psychos.

Household

The family home is the place we curl ourselves for comfort, every person needs a place to call home. Owning a home is the one thing that restores human dignity. Homeless folks are always expressed to all kinds of dangerous that they may have every little to no control over.

Philosophy

Ancient Greeks were famous for their thinkers. They thought up things that never crossed the minds of the people of their time. Those were thinkers that were hired to think on behalf of the society. Right now everybody is a philosopher and a motivational speaker. It is now a common subject in many academic institutions today.

Business and economics

Our today world is run by advanced commerce. From the way people bought things through barter trade in the ancient past to the high speed ecommerce platforms of today, we can honestly say that we have come a very long way. Every teen today has some knowledge of business and economics, because that’s what they do everyday without them noticing it. We are in the richest period in humanity's history right fro the emergence of our first civilizations to our modern day technologically advanced world.

Professions

Its every child's dream to have a profession to follow up in life and pursue throughout their entire adult life. Professions allow one to specialize in the field of their choice, something they love and are very passionate about. Division of labor and specialization is the thing that has made our modern world become efficient as it is and more focused in the desired manner.

Psychology

Many people think that those people who study psychology are mind readers, well that may be the case to some extent, but that is not being called a psychic. Psychology is a very broad subject covering not just human way of thinking but also behavior. It is the holistic approach to the mind of things, whether you just think it up or act on it, is the same thing.

Technology

Our modern day technology has advanced very rapidly, right from the invention of the wheel thousands of years ago to the way we live our today lifestyles is an incredible transformation. Technology that was very cool a few decades ago is classified as obsolete right now, from travel, communication, learning, smart homes, working and everything else is greatly advanced.

Food and Dining

We all remember how we enjoyed our last delicious dinner. Food is the cradle of humanity and we are in a position to make things work this way. The diversity of cuisine in the world gives a solid reflection of the diversity of the world we live in today. If you want to know about another culture hen you should try their food, you will be mesmerized.

Communication

From the time our ancestors were engraving paintings in the rocks of the mountains to our present moment whereby we send messages through electronic means, so much has changed for the society though much of the message remains the same. Humans need to be constantly communicating with one another in order to survive the harsh environment on the planet, so our early ancestors built efficient communication tools to aide them in their day today activities.

Culture

When people travel abroad they often face culture shocks, sometimes people discover that things which are totally normal in their own culture are completely frowned upon in other cultures. It takes a while to adjust to the new culture that you move in any time you make it work. All cultures are different and we need to accept this reality of things.

Hobbies

Everyone likes doing their own things in their own time. Even though we all share similar hobbies there is always something that someone likes doing that makes them totally different from all the others, who still collects stamps today? By a show of hands?

Danger

The human life is fraught with danger. Life is frail and risky wherever we go. It is up to every individual to be cautious with their steps so that the do not put themselves or others in danger. Motorists should be careful with their driving so that they don’t put themselves or other road users in grave danger. We all should work hard to get our brethren out of harm's way.

Geography

Our planet is extremely large with a diameter of 500k miles across. Its covered mostly with water and the remaining part being habitable land. Very early explorers tried to circumnavigate the globe so as to to properly ,map it. Many unfortunately ended up paying with their own lives . When they failed to reach their destinations they were still hailed as heroes by the academic world.

Lifestyle

Every young teenager today wants to live the flashy lifestyle they see in cinema and other places. Not all of us can afford that you know. A lot of the things you see in cinema and social media is all fake. Nothing but forgery in the highest form of expression. Why is everyone suddenly showing off like they are filthy rich? Why is that?

Religion

Our planet is the home to more than six thousand religions, the most prominent being Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. A lot of innocent people have lost their lives in the worldwide wars of religious cleansing. Each religion claims to be more superior than all the others. Some countries have multiple religions within their borders while others do not tolerate other religions that are not approved by the state.

Arts

The arts world has captures the imagination of human endeavor, today, millions of people travel to the Louvre in France to take a look of a picture of a famous woman who is commonly referred to as Mona Lisa. The painting is many centuries old, yet it still mesmerizes the world today.

Fitness and exercise

Everyone wants to look young and athletic despite their age, but our modern world doesn’t allow us to do so, we are so busy with our personal lives that we don’t take little amount of time to lift some weights in the gym. No one likes going to the gym but everyone needs some healthy exercise irrespective of their age or gender. People need to spend a day off, take some walk in the park or walk their dog outside on the weekend. Fitness is not a fashion trend but a necessity that every person needs.

Nature

We are surrounded by beautiful nature, from crystal clear waters of the streams to the lush green grasses to the pristine landscapes, its no joke that we need to protect our environment at all costs. We need mother nature to survive but mother nature doesn’t need us to survive. Its sad that so much environmental destruction is going on in the world around us yet there isn't much we can do about it. Citizens should continue putting pressure on their government to properly protect the environment.

History

For those that like digging up the past, history is on your side, do not give up digging because its through uncovering our past experiences that we manage to handle the hardships we go through today. Well documented history can become a great tool to be used as a guide that will help the modern day humans overcome the challenges they are facing at present. Prepare for the future but never forget about the past'' is the common phrase motivational speakers bombard us every single day.

Health

Who doesn't like to be healthy at all times? Nobody of course. Old people crave the vitality and vigor of a small child. The old age comes with so many health issues such if the aged didn’t have loving family around them to provide for them and shield them from potential harm. Old people's bones are brittle and therefore cannot handle heavy duty work. It takes an incredible long time for an old man's bones to properly repair themselves.

Leadership

As the old adage goes, that you must first govern yourself before you think of governing others. Its not just about blind governance but a long process of crowd management. For those that run into the clutches of political leadership they need to be faced with so much turmoil that they wont know what to do when trouble gets them in office. Everyone wants yo change the world but no one wants to change himself.

Astronomy

For those folks that like gazing into the night sky, what do you see? The nights stars are at their most beautiful moments in the complete darkness of the nights. Life in the cities creates so much light pollution that it is incredibly difficult to spot the stars in the open sky. If you can get yourself a telescope, then be ready to see a world of wonders. The planets, the solar systems, the milky way, the galaxies all are pretty beautiful to watch at night.

Science

Modern day science has become some sort of religion. Its hard for people to believe in any concept until they see scientifically proven. centuries ago scientists were greatly frowned upon , and science itself was regarded as unethical, now things have turned upside down. Its science that has taken the number one podium while everything else follows it. Scientists of the old are hailed as heroes by the modern day academics. Science is cool.

Sport

We remember sports in our schools. During our prime age we always went out in the fields to play with our friends during leisure from academic work. Playing is very important for every child's growth and development, therefore, students who engage in co-curricular activities end up growing well holistically and mentally. They get to perform better in their academic studies. Sport is an essential part of human life and now that we live in a sedentary lifestyle we need it even more.

Self Help

At some point in life we feel so low and worthless to the point where no kind of motivation can be of any help to us. So we therefore try to comfort ourselves in whatever way we can. What motivation can be more peaceful than the one that comes from within oneself? You don’t need to read lots of books or listen to motivational speakers but instead look deep into oneself and reflect on your life, this is probably the best thing in your life you can even do so go for it.

Entertainment

Modern day entertainment has gone beyond the old style rigorous activity we used to have in the olden days. Most of it now we can confidently say its electronic. Modern day parents are becoming very concerned about seeing their kids spending their entire days in the house playing video games when they should be outside running around in the family's backyard. Modern day entertainment has its own ups and downs. Things like cinema were very appealing when they first showed up on the scenes, millions of people flocked into the theatres, they were very revolutionary at the time. Nothing like them existed before and people were delighted that they could watch pictures of things taking place many thousands of miles away on the home screen. Cinema also become a powerful propaganda tool during the world wars.

Christian

Being the number one religion in the world, Christianity has spread to almost every corner of the planet right from its humble beginnings in the Jewish cities of Jerusalem in modern day Israel. The religion has splintered into many factions the main ones being roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The Catholics form the majority of the sect while the protestants come in second. Protestantism itself is split up into several more smaller subdivisions that are fiercely opposed to each other's doctrines. Christianity is a religion of so many colors and contrasts.

Travel and adventure

We all want to go out some day and explore the world like the adventures of the old. The road less travelled however is fraught with danger, we hear horror stories of tourists in trouble almost everyday in the evening news. When exploring the world may be a lot of fun, travellers should be more careful with their footsteps because not every place has their personal safety guaranteed. For those of you who can afford it, you can travel the world enjoying yourself, but always remember that danger is always around the corner, no place can ever be one hundred percent safe.

Environmental issues

We will continue to reiterate time and again that environmental issues are certainly the most pressing issues of our time. We are facing a myriad of issues such as global warming, climate change draughts, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, mass extinctions, mass deforestations, plastic pollution, air pollution, water pollution and all these are happening simply because man is unable to control his appetite for extracting vast natural resources for his personal use. Humanity has reached a point whereby the reversal of damage created by humans is almost impossible.

Genetics

Since the discovery of the double helix shape of DNA several decades ago, genetics has always fascinated scientists so many more discoveries have also been made after that owing to the fact that science continues to advance each more coming day. There are some ethical issues however that emerged from genetics this includes cloning of animals such as dolly genetically modified foods also known as GMOs. Right from their creation to this very day, GMOs still remain a very controversial topic in our modern day societies. A lot of genetics nowadays is quiet unethical.

Music

Music has always existed since the day man started walking the face of the earth. Cavemen used sticks and rocks to create music and also cut some animal skins to make drums that they would beat at a regular pattern depending on the ceremony. Music had advanced very much since then, the ancient civilizations played flutes made out of hollowed out tree branches or animal bones, they also played harps lyre, modern day music is very electronic, you don’t even need a musical instrument to play, all you need is simply download a software onto your pc and you are ready to go.

Comedy

In ancient Greek theatrical plays, comedy is a play that ends well for the protagonist while tragedy is a play that doesn’t end well for the lead actor, though the world has changed a lot in meaning to encompass things that are not necessary to refer to anything humorous in general. Stand up comedy is on the rise and many people are making careers out of it, its not about simple laughter, but making the audience enjoy your entire speech.

Archeology

A lot of scientists today have found great passion in digging up ancient bones, be it of kings and nobilities of the old or of long extinct animals and plant species. Archeology is big business these days. Museums make millions of dollars every year exhibiting bones of long dead dinosaurs that have been carefully preserved in the rocks of the earth. There are a lot of secrets still hidden in the rocks of the earth today.

War

No one knows when war first started but experts believe it existed long before civilizations rose and fell. The cavemen used to fight one another with rocks, sticks and weapons made of animal bones. Ancient civilizations preferred the act of warfare by making weapons out of metals like bronze and iron. Ancient Rome, Greece, Persia, Egypt and Sumer prospered through conquests achieved through warfare.

Linguistics

Most people in developing countries speak at least two or more languages, for those that do not speak English as their first language, they usually face incredible difficulty transitioning from one language to another. Its better to be bilingual even if you are not fully fluent in that second language you still have to continue learning new things for it opens up your mind to the material knowledge of the world. Languages may seem a little bit difficult to learn at first but once you get the hang of it, it always a quick breeze, we have to continue finding a way of learning new vocabularies, terminologies, phrases and figures of speech. The more languages you are fluent in the easier your life is likely to be in the long run.

Rocket science

The entire Humanity held their breathe in the late sixties when they watched the first man to walk on the moon. Neil Armstrong will remain an icon in the eyes of many rocket scientists. Lunar explorations however started much earlier as early as nineteen twenties. American scientists were building and testing rockets in their home country.

Teamwork

Nothing of significance ever gets achieved in an organization without the cooperation of the team. All people had to work with one another to achieve a common goal. It’s the goal of the management to keep up team spirits so that the morale of the staff remains high and assignments could be accomplished much faster and more efficiently. Management should never underestimate the value of keeping up staff morale.

Ethics

Societies cannot function properly without accepted code of conduct by the citizens, certain behaviors may be accepted in one community but greatly frowned upon by another. Its ethics that maintain the moral high ground in communities and allows people to be proud of their unique identity. The word ethos originally Greek is now everyday term used to represent moral standards.

Motivational

We cannot honestly advance our lives in the modern world without a little does of motivation, the hardships we face are so heartbreaking and so difficult that a little dose of encouragement from family, friends or complete strangers is enough to push us on. E have to keep moving however harsh the challenges may be ahead of you. motivational is the food for the mind and soul.

Love and relationships

Everyone at least remembers the first time they had a crush on their schoolmate and though it was real love. Many people believe in love at first sight while others would like to explore their other avenues long before they return to the so called sweetheart. There is a lot of information out there giving advice to couples or people in particular kind or relationship. Is love advice from other people that are not presently in a relationship worth following or even listen to? People guard their hearts from heartbreak.

Education

Primary education is now compulsory in most parts of the world except in places like Afghanistan , children now start going to school from a very early age and spend most of their childhood in school. By the time they are adults they would have learned so much information that would help them take care of their adult life, however not all children are born equal, there are millions of children out of school today because of one reason or the other.

Computing

Computers became famous in the mid nineties with release of windows as by Microsoft. Its like all of a sudden computers became fashionable and every person wants to get their hands onto them. Computers appeared a little bit scary at first but once their usefulness was established they became a necessity and became a part and parcel of every household.

Political

Politics is a dirty game. We all know this catchy phrase, but people still go into politics to build a career despite this bad reputations they have for ruining peoples public image. The political arena is not a simple thing that someone can joke about despite their home grown career training, you need to be extravagant in your moves because the world is watching you and one single misstep could bring your downfall.

Beauty and fashion

A lot of folks want to work in the fashion industry, many however don’t know how to get about it. This is an industry that is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. It has turned some people into tycoons and many more people continue to make a killing out of the industry, the fashion industry has however been accused of things like labor exploitations environmental damage and racism biases through some of its cosmetic products.

Pets

Cats and dogs are very popular pets found in millions of households across the world today. They are very friendly and docile creatures, they also act as security sometimes, when burglars break into your homes, they are among the first to save your life. There are dogs however that are sometimes extremely dangerous even to the members of the family. Dozens of innocent people have been mauled to death by pitbulls in the last decade alone.

Media

The mainstream media gained its popularity at dawn of the last century. The invention of radio, television and printing press allowed people to instantly receive news of things that were happening around the globe. For decades now, it has been the only source of information to may households across the globe. It is trusted by the majority to provide reliable news information.

Weather and climate

We are facing erratic weather patterns in the last few decades as we continue to envisage a world of clean air, water and soils, in many parts of the world today, weather is becoming more and more extreme in the sense that people are finding it difficult to live their normal lives, extreme heat and heat waves a few years ago sent some people to the ICU and a lot of outdoor activities to be suspended. Extreme cold on the other hand has led to snowstorm that destroyed power lines and out the lives of millions of people at risk.

Mental Health

Even today there is still a lot of stigma attached to things concerning mental health. People are afraid to open up about their mental health issues for fear of being subjected to public ridicule. It is an issue that affects the lives of millions of people worldwide and therefore needs to be properly addressed if the society needs to move forward. It should be normalized and treated like just any other bodily ailment that people suffer everyday.

END OF INSCRIPTIONS.

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Final Clause

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Footnotes.

My most used/favourite stylistic features

- Sharp contrast

- Heavy metaphor

- Extravagant exaggeration.

The reference to masculine characters In the above stories is not a biased motive to discriminate against any gender, it's just for the purposes of description, the authors repeated use of words such as he/him/man/king are just for the purposes of enchanting the narrative, if you feel offended by them then feel free to replace them with whatever words you choose as you read along, these pronouns are NOT put in place to intimidate, you can also contact the author directly and specify which part should changes be made to and to what particular effect, the author respects all readers and will not misrepresent members of any class, age, status or gender. All readers are precious.

I am trying to avoid the inconvenience of having to jump from one side of the group to another as it easily puts the readers off, jumping from side to side, back and forth, here and there is really irritating, take for instance it's better to say, "the king came out of his castle, called the knights and asked him to take him out on a ride through the royal forests and left his son in charge of the castle," than to say, "the king/queen came out of his/her castle, called the knight/knightess and asked him/her to take him/her out on a ride through the royal forest and left his/her son/daughter in charge of the castle"

Textual homogeneity- some aspects of the words, phrases and stories share lots of similarities with one another, the keen reader who repeatedly crosscheck between different tittles will definitely notice this trend, if characters are portrayed in such a sluggish manner that makes the text boring to the reader, then reader please remember to inform the author as soon as possible.

Cover image: Grey old Vulture in studies, theme by the Author