Mabel Aghadiuno has loved writing since primary school. Born in Scotland of Nigerian parents, she ended up being a GP. Her passion for writing was revitalised four years ago when she tried her hand at fiction after producing a published work of non-fiction.
When she was accepted on to the Almasi League Writers’ Programme, headed by award-winning writer Courttia Newland, Aghadinuo was exposed to new writing, felt challenged as a writer and is now working on a series of short stories and is producing an outline for a novel.
Aghadiuno tells Joy Francis how before she joined the programme she felt that writing and the barriers to publication facing writers of colour were the “great unknown”, and explains why she is now determined not to be pigeon-holed.
Despite a love of writing as a child, you only started writing fiction four years ago. What sparked that commitment?
It’s a long gap. I would write the odd short story in between. I also wrote a work of non-fiction, looking at the spiritual dimension of health. While I was writing the book, I was really struck by the patients’ stories, of illness, how they coped and what they learnt. This was the most interesting part of the book for me. Because of the type of research I did for the book, and the whole process of writing, I didn’t want it to end. In 2010, to support my writing process, I did a course at the London School of Journalism. I noticed there were other courses, so I decided to do a short story writing course.
How would you describe your writing style and what themes are you interested in?
I wouldn’t know how to describe my writing style. I am particularly interested in voices. When we did the Newham writing course [the Almasi League programme] with Courttia [Newland], I was able to understand story writing better. I discovered that indirect narrative and indirect speech interests me. That is what I try to draw out in my writing. I write about the things I experience, such as illness. In medicine, there is a lot of focus on disease. For me, it’s about how illness changes people’s lives, how it conditions people and how it helps them to grow. My short stories tend to feature illness in some way as that is the world I know.
Before you joined the Newham writing programme, what type of writer would you say you were?
I had a question mark around being a writer because I didn’t know if I was any good. There was always doubt, but I didn’t want that to stop me writing either. Even being accepted onto the programme was like an affirmation. I come from a world where I judge success by what I do to help someone. I know that if someone has a certain diagnosis, I can treat it in some way. With writing, it’s the great unknown for me. Also writing is so subjective in terms of taste. Sometimes what is judged as good writing for some may not be appealing to others, but being on the programme helped to broaden my horizons. There’s an area of your brain where you don’t know what you don’t know. I know I’m ignorant about a lot of things, but finding out what I was ignorant about was really good for me. Hearing others share their writing and writing experiences, how they saw the world and wrote about the world made me realise I had more to learn.
What was it like being with writers of different genres and experiences?
It was just great to be with a mixture of writers and hear a bit of everyone’s stories, about how they got there. There was one person who was very lyrical in their writing and how they used words, or how they captured emotion with very few words. I also learnt from Courttia’s own writing. To have the privilege of being with an established writer and to learn directly from him was one of the great things about being on the programme. There was the choice of writing, which was very diverse, and the homework was to read material and discuss it in class. I also learnt about the process of writing. I wouldn’t have sat down and done that on my own, or read the books on the reading list. The important thing was the discipline. On the Monday night I had to produce work that was worthy enough to share with the group. That was when I realised how much I needed the others.
What would you say are the barriers facing writers of colour?
I didn’t realise how many there were. One of the barriers I noticed was an acceptance of the way that you write and experience the world. When I have a patient, I see no barrier to the story being told. If I see or create a barrier, that story will not be told. I have to facilitate the telling of that story, so that was an eye opener for me.
What was the highpoint of the programme for you?
It was when we had a reading of our work. We all had a chance to present our work in one of the rooms at a university. It was good that each person’s work was valued and we could present it in the way we thought fit. I was grateful for that.
What type of writer would you say you are now and how has your perception of yourself changed?
Before the course, I was writing about things I had experienced or seen. I didn’t have a problem with writing that way as I saw it as transcending colour and race. What I’m aware of now is that there may barriers to publication, of which I wasn’t aware and didn’t dream there might be. I’m going to have to face them. I now feel that I want to write about what I want to write about. Because I’m a writer of colour, it doesn’t mean I will only write about certain topics and I refuse to be pigeonholed.
What next for you and your writing?
We had an editor come speak with us, Ellah Allfrey. She was pragmatic and helpful. Until then, I didn’t realise that publishing short stories was more difficult than publishing novels in terms of sell-ability. It left me at a bit of an impasse as I have some short stories I have been writing for a while. I thought, should I write a novel just for the sake of it? At the same time, I don’t want to write something that nobody wants to read. If you have a novel published first, short stories are more likely to be read, so that’s where I am. I have a novel that I’m working on and I have some short stories I want to polish. Ellah did suggest entering them into competitions. I still have to act on that.