The grandeur —the voices that have earned coinages, snapped fingers and all those glittering trophies photographed and posted on social media, are flames —a burning proof. If you don’t look closely, you won’t realize that behind a fire, there’s a tinder willing to burn.

I often received emails requesting that I adopt the sender as a creative writing mentee. There’s always air to breathe in. It’s sometimes the shortness of the lung to take oxygen from the environment that results to seizure. There’re always students for me to teach. Time is the treasure I steal from my young family and give to them. I would love to do more. Over one-hundred mentees with less than fifty published writers aren’t a good feat.

I have given a greater part of me to the next generation writers. What I do is beyond teaching. You’d see my students and I at art festivals together. I often dread writing to parents or meeting them for permission, especially when it has to do with traveling with their children for almost a week. I have prostrated to parents on several occasions. I’ve been cursed by parents, some failing to understand that writing skill will not seat on academic dreams.

A thing of joy, to be recognized as a mentor. However, the knowledge that my mentees are carving their niche in the literary world makes me better-off.

Author’s Biography

Blessing Omeiza Ojo teaches Creative Writing at Jewel Model Secondary Schools. He currently has work forthcoming in The Shallow Tales Review. Outside of writing, sermonizing, knocking PES with friends, he translates into American and Nigerian Sign Language. Omeiza resides with his wife, Enchantress and son, Joel, in Kubwa, Abuja.