What do I write?

I was at a Ghana Women Writers Forum a while back - a group that meets regularly for book readings, critique evenings and anything literary-related,  and the question that kept coming up all evening was: What do you write?

The answer is everything. I write lists: extensive to-do lists, lists of names from my childhood, things I enjoying doing, things I want to do, places I plan to visit, alongside my shopping lists. I write notes, to my family, to myself, in letters, emails and blogs.

More seriously though, I keep a journal, a yet-to-be-published novel, and the start of a collection of short stories. I am in no way ready to claim a genre, nor am I entirely sure I want to as yet. I admire writers that can move with ease from one genre to another and still retain a freshness and agility each time.

I hope to one day be able to weave a tale like Jhumpa Lahiri or JM Coetzee; or enthrall with a mere phrase like Chimamanda Adichie or Tsitsi Dangarembga; to entertain like John Updike or Jay McInerney ; or go historical like Austen or Brontë.

For now though, I will quietly write from my corner, hoping to one day be bold enough to say: Here, this is what I write - read and weep. I admire the other writers in the group who confidently read out their writing. I am still fearfully worrying about whether or not it will be liked sufficiently to even be worth a critique.

Getting past the fear? You could say that I have not yet. But one day.