MENTORSHIP RECIPIENT

Mentorship Recipient: Collage

Mentor Commentary:
Nardine Taleb

On the Revision Process for "Collage"

by ​​Zenas Ubere

I had written the first draft of “Collage” during the COVID-19 lockdown in my city, Owerri. It was a chaotic time, and as the chaos around me kept unfurling and our solitary lives continued, I kept tinkering with the idea: making a collage out of prose pieces, chaos being the thematic thread. After peer reviews and a lot of rewrites, I sent out the piece.
 
When I received the acceptance letter from Gordon Square Review, where Nardine noted she loved my piece and would be granting me editorial mentorship in preparation for publication, I was excited. Working with her was phenomenal. Her editorial comments were elaborate, with brilliant suggestions on improving the work. She had a razor-sharp eye for superfluous words. She saw where my idea was headed and helped me take “Collage” there, and I am very grateful for that. One of Nardine’s suggestions I particularly liked, from our first editorial round, renovated the layout of the piece: I had to move a small section from the middle and attach it to the beginning of the work, as the line was closely related to the beginning and would read stronger there. And after I did this, the piece had a more coherent face, and I was glad she had suggested it.
 
In total, we had three rounds of editorial suggestions and changes. And at the end of these edits, sentences got trimmed, paragraphs shortened, letting these fragmented prose pieces collage into a beautiful whole.
 
Thank you, Nardine!
​

Zenas Ubere 

Zenas Ubere is a Nigerian writer. His works appear in Lolwe, Barren Magazine, Agbowo, Praxis Magazine, The Weight of Years - An Afro Anthology of Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. He writes from Owerri.