In my perfect imagination, with stern discipline I rise with the first bird, salute the dawn, have a healthy breakfast of fruits, wander over to my faux-oak desk, tap the On button on my Macbook Air, acknowledge the muse, and skip into the world where the story flows over the day and into the night.

Novel-writing is a settling, lovely space. I call it self-indulgent - I feel mildly guilty about it.

Even though we've written epic poems and made incredible films about love, I still don't think anyone can understand what it is, or why it means everything.

Even if you're in charge of the grand story there's still memory. The other stories do not go away.

The young readers I have interacted with carry old concerns repackaged in the skin of a new generation: puzzlement over continuous national moral failings, contradictions with the elders, nostalgia for a nonexistent Kenyan past.

I like talking to myself and making patterns out of the letters of the alphabet on blank surfaces.

Kenya is an immense land with a capacity for healing.