‘Wow! I didn’t know someone like you could write a story as deep as that. I even scrolled back to the top of the page to confirm that it was you,’ she adjusted the frame of her glasses as she spoke.

‘Really?’  I asked.

‘Yes now,’ she went on. ‘You know you visit all those fashion blogs everyday. And you’re…’ I could see her struggling to find the right word ‘trendy. Honestly I didn’t know you could write like that,’ she said with a belittling chuckle.

I stared at her too-white teeth and felt like shaking her. But I didn’t. However I did say something about not judging a book by its cover and how I wasn’t a fashion guru or a celebrity stalker – which may or may not be true depending on who is telling the story.

The relationship between literature and fashion is a precarious one. The globally accepted style for the African female writer is terribly bohemian; confined to dreadlocks, afros, turbans, conspicuous wooden bangles and ankle skimming ankara skirts. The average person will assume that you’re vain the minute they discover you love fashion. It’s okay to overindulge in chocolate, books, cars or exotic vacations. But if you love clothes or shoes you stand the risk of being regarded as an airhead.

After the last book reading I attended, I got home heavy headed from loud debates about why the theme of solitude ran through Márquez’s novels and whether or not Mario Llosa deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Then I took off my six inch heels and flung them away like a crumpled sheet of paper. And as I watched them sail across the room, I felt like crying.  My towering heels had done nothing to hide the fact that I was a dilettante as far as literature was concerned.

In my quest to be published, I have received letter after letter of rejection and acceptance.  Some of the editors who bothered to reply were kind enough to explain why my story wasn’t selected. So I got a lot of: ‘I don’t think you’ve found your voice’ even though I wasn’t aware that I had lost my voice and ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to pass on this one, your writing is a bit too plebeian for our taste’ even though they didn’t say what their preferred taste was.

I believe the best writers write well because they read widely. Many will argue that it is impossible for me to write like Cheever, Achebe and Hemmingway if The Devil Wears Prada and Confessions of a Shopaholic are some of my best books of the twenty first century. It hasn’t dawned on them that I do not want to write like Cheever and co. Or that while there are certain authors I enjoy reading, I am not fanatic enough to become their literary doppelgangers.

Take the bustling Lagos social scene on the other hand. Just wear a playsuit or a jumpsuit or a birthday suit, grab a pair of coloured contact lenses – preferably green or blue – and the mandatory twenty inch Peruvian weave. Then attend the right social gatherings, master the art of contrived air kissing, appear in Scene and Be Seen and voila!  A fashionista is born. If you flip through the airbrushed pictures in newspaper fashion inserts, while you’ll find a potpourri of professionals, business men, socialites and actors, you’re not likely to find any author in there.  How can you be regarded as a ‘serious’ writer when you live in rabid fear of being photographed in the same outfit twice? How can you claim to be an ‘African’ writer when you’re smiling for the camera instead of telling the kind of stories that will bring us foreign aid?

I give up. It’s no use willing the god of fashion to win the god of literature. So, to appease the latter, I’ve written a handbook to help me look more like a writer:

1. My Jimmy Choos have got to go. It doesn’t matter that I starved for months just so I could buy them on sale. Bye bye Jimmy Choos, Welcome sensible, label-free shoes suitable for the black and white portrait on my dust jacket.
2. I’ve forfeited my sixteen inch Brazilian weave for a brand new dreadlocked diet. I’ve also cancelled my eyebrow waxing appointment at the Day Spa. If Frida Kahlo could grow a unibrow, so can I.
3. My parents do not exist. But when I become a famous, critically acclaimed author they will appear. My mother will write a tell-all autobiography revealing that my baby doll was named Twiggy, not Amelia Jane like I claim and I’ll sue her.
4. My Estee Lauder Lipstick in Extravagant Red has gone AWOL. So has my Benefit Bad Girl Eyeliner. Swipe by swipe I’ve stripped my face clean of makeup. Now it’s easier for me to go about with the pained expression befitting for the heavy themes in my stories.
5. Sophie who? Marian who? Sorry, never heard of them. I am a serious writer who only reads serious, prize winning authors.  I ordered Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom from Amazon even though I still haven’t been able to get past page ten after a month. But I’m making progress.
6. It’s official. CNN is now my favourite TV channel. Who knew that Inside Africa presented such an inside view of Africa? Sure I’ll miss the Kardashians’ antics and Joan Rivers’ creative insults but whoever said a writer’s life is easy?
7. No more Le Petit Marche. No more Sexy et Fabuleaux. My GTB MasterCard lies frozen in my deep freezer. Note to self: remember, Labyrinths is Christopher Okigbo’s poetry collection, not the latest fragrance by Guerlain.
8. I’ll attend every edition of the BookJam at Silverbird even though I’m clueless about the guest authors.  Never mind the time I mistook Chinweizu for a deity. I’ll blurt out Jhumpa Lahiri, not Carrie Bradshaw, when I’m asked who my favourite author is.
9. I’ll stop harassing my vendor for copies of élan and ThisDay Style every Sunday. I’ll get rid of the ceiling-high pile of French Vogue and Italian Elle in my bedroom. From this day forward, I do solemnly swear to read Okike, Granta and The New Yorker.
10. Public Notice: massive DVD auction of  the complete seasons of Sex and the City, Gossip Girl and Ugly Betty going…going…gone!If I still don’t bear any resemblance to a writer after following these rules, I’ll quietly relocate to another planet.  Until then, I’ll just keep doing what I love to do most. Write.

Suzanne Ushie