The art of writing is said to be quite similar to carpentry; meaning one literally pieces words together to make a great story the same way wood is pieced together to come up with an adorable piece of furniture.

In a writer’s workshop held last Monday at Goethe institut- Kigali, a handful of writers from around Kigali gathered to listen to renowned editor and publishing specialist Kate Haines in a two hour session from 6:30- 8:30pm.

Under the theme "Becoming an author: planning your writing project”, the workshop sought to provide and guide writers through a series of chronological steps from initial idea and concept through to publication.

Prospective authors on different genres and fields all shared ideas on what projects they would be working on and the challenges they face so far on their projects. About three writers from the audience who had sent their scripts to publishing firms equally shared their experience with colleagues.

Kate Haines through her ten years experience in the publishing industry provided writers with practical tools and ideas towards achieving their dreams; be it for screenplay, memoirs or a finished novel. 

She took writers through the stages of planning, writing, editing, rewriting and completing a writing project with much emphasis on plot, time and structure as well as strategies for making sure the project has the needed time and imaginative space.

Mark, an American Sci-Fi movie script writer currently working on a project in Rwanda shared a great deal of his experience through his project and asserted that attending the workshop emboldened ideas on his Sci-Fi project.

By the end of the workshop, it was quite noticeable that each writer had developed a plan for their different writing projects and had discussed it individually with Kate.

Kate Haines has recently worked as head of humanities at Palgrave Macmillan, a role in which she interacted and directly worked with over 200 authors from initial plan to publication. She is currently an associate editor of Kwani Trust in Nairobi and manages the Kwani manuscript project.

Being a PhD student in the same field; she is committed to her lifelong passion of helping writers realize their dreams; through her grand plan of establishing a literary publishing house called materialbook.org to be based in Kigali.