Joy Uwanziga is an expatriate and a writer living in The Hague, Netherlands. She is the author of the book "Manners in Rwanda: Basic Knowledge on Rwandan Culture, Customs, and Kinyarwanda Language”, her debut book and ‘The Incredible Ways of Parenting You Always Wanted to Know’ that was recently published.

Her first book talks about culture, history and manners in Rwanda and has been among the first 100 bestsellers on Amazon (Africa Department) since 2015, three months after its publication.

Her second piece is a parental guide book to help parents, guardians and readers around the world.

She shared with Sunday Magazine’s Sharon Kantengwa about her books and her love for writing.

In summary, what is your book ‘The Incredible ways of parenting’ about?

The book is a product of my extensive research and my personal experience as a mother. It allows us to learn from the experts and equip ourselves with the scenarios that can be harrowing for new parents or to the ones who need further learning support.

The book also deals with important aspects of parenting, offering creative answers for many of the most common parental dilemmas and mistakes. It incorporates modern and traditional methods that serve its purpose to maintain a parent-children harmony.

From infancy to being a toddler, it includes scientific explanation and psychological understanding on children’s growth and supporting their physical and emotional necessities. It emphasises the need to teach children to do the right thing through proper discipline which plays a crucial role of shaping their character.

It further includes practical and useful key points for the parents as their children become teens. It involves their behavior, self-esteem, physical changes, appearance, sexuality, privacy and their overall well-being.

It also offers solutions on how to deal with stressful times in the best possible means and how to create a positive environment for the entire family.The book can be found on Book a million  and Barnes and Noble . It is also available at Ikirezi and Caritas libraries, in Kigali.

What informs your writing?

Usually something very minor- a story in the local paper, a snatch of a conversation at a party, or something someone tells me about their lives that grabs my interest and makes me start thinking about the "but what if ?”

What inspires you to write?

What I love about writing is that it gives me the opportunity to share big ideas with so many people, I would never have had the chance to meet in person.

Take us through the difficulties of writing this book...

With the long solitary hours required, writing can be lonely. In addition, it may look strange to people who are not writers. It isn’t very dynamic, so people you live with may just see you vanishing into a room from time to time and staggering out looking exhilarated or discouraged or simply lost in your own thoughts.

What’s your advice to an aspiring novelist?

If you are working on a long novel, sometimes you get little encouragement.  But there are many reasons to write and writing does require sacrifices of time and energy.

For many writers, if the joy in writing dissipates, there is little point in continuing.

At the same time, losing your joy in writing does not mean that writing is over for you. More likely, it simply means that you need to re-calibrate your relationship to writing.

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