Writer, Know Thyself

How the right amount of self-awareness increases your writing productivity ✨

If you're like me, you’ve probably decided to write more in 2024.  Eleven days in, you should be worried if you haven’t done any writing or worse still, do not already have any plans other than I’ll get to it. No content calendars, no blank sheets with working titles. I would know, it’s how I sabotaged my goal to write six short stories in 2023. Big plans, [close to] zero structure. 

A great philosopher once said plans without structure are a recipe for disaster. It doesn’t help that as writers, we struggle with more: writer’s block and the overwhelming nature of working-for-bread.

When I started writing, I waited for the ideas to come to me; some of the best stories I’ve written and published came from this process. It can be addictive. Waking from a fever dream with an idea or getting inspired by a mole on the old nurse’s wrinkled face. Writing in a haze until the story is a breathing being that has snatched your breath from you. I did this consistently for years. Unfortunately and fortunately, the more my responsibilities at work and in life have grown, the harder its been to maintain that level of consistency and to rely on inspiration to write.

In December 2023, though, I started unlocking what I hope is a more reliable process. One that helped me write two stories in the middle of the busiest time of the year. 

Reaching for your stories before they reach for you. 

I’m privileged to work in close proximity to a newsroom where reporters are constantly running after stories. They know something a lot of creative writers do not know: “Stories are everywhere, waiting for someone to find them. I’m capable of finding them and telling the world about them excellently and to the delight of my audience.” It’s productive madness.  

It starts with understanding what fuels your creativity. Where do your ideas come from? What triggers your creativity? No one says it as much as they should: an important part of your process is knowing yourself. Different from finding your voice or understanding your genre or writing technique. Who am I? What themes do I care about? Writing just might be bearable (not easier, good writing never really is) once we answer these questions. 

This is not a lesson on craft. You should still read books, take masterclasses and attend workshops to be a better storyteller and writer. This is more about how to stay productive [reach for stories] as a writer or creator who wants to write or create consistently. I’m [very personally] tired of claiming to be a writer and leaving the actual writing to vibes (edited this from “… and not writing enough” because what does that even mean?) It's true that when we’re not writing, we’re still always writing. Thinking about writing. Finding story ideas. Talking about writing. Rewriting. Editing. I [very personally] want some structure around it. I want to control inspiration and not the other way round. It won’t always work but what if it does? After all, tons of writers and innovators have written about the things that inspire creativity.

“For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.” — Mark Twain, in a letter to Helen Keller, who was accused of plagiarism.

It’s no surprise that Steve Jobs said creativity is connecting things. If that’s the case, then creating productively is knowing what things to connect.

“When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.” — Steve Jobs, Wired

What are your conscious outside sources? 

You’ll find your answer when you read and reread your work, and ask: where did this story come from? Why did I write this story? Where was I when I wrote this story? Where was I when this story came to me?

Yes, you’ll cringe at your purple prose and desperate attempts to mimic James Baldwin or Chinua Achebe, but inside each story is a piece of you and inside each piece of you is the key to understanding your sources. It’s not as easy as I’ve described. A lot of writing ideas will come out of our subconscious. Something triggers something that triggers something else. But there’s the conscious which we can investigate by paying attention.

Once you find your sources, nurture them. In the same way a journalist must build relationships with human sources, you should find ways to build healthy relationships with your sources. That's not to say that if heartbreak invokes deep and beautiful lines of poetry, you should text your ex at 11 pm for a second dose. That’s a bad idea and I won’t be responsible for your self-destruction. However, you can step into the shoes of people experiencing heartbreak through friends, movies, books and talkatives on the internet and use that to trigger new stories. If you scour the internet or go out more, chances are you’ll find someone willing to talk about their interesting heartbreak experience. I know, I did spend a few years of my career collecting similar stories. 

Know the process to trust the process  

You’ve got to be the project manager of your life. I chuckle when people think the only skill to be learned as a creator is getting better at your craft. Chances are you’ll need to be a good marketer, accountant, editor and… project manager. This really is about tracking and documenting like your life depends on it. 

I recently started keeping a journal and one of the random things I try to document is the source of every single thing I write. For this issue of the newsletter, I started with wanting to explore the influence of travelling on storytelling, and how to leverage your new environment to tell strong stories. Which I’ll probably still do in a different issue. But not every writer can travel at this time or has the bandwidth to. What every writer has is a world in front of them. A world from which they can draw ideas. 

While there’s no secret sauce — at least not to my knowledge — no secret formula to coming up with strong fiction (it’s after all not content marketing or journalism), there are ways to game your system. If you have an overactive sense of imagination and curiosity, you’ve already won. But you need to be self-aware enough to know this is a weapon in your arsenal. Perhaps you’re an obsessive people-watcher and instead of dancing at the club, it’s the beautiful woman with the lisp you can’t stop looking at even though she’s not talking to you. Do you know this about yourself and can you draw a line from that experience to the next story you write? What about you with the interesting or complex childhood. How are you channeling and building on that?

Think through every step in your creation process. How was the seed planted? Who watered it? Now deliberately seek out similar seeds and constantly water them. Here are a few broad examples of idea sources you might not easily identify if you do not routinely journal your idea sources or question your process. 

• Art

• Photographs

• Music 

• Someone’s voice

• The strange and disturbing (e.g. a sixth toe, a third nipple…)

• Random conversations with friends or strangers. 

• Reading books - fiction and nonfiction 

• Reading the news (jarring things happen all the time) 

• Watching movies, documentaries and shows 

• Nature

• Experiencing new people and places 

• Trying out new experiences 

• People watching 

• Social media posts about people’s strange and wild experiences 

• Travel 

• New hobbies

• Your current occupation 

Also recognise that emotions and places could influence you. Eleven years ago, after my grandmother died, poetry was the only way I knew to express grief. An infinite amount of things can inspire you to write a story. And an infinite amount of things might inspire one story. That’s not to say that you’ll hit gold every time you read a book (if that’s one of your ideal sources of inspiration) and so you must buy more books (again, don’t say Ope Adedeji told me to buy a ton more books I won’t read in 2024. I’m literally not in my seat). 

Find patterns in your work 

In 2014, I was in a bus with an old friend when she asked if I had a muse and I told her no, but death did inspire me. My grandmother died the year before and my grandfather died that year. For the first time in my life, I was confronted with death. Saw it at such close proximity and I had so many questions. Such a nasty, cruel thing. I was furious. It fuelled my writing. Most stories started off with a dead protagonist or one that would end up dead. There was the one where death was a shadow lurking in my grandfather’s house. I didn’t and do not mind that this is an obvious pattern in my work; readers might know what happens in the end but want to know how it happens regardless. A similar pattern still runs in my work, but there are layers. For example, you’ll easily find me writing about mother-daughter relationships — which is why these relationships interest me.

I was telling a new friend about this interest in exploring the mysterious, unknown, unanswered, confusing side of life and she was quite taken by that I — who can be chummy and bright — was interested in something so dark. I shrugged. It’s why I spent hours watching the BBC Eye documentary on the Nigerian miracle maker TB Joshua or why my dissertation at UEA drew from Helen Ukpabio’s unfortunate haunt for child witches. Or why I read extensively about reincarnation within the context of the Yoruba culture. 

Once I realised these were themes I constantly wrote (pattern), it was clear there was a curiosity or fascination (inspiration) and I started feeding it by consuming content around these topics.

Who do I write for?  

This is one that I haven’t been able to fully answer because it needs to be specific. And maybe we don’t need to answer it. But it helps in writing consistently. Know who will be completely and utterly moved by your writing and why they will be. What kinds of things are interested in? Write for them and write for yourself too.

Know, so you can kill the distractions. 

Darlings are not the only enemies that writers have to deal with. Have you heard of distractions? Chronic obsession with delivering hot takes on the internet? Binge-watching the next horrible Netflix show? Defining the annoying things that keep you from writing consistently is at least one step in eliminating them. Now I’m not endorsing murder if it’s a person. But if your loved ones are a distraction, you need to proactively plan writing time away from them. My distraction is social media, which is why I’m off my favourite platforms for now, which is why I can even write this. There are unavoidable distractions like house chores or capitalism. Unfortunately. But, you must create a system around them or you’ll constantly give writing excuses. This is not saying that there are overwhelming distractions that can prevent writing. I empathise with these and recommend documenting your writing ideas, in any case. Perhaps, someday, you’ll have the time and space to write them to life.  

The ‘where’ is not unimportant

In 2019 and 2020 when I commuted to work daily, I did my best writing in Ubers and Danfo buses. I wasn’t inspired by people watching. But I found it productive to combine one hectic activity with one activity I have a love-hate relationship with. Lagos was chaotic in the way that big cities can be. Noisy too. And that was the package deal. As sick as it is, being outside in the noise gave me beautiful lines. In 2023, perhaps the most cooped up I've been in doors, outside of 2020 and except for long travel, I struggled to write consistently. I did write a lot of different things, including my second book. But I didn’t make much progress. I had nothing to tie my writing to. And it was always really quiet. Not that I can’t write in the quiet. It’s just eerily quiet in London in contrast to Lagos where, even when it’s quiet, it’s noisy. A distant generator. A barking dog. The hum of the air conditioner. It’s only taken four years and a curiosity about my writing patterns to see that I wasn't creating an environment that could aid consistent creativity. 

In a subsequent edition of the newsletter, I’ll write briefly about physical space and writing tools. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a book recommendation. Atomic Habits. No, I don't think it’s just one of those habits or self-help books. I think it really helps if you want create or write more going forward.

Happy new year! 

Some things I found interesting since the year started:

• Commit to competence in this coming year

• This Year, I’m Going to Plan Less

• The Duolingo Effect

• You don’t need everything you want 

• Is Struggling Website The Messenger Really Worth Anything Close to $60 Million?

• OpenAI Says New York Times Lawsuit Against It Is ‘Without Merit’

• Ego, Fear and Money: How the A.I. Fuse Was Lit

• My Year of Dry January

• A guide to difficult conversations for people who hate confrontation 

If you found this issue of the newsletter interesting, please drop me a comment below and share with your network! Thank you for reading, always. [Errors, as always, mine.]

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this newsletter had Dec 2023 instead of Dec 2024. Forgive me, I’m already in the future!