Writing Away My Fears; A Sectioned Life

I started writing as an escape in 2014. Writing to me was beauty borne from turmoil. A way to process the sludge, the gunk that my mind secreted and my body experienced. I found myself writing for every and any reason.

I failed my exams, write.

I loved this girl with the long face and she didn’t love me back, write.

My mum fell ill and it has been a roller-coaster to get her back on her feet, write.

I really want to be a writer but I fear I might not have the grace and natural talent needed to breakthrough, write.

Sometimes, I write myself into corners where my insecurities lie. This of course is a great way to stack up a repertoire of abandoned projects that I feel I don’t have the skill set to complete. Other times, I write as far as my excitement can take me. However, the thing about using excitement as a driving force for anything is that it is not guaranteed to last and if you have a short attention span like I do, it is safe to say you will never complete anything. (Sucks, but it’s true)

Before you say it out loud, no, discipline certainly does not live here.

For something that started out as an escape, it has become a huge source of inadequacy for me. I have this thing where I section my life into parts, every aspect is strictly outlined so they don’t mix. My social life basically looks like a pie chart and it is rare to see a segment (wait, is it sector or segment? I’m a bit rusty on my math here) overlap into another one.

My music friends do not know my childhood friends, my work friends do not know my literary friends and my love interest probably hears some names but never gets to meet anybody. Or the fact that I make music and I have 3 albums yet none of the skills and tips I have picked up over the years have helped me in my stint as a chorister. I still sing crappy backup tenor in church and the world still rotates round its axis. (I section my life… and it is crazy)

For me, it is quite impossible to reconcile all these parts of myself and actually go with the flow.

Getting back into writing, I have also sectioned that into 2 major parts (the minor subsections might be endless and getting into it will probably produce an endless piece… which I will not complete) I have a formal and creative side to my writing. My formal side encompasses corporate material, scripts, web content and basically anything that will get me paid and follows a pattern. My creative side is where my backdoor imagination has its day. It might be about a shadow that wants to sabotage its source for a taste at real life, or a group of hunters chasing down a vampire in Ibadan. Although I believe both draw from the same pool of experience I have amassed over the years, my approach makes all the difference.

I believe the creative side of my writing is gift-based and more often than not, I am stuck with this faux mindset that inspiration comes like thunder. There really is no way to manually get the juice flowing so in most cases, I sit still and wait for magic to happen. Sometimes I try to set it in motion through self-destructive means and a lot of times, it creates interesting content to write/rap/talk about.

It could be nicotine, thc, it could be decision based and it could also be emotional sabotage (believe me, breakups might seem good for your creativity in theory… but they’re terrible). Talking about this now, I feel creatives might be the cause of this new wave of ‘depression-cool’ youths. Since they dictate what culture is and it seems all they do now is fetishize sadness. It reminds me of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman where a fictional William Shakespeare meets Dream and tells him that he watches his life as if it were happening to someone else. He continues to say that when his son died, he was hurt. However, he watched his hurt and even relished it because then, he could truly write about loss.

The other extreme is quite different—deadlines, necessity and survival push me to get things done… and done well. So, I have no excuses to faff around when I am in work mode. But as I grow older, this writing thing seems more as a career path than something to pass time with, and this realization comes with demands and career deadlines. And so, the line between creative writing, corporate writing and my career trajectory begins to blur.

First of all, you cannot be a successful writer if you don’t have clout. And if you are not successful, you will be paid peanuts since everybody and their mothers believe they can write as well--- they just don’t have time. So, you need to build a following, a base, some iota of popularity and then latch onto that into what you eventually will become. I have no idea what perils writers who have attained that status face, but I’ll love to think they’re a little bit more secure about their craft.

Writing, right now has never been more difficult, yet more urgent for me. I cower at what the future holds. But it is still my escape so I’ll still keep writing. I’ll still keep my support group close; I’ll still write these unsolicited opinions I hope editors don’t throw out at first glance; I’ll still grow cold feet when I finish a piece and certainly, I’ll still write away my fears… as I’m doing now.

P.S: About the discipline thing, yeahhhh… I’m working on it.