A few years ago, as I listened more intently to the lyrics of Pure Imagination as sung by Gene Wilder in the 1971 movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, I decided that it had to be the Creative Person’s Melancholy Anthem. At least for me, because most of what I enjoy writing is fiction and this requires me to step into a world of my imagination, a unique place that is known only to me. Barbara Kingsolver, whose work I have always enjoyed reading, once said that “writing fiction is a dance with lunacy.” So, if that means that I am creating a world of my own imagination and placing people in it and taking them a voyage that entails meandering twists and turns, then perhaps that makes me a lunatic dancer. I have found that while I enjoy writing fiction, the best way to make the creative process enjoyable for me is to approach it as an adventure. 

The words “There is nothing to writing. You simply sit down at the typewriter and bleed,” are attributed either to Ernest Hemingway or Red Smith. The notion of the typewriter makes it easy to assume that this is probably what the writing process meant to one of them. Those words remind me to be thankful that my writing career did not have to rely on a typewriter’s existence. I took typewriting as a class in secondary school. I was not good at it. So, I am beyond thankful to the inventor of the word processor. I do not have to sit at a typewriter and bleed; yet, the mere notion of having to sit and expect creative juices to flow through one’s veins as your fingers fly over the keyboard to produce a literary masterpiece (hopefully, sanguinary-free), oversimplifies the creative writing process.

Writing for me involves a combination of thinking, observing, and active listening. A lot of what I read influences what and how I write. I have multiple journals that I write in which serve all sorts of purposes in the creative process. I do not restrict what I include in my journals, from twists and turns of the plot of a story I am working on, to dialogues, witty sayings, new word discoveries, timelines. I also include memorable lines from books, or articles that I have read. A couple of years ago, I learned that in pre-modern times, academics kept reading journals which were called florilegia (flowers of reading) and from that moment, I christened all my journals florilegias.

Before I start a writing project, I often think I know how I would like the story to start and end. It almost always never ends up that way. But this still serves as an essential building block for the whole process. In the past, I would write my fiction from memory, but recently I have re-energized the history nerd in me and started devouring history books to come up with material that I can create fiction from. This has definitely changed the dynamic for me because where I once was neurotic about what I wrote and had to have a perfect piece before I could share it with the world, I now have a series of creative messes. I find myself having pieces of writing that I might not immediately know what to do with and which I have difficulty knowing how to repurpose to make something meaningful. I realize that I do not necessarily have to regard these pieces of writing as useless, but they are the building blocks to a final product that I am working on.

A couple of years ago, I learned that in pre-modern times, academics kept reading journals which were called florilegia (flowers of reading) and from that moment, I christened all my journals florilegias.

This is a good place to share how I write a scene. For me, this process has evolved over time but now I have a formula that I use which involves me physically immersing myself into a scene and exploring the sensory details within that scene to capture it for my writing. Questions centered on what I can smell, feel, taste, hear, and see help me create a scene, and while not all the sensory details that I explore make it to the final piece, they all serve an important purpose. Most of my fiction is set in Lagos, and I recognize that many of the people who read my work may never have visited the places where I was raised. I want to be able to transport them and create stories which, as the writer Rémy Ngamije once said, “shorten the distance between you and me” and can reveal that we are more alike than we are different.

My reading life has always been entwined with my writing life. I have always been a voracious reader and it was not until a couple of years ago that I realized that I could put my reading into three categories: reading for news and information, reading for research, and reading for pleasure. Nevertheless, all of what I read somehow influences what I write. For instance, a word that I discover in reading an article written in The Atlantic, might eventually find its way into a sentence in a short story that I am writing. I have always considered myself to be a bit of a wordsmith, and as I read and write memorable lines in my florilegia, I also record the words that I find fascinating and would like to use in my own writing. and iIt does not make any difference if I discover the words through reading fiction or nonfiction, even if fiction is the primary medium through which I tell my stories. 

I also consider engaging with other writers to be a big part of my creative process. With the world going virtual in the last two years of the pandemic, I have found myself attending more literary events than I have ever done in my writing career. Listening to other writers discuss their craft and talk about their creative process inspires, motivates, and energizes me and I consider this to be a part of my creative process.

I heard a story about an author who was working towards a writing deadline and had asked her family to leave the house so that she could write but rather than do that she ended up binge watching hours of a television show. I could not relate to this until I found myself in that position, when in the middle of a writing project, I found myself losing steam. I ended up binge watching two seasons of a British crime series. I have always liked a good whodunnit and this show had all the fancy trimmings of suspense and great storyline with meandering plots. I cannot point to a tangible way that watching the show contributed to what I wrote;, I think for me, it represented a leisurely way to take a break from writing and watch something that was well written. Up until that point, reading had been my default solution when I needed to refuel my writing energy, but now I have realized that a good television show or movie can get the job done when it comes to re-energizing my brain for the writing process. 

Over the years, I have taken writing classes to enhance my writing skills and one of the biggest challenges for me was the idea of creating a piece based on a writing prompt from the class instructor. The difficulty for me lies in the fact that there is a forced spontaneity in the writing from the writing prompts which goes against my personal writing style which involves a lot more thinking, listening, and reading. This general process of ruminating on my writing is something that I have become comfortable with and is a habit I do not see myself departing from any time soon. 

I am also rather neurotic about the quality of the writing that I put out there. This means that I review and revise my writing quite often. On the other hand, I find it challenging to edit my writing. To overcome this challenge, I have adapted a process of walking away from something that I have spent time writing. I try to write every day and I am usually juggling at least four or more writing projects. Since there is no shortage of projects for me to work on, I can leave one writing project and focus on another one. The duration of the time that I walk away from a writing project depends on its urgency. So, it could range from hours to days to weeks. But no matter how long it has been, when I return to the project, I am looking at it with a fresh pair of eyes to revise and make changes. 

I want to be able to transport them and create stories which, as the writer Rémy Ngamije once said, “shorten the distance between you and me” and can reveal that we are more alike than we are different.

This is a feat that is difficult to accomplish when writing in short bursts as part of a writing class. I think the inability to allow my writing to percolate and for me to get a chance to revise it as many times as I am comfortable with, is something that I have a large amount of discomfort with. 

However, I will not be so quick to dismiss the quality of writing that is generated with writing prompts in the classes and workshops that I attend. While they may not always be my best work, they can serve as the building blocks for something that I can turn into a satisfactory writing piece. In one writing class, a writing prompt that we were given led me to create a piece of work that ended up being published in a literary magazine. I am still rather surprised by that, but then again, I find myself constantly surprised by my writing. 

Therein lies the adventure: following a path of my own choosing, having a fair idea of where I think I am going but open to taking a few detours as I create a world of pure imagination and giving myself the freedom to explore.  It’s like Albert Einstein said, “creativity is imagination having fun,” and there is so much fun to be had in the creative process.