Zen…

Writing is difficult. To be clear, the hardest part of writing is the actual writing. Of course it’s just my opinion feel free to think otherwise 😌

There are things I didn’t know about writing until I started;

1. Time : writing takes plenty of time. When I started writing in 2015, I expected to finish my first book “What Men Do” by the end of the year. I left secondary school 2016 and I’m still holding on to my tenth draft till now.

Rushing the process isn’t the best thing. Take your time and edit until you’re satisfied. You’ll be happy you did.

2. There’s always a room for improvement: Even the best writer in the world has something to learn. Writing is not about perfection. Pick up any book and you’ll see it’s flaws. No matter how long you’ve been writing for, there’s something new to learn.

3. Projects will be left behind!: I started writing a new story “Sell Out” earlier this year, the inspiration came from the initiative women empowering women. I wanted to write about a girl with an ugly past who decided to fight and become the best version of herself after a successful woman picked her up from the streets and brushed her up. At first I was obsessed with the story and I wanted to tell the world that women do things differently and even better. As I continued to write, I dreaded it and hated the plot. The vibe was no longer there. It was supposed to be a short story but I wanted more from it. I wanted it to become a full length novel or a serial fiction. I was forcing myself to finish the story and leave out all that juicy details. But after the first draft, I decided to abandon it.

It’s okay to stop writing a book the moment you lose interest. If you don’t and force yourself to finish it and put it out there, there’s 100% chance your audience won’t feel it. And you just won’t be happy with the outcome. So yeah you will abandon projects!

4. Writing can really mess with your Mental health : When I wrote the first draft of my book “Natasha Jakes“ I started with 3000 words per day and most times I spend the whole night on chapters. It took me away from the outside world to a moment of creating and being inside my feelings, my emotions and my head entirely to make it an amazing story.

This resulted in me losing balance of some other aspects of my life. I canceled social appointments with friends, dreaded relationships especially with the opposite sex. I was also missing classes, eating unhealthy foods cause cooking felt like a waste of time. I was so obsessed with “Natasha Jakes” that if I’m not exhausted from writing 2 to 3 chapters, I won’t be able to sleep.

Try to break the task into bits. Give yourself some rest. Take a walk, eat healthy foods, do some exercise, get some sleep, hang out with loved ones. Then go back to writing. Having a good work routine will not only improve your mental health and create balance between your writing and other aspects of life , it will also improve your writing in general.

5. Commitments: You have your social life and you still have to write. Managing other things like school, work, family, friends and so on isn’t easy.

My life is dedicated to writing, although at the beginning I couldn’t manage everything at once. Having a content calendar and sticking to the routine (consistency) is very important. Anyone who doesn’t understand how writing works will find it too much of a task and extremely boring.

But committing to finishing that book or story is worth every sacrifice because…

6. Writing is just that awesome: You get to create your own world, fall in love with every process of creating the storylines, the characters, settings, plots and most importantly how you get to make your audience feel is something you will live with for the rest of your life.

So don’t stop writing! Keep the energy up and positive. Passion is the most important tool when it comes to creativity.

Who else can relate to this? 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾