How I write

It seems a bit ‘arrogant’ to be writing about this – sort of as if I’ve now officially pronounced myself a ‘writer.’ The title seems to suggest that I’m presuming I can write, but in actual fact, I’m only taking this on because I do write.

For my fortieth birthday, I got two copies of Abidemi Sanusi’s book, Eyo, from different people. I devoured it over the next few days. It turned out to be the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. There is not a single ‘smile,’ not a single moment of respite in this tragic, powerful book. I have a tendency to go back and read good books (or my favorite portions of them) again and again. I have not been able to do so with Eyo. I have no desire to relive the protagonist’s horror. I highly recommend this dark, yet tragically beautiful book if you’re looking for a seriously good read.

It was actually Abidemi Sanusi’s blog that got me thinking about this question of how writing comes about (http://www.abidemisanusi.co.uk/Groups/113496/Abidemi_Sanusi/Blog/Blog.aspx). I think it’s an interesting question. How do I write?

For me, there is no standard, linear way in which I come up with a blog post, but in thinking about it, I realize that I always ‘write’ parts of the posts in my mind for a period of time ever before I type them out on my laptop. The first month I started blogging, I could hardly type fast enough – the stories just ‘flowed’ one after the other. But that was because I had carried those initial stories in my head and my heart for a very long time. There was no need to agonize over how to begin because the stories were almost fully formed in my mind. I had told them to myself over and over again in my mind. All I had to do now was tell them to others.

In subsequent months, I began to record my thoughts on my laptop, no matter how disjointed. I still do this. When I get an idea that I think might be interesting to write about, I type it out as a bullet point as fast as I can, before I forget. And as more, related ideas come to me, I type them out, too, under that same bullet point, and then try to pull them into a coherent story line. I have a list of six bullet points right now – initial thoughts just waiting to be elaborated upon and written up. Most are really messy. For example, here is a bullet point that I’m about to delete because I’m now done writing the full post:

• I have no right to be writing this right now. Not with all the deadlines I have. I’m supposed to be working. I’m much too busy. I need a vacation very badly. I don’t have time to take one. Can’t imagine how I can possibly squeeze it in. But I’ll make a way. You have to pay attention to your life. The way I haven’t had time to look into my finances. How good it felt to pay attention. Realize it was doable. Almost done paying. Without a plan your life will pass you by.

And yet another:

• Mother-in-law, Dearest: He sent me a text last week telling me how ill he’d been lately, how he’d been admitted to the hospital, etc. Do my in-laws expect me to respond? And do they plan to penalize me in the future for not doing so? How I called her three times and she suddenly wasn’t available. How I eventually got the message. The struggle of divorce when you still love your mother-in-law. How I was hurt they didn’t tell me she went to the US. But do I really have a right to know anymore?

I get quite a number of ideas while sitting in traffic (which I hate – or ‘intensely dislike,’ to use my son’s correction). I suppose my mind wanders during these times to cope with the frustration of sitting in one spot when I’d rather be zooming back home after work. Sometimes, I draw inspiration from something I read, or from an incident that occurred in my life that day. Other times, I have a sudden, vivid memory of something that happened in the past. It’s usually a seemingly ‘small’ thing that begins to develop a life of its own the moment I start thinking about it, taking myself back to another time in my mind.  A small thing such as my wedding ring, a phone conversation, a dream, a prize one of my children won, or a prayer meeting. I make a concerted effort to go back in time and try to remember every little thing I felt at the time or about the object in question, and then I quickly type up my description of these feelings.

Sometimes, it all begins with the very first sentence. By this time, I have already pondered over the issue I want to write about, but the first sentence can often be key for me. Sometimes, a ‘good’ opening sentence just comes to me as I’m going about my business, with a particular blog post idea in the back of my mind. I find that the first sentence can be almost magical (if I feel that it sounds just right), propelling me to write an entire blog post. Coming out of the bathroom one day (‘T.M.I.,’ as my sister would say), the words ‘There’s a reason why I’m still not on FaceBook’ came to me. I had struggled with how to write the A Beautiful Mind post, but with this first, magical sentence, I suddenly felt free to just write. In bed one day, the phrase ‘There’s something wrong with my church’ came to me and I just knew I had to use it. At the time, I thought I would just use it as a sentence somewhere in the post, but I later decided to use it as a title, too. Today, as I tried to squash my misplaced feelings of guilt for not working on the weekend, the opening sentence I have no right to be writing this right now suddenly came to me.

Sometimes, when I’m done writing and I read a new post over before putting it online, I’m surprised by how well certain paragraphs seem to hang together, or by the logical interconnection of some of the ideas - especially because it often happens without any planning on my part. I only see the coherence after I’m done and I wonder how it happened, given the scatter-brained fashion in which I started out writing it. Of course, I'm not always coherent, but I just decide to write and post, anyway!

Sometimes, I struggle with the title of the post. With Far from the Madding Crowd, I initially uploaded it as Far from the Maddening Crowd and, immediately after, asked my sister if she thought ‘Madding Crowd’ sounded better. She went for ‘Madding Crowd,’ pointing out that those who had read (or heard of) the Thomas Hardy book would probably appreciate my sticking to the original title. And so I changed it. With A Beautiful Mind, I was torn between using this title and using (Almost) Becoming the Other Woman. My sister suggested I find a way merge the two. I opted not to, in the end. I realized that having a title with ‘the Other Woman’ in it would probably generate more traffic, but I loved the symbolism behind the A Beautiful Mind title.

I recently started displaying a list of the 8 posts that have received the greatest hits on the blog. It’s fascinating to me to see the posts that people are drawn to the most – especially because few of them are my personal favorites. I like the post about my mother-in-law, for instance, but I wouldn’t exactly describe it as one of my favorites. And yet, it almost immediately became one of the top blog hits, unceremoniously kicking out some of the others which I thought were 'better.' It’s really interesting to see what appeals to different people.

For all you authors, writers, bloggers, tweeters, poets, essayists, FB-ers, etc. out there (both in and out of the closet): How do you write?