Cover Photo by Michael Descharles on Unsplash
In 2019 my short story “A Change in Sleeping Arrangements“ got published in the anthology Water Birds on the Lakeshore. As much as I’d like to tell you those less than 3000 words came to me effortlessly over the course of a few hours, they didn’t.
The first time I wrote that piece was in 2017. At the time it was meant to be for a longer body of work that sadly I’ve since given up on. In that year though, I wrote it religiously everyday. I knew what I wanted to portray but for some reason it just didn’t come together. I was frustrated to say the least.
Coincidentally, 2017 is also the year my two year writer’s block found me. One day I put my pen down (well, I closed the writing folder in my laptop) and just never returned.
Fast forward to 2019, I see a call for submissions by the Goethe Institut for the Afroyoung Adult Anthology and I think “oh why not.” I still hadn’t written anything concrete or good- maybe a scribbled out line, a disjointed poem, just the femur of the skeleton of a story idea – but nothing that could win any awards really and my brain still wasn’t in state to conjure up anything fantastically new.
My mother suggested I rework some of my old pieces. She doesn’t remember it, but this casual throw away statement literally changed my life. If she hadn’t suggested it, I would have probably tried (and failed) to write something new and would never have been selected for this anthology. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Following the advice of my clearly wise mother, I scavenged through a number of old pieces, some subtle romances, others really gruelling stuff about how people become reapers in the afterlife and many many half sentences and forgotten paragraphs, before I came across this chapter from a book I never wrote and probably never will.
When I had first given up on this book, I had thought everything I was writing was not at all good. But when I reread bits and pieces of it, I realised I was vastly wrong. I could hardly believe my younger self had written any of it. Not only that, there were things I could now see with stark clarity. I think I finally knew how to write this story that had once consumed my every thought. I got to work immediately – the block that had haunted me for two years simply vanished.
That chapter became “A Change in Sleeping Arrangements“. And this one singular story from 2017 would take me first to Rwanda and then to the Aké Festival in Nigeria two years later. My writing literally took me places, and that changed my life.
In the same 2019 I wrote another story. It was initially titled Animal and it went on to be rejected everywhere I submitted it to. This one particularly hurt because I actually did like the story – a lot. It is one of the few stories I have ever written to completion without any long hiatuses in between. After one rejection too many, I shelved it and proceeded not to look at it again until some time in 2024 – a whole half decade later.
When I finally reread it, I realised the ending wasn’t true to the rest of the plot, so I changed it drastically. After which I shelved it again. Then, last year, I gave it a final polish and submitted it to a short story competition. Animal – now titled Davu’s Cord – went on to place first in the Makewana’s Daughter’s Short Story Writing Competition in 2025.
All this say, a lot of writing advice insists you should write every day and don’t get me wrong, I understand why. Writing is a skill, and like any skill, it gets sharper with practice. But here’s the thing, working on the same project for too long can sometimes make you miss the forest for the trees. ( I don’t even know if I’m using that idiom right).
Sometimes the best thing you can do is leave your work alone. And no, I’m not suggesting you embody that quote of “art never being finished only abandoned” and taking a two year hiatus like me. What I am suggesting is that stepping away for a time gives you the chance to grow and the story the chance to marinate into something better.
Something I’m telling myself these days is that the work isn’t just happening when I’m sitting in front of the page. It’s happening when I’m washing dishes, walking around the neighbourhood, or even when I’m agonising about not writing. I may not notice it, but my mind is still quietly stitching the story together.
So if you’ve been forcing yourself to strain through your creative process, maybe allow yourself to walk away for a while. Leave the work alone. Step away from your desk. Let the both of you simmer. Just remember to return. The work will be waiting for you.
