Motivation Won't Finish Your Book
Segun Iwasanmi@iwasanmisegun212159
2 days ago
© Segun Iwasanmi
✍️✍️✍️
There is a notebook on Mr Lagbaja’s table that has been “about to become a book” for three years.
The owner is serious about it. Every January he announces it like a national project. New year, new resolution, new discipline. But by March the notebook is back on the table again, resting like someone that came to greet and decided to sleep over.
One evening they were talking and he said something honest.
“I don’t lack motivation,” he said. “The problem is that once I start writing, the whole thing begins to scatter.”
And Lagbaja understood him immediately.
Many people think books grow from passion the way grass grows after rain. But writing a book is closer to building a house. Even the most talented bricklayer cannot start from the middle of the air. There must be pillars first, then walls, then the rest can behave themselves.
The strange thing is that when the structure is missing, the writer blames discipline. They promise to wake up earlier, drink stronger coffee, pray longer prayers for inspiration. Meanwhile the real trouble is that the story itself does not yet know where it is going.
That same notebook came back to the table some weeks later, but this time the pages looked different. Fewer words, more small headings, arrows, rough notes that looked like a map someone was still arguing with.
Now when Mr Tamedu writes, the story moves.
From time to time he still laughs and says he wasted two years chasing motivation, when the book was simply waiting for someone to arrange its bones properly.
It is a quiet thing, structure. Many people don’t notice it when a story is working. But when it is missing… even the most determined writer can sit with a notebook for three years and still feel like the first page is staring back.
© Segun Iwasanmi | ™The Man With The Story.
Book Writer | Screen and Scriptwriter | Creative Fiction writer | Book Editor.
I help people turn rough ideas into bold stories that work
