A long time ago that wasn’t so long ago, I used to consistently write fictional stories.

I wasn’t dedicated to a specific genre, I just loved to fantasize, to design, and to create. My favourite part of the day was the long bus ride to school on public transport. The sounds of Lagos City served as the perfect background noise, and before I knew what blogs were, a spare exercise book was my medium.

I wrote about love, and friendships, and highschool (or secondary school as we called it), and loneliness. These were the things I knew as an occasionally lonely secondary school aged hopeless romantic, who had a few friends. I got home and thought about the book I was reading next, hiding under the covers and scrolling on wattpad on my smartphone, reading the stories of others, or occasionally working on my own drafts.

One day, I started writing a book. I must have been around 12 or 13. The books that were trending back in the day were about bad boys and good girls, who lived in the USA and prepared for SAT and went on winter break. I remember that my first chapter was 150 words. I remember that the scene was a highschool bathroom, my main character getting bullied by the unavoidable popular girl. I remember that there was never a chapter 2.

There were a few more Chapter Ones for different story concepts, but I kept writing about a reality I didn’t know. I didn’t know any girls named Maya who lived in New York and rode the subway, nor did I know about any guys named Richard who drove a truck and worked in Denver. I couldn’t describe what their hair looked like, what their skin felt like, when their day started, and certainly not what happened in the day. I remember one day staring at Google Maps, as someone who had never driven a car or lived in the USA, trying to find highschool buildings and cafes, so I could be more accurate with my novels.

Then one day, I stopped creating and kept consuming. But this time, I started to read more from writers who looked like me. I noticed Adichie set her novels either in America or in South East Nigeria, with the occasional scene in Lagos. I read more books set in my city, and enjoyed them more because I could really see the characters taking a run on Third Mainland Bridge, or walking through the campus of UNILAG (University of Lagos), or going to Victoria Island on a night out. I knew these places, I’d lived these places.

My stories started again, but they changed. I wrote about young women who schooled at UNILAG and made music, and of people in love taking walks through the dimly lit street paths. I wrote about musing on public transport, and mixed group friendship dynamics. I wrote short stories borrowed from my life, and stories about the woman I wanted to become.

And then one day, one of my friends put it into perfect words: “We steal from ourselves everytime we hit a writer’s block.”

We steal from ourselves everytime we hit writer’s block.

At the point at which he said this, I lived in a completely different timezone than he was. We nurtured our friendship by replying each other’s Instagram stories, comforting each other’s woes over text, pretending that we still completely understood each other. I wrote about being homesick, he wrote about finding your identity. I wrote about losing my creativity, he wrote about love lost. We’d briefly speak about the pieces, skirting around asking if we were really okay.

About two years ago, I started writing another book. I gave it a title, and I gave my characters names. It was going to be a lifelong project, something I kept adding on to, my first child and work of art. Then I learned about the concept of fictionalisation, and realised that sometimes I hid behind my characters.

I cannot tell you the exact moment the line blurred between writing about what is familiar, and writing a character that’s just you in a different font whether past, present or imagined future. I crossed that line when I wrote about a girl who worked in public practice, wearing gold hoops and her hair in a tight slickback bun. I crossed that line when I described how she started and stopped different hobbies in hopes to light that creative spark that went dim a long time ago. I crossed that line when I wrote about driving 40 minutes to the African shop to buy a very specific spice. I crossed that line when I wrote about how foreign it felt to open up to new friends, because I cried in an accent that wasn’t really mine.

I don’t know what exactly it is I am hiding from. Infact I don’t even know if it is hiding. I just put my pen on paper, and describe it as best as I can, then I give that section of my life to a character I invented on the spot.

Maybe this makes my stories more realistic, or maybe I’m using it as a buffer between myself and what I’m actually feeling, each character serving as that safe distance.

I created imaginary worlds only to realise I was disconnected from my own, and after finding my voice by writing what I knew, I discovered my characters were mirrors.

I think this applies beyond writing. Whether we are building careers, businesses, or relationships, sometimes the things we are searching for are already contained in the experiences we keep overlooking. I think everyone can benefit from examining who they really are, not just from the lens of who they aspire to become, but also from through what their lives, habits, and circumstances reveal about who they may already be.

And maybe one day I will settle into that happy medium between writing what is familiar and having the courage to admit when the story was always mine.