From Blank Page to Known Blog: A Writer's Growth Story

This is not what I expected, this is the second time around writing this blog post, and honestly it seems like a monumental obstacle, going from an 800 word draft to an empty page (darn you vocal), Its hard, mainly because recreating the vibe and pace I had crafted already is difficult, and things aren't happening the way I want them to be at home, but I decided to press on. If you are reading this, and it shows posted on 30/08/24, then I have succeeded, else, we move,(just know I ate a lot, got tanked and slept off till when it got posted, my bed won the fight).

Now, where to start, I have been a writer for a couple of years, the passion started in Junior High, when the literature teacher (a sub, the actual teacher had a terrible reading voice ) read a story to us, titled; "The gods must be mad". I'll tell you now, that tiny book was fantastic, but I cannot recall for the life of me what the actual story was about, though if you sit me down and interrogate me to divulge the story, you might have something. Yes, I wouldn't call what I was doing then writing, I simply had a spiral bound hard cover book where I wrote out fantasy stories (I tended to LARP my stories out in public).

The year 2019 came with a barrage of ups and downs, the first was moving out of my childhood family home and not actually having a home to move to (we lived in our school for a period, which while fun, was mentally constrictive). Happily, I ran away to my sister's apartment on the Island, which (not so surprisingly, given my siblings and I were just alternate versions of the same character) my two other siblings were crashing at. It was from there I got admission and went to University (though there was a period of panic when my name didn't show up on the admission lists). While on campus, I found a community of like minded people (CULT-Covenant University Literary Team, changed to CULDS - Covenant University Literary and Debate Society), where I could be creative and write things without much judgement (they still told me all my poetry was a little too dark and foreboding). I did end up leaving, but not because of judgement, but because of other (more interesting) extracurricular activities.

Fast forward to 2020, when the pandemic struck, I was by myself (counting the number of spaghetti in a pack), recuperating from a minor surgery, and I decided to write a fantasy novella with a friend, this went swimmingly, for the month it lasted, we got as far as 20k words and three and half chapters, and by the side, I was dabbling in poetry (I wrote on and off on the odd notes and poetry apps), to be specific, I had an account on Writco (beautiful app then, not sure about now) and I wrote short free verse on my sisters tablet. But all this stopped completely after my first rejection (well technically a break-up, since she left me for a friend), the whole situation is material for an entire blog series (the details are quite sumptuous).

That was my introduction to writers block, I stayed two years and some months without writing a whit, I can recall joining HSL-Hebron Startup Lab (an organization on-campus geared towards raising entrepreneurs, and providing a community to learn skills) to try and restart my writing journey, but nothing happened, this continued till the late end of 2022, when I had an innovative idea to write about writers block, I titled the poem; "The Pregnant Pause" (this is the link for it on my channel), this brings me to a significant problem that I never actually saw as a problem from the start, I wasn't actually saving or storing what i wrote anywhere!, asides from my short stint on Writco, everything I had written was either inside some obscure book I had already disposed of, or on pieces of paper (which I never had the mind to keep). I realized this was a problem when I told the "umpteenth" friend that "Oh, I write" and she asked, show me your work, and maaaaaaan did I flounder to respond, how was I to know that everything I had written was to be stored in some sort of compendium, seeing the obvious discomfort on my face, she suggested putting the things I wrote on a channel.

This whole channel shindig wasn't new to me (I already had one for posting books I had read and loved), but it also felt like an Eureka moment, and being the couch potato I am, i just formed one on Telegram and put up the only written poems I could scrounge up there. Honestly, from there it was meant to be an Up Hill journey, but it's been a wholly bumpy ride. 2023 came and during my six month internship, I expected to write more and consistently, but booooy was I living Delulu, living the 8 - 5pm life wasn't allowing me as much free time as I thought, and even the days I was afforded free time, I ended up using the time to rest up, suffice to say, my writing suffered immensely during that period (and I was still going around calling myself a writer, Imagine). When 2024 rolled out, I put a new year resolution "Write more, and finish my book", (more delulu), this whole blogging thing was not even in the plan, at, all.

But final year engineering was like being handed a sour lemon (and I make terrible lemonade). Time didn't make itself available, and most of the free time, i could be found laughing to myself because of the amount of mental stress the project was causing, life then threw in a pile of lemons (Yayyy! more citrus-ey horrors); a long standing friendship got tanked, I got isolated due to taking on more responsibilities and leaving relationships on the back burner and the general whole atmosphere of things. During a leadership programme for graduating students held at the end of the session, I had a big dream, and decided to take a bold step; actually doing it. This dream was simple, start a blog, write more intentional posts in specific niches, find a writing gig, and get my work monetized. This took me out of my comfort zone, calling people (I have an unhealthy relationship with calls), reading new types of literature intentionally, and searching for obscure things online.

Immediately I came upon two types of roadblocks, the first was were knowledge was intentionally obfuscated, mainly because it did not really exist, and the idea that it existed was created due to content creators changing the titles of posts for SEO reasons, then the second type of obstacle was the paywall sort, a lot of times I would find knowledge I needed behind a "Click the link in my bio to buy my course", or "Click the link in bio to Learn how to become a Paid Writer". This pained me badly (mainly because my account is on life-support), and initially, i wanted to wait till i got a freelance gig (I applied for four specific jobs), instead, more lemons landed at my feet. I got rejected twice for jobs that required entry (ENTRY!!) level skills, found out one job was a scam (after I wasted a week waiting for an interview and got "hired" without it), and the other has left me floating like meat in soup.

In all honesty, the worst part about this period was needing to have experience (in this case a writers portfolio with client articles) for a job where you needed no experience. Deciding to just do the whole thing once and for all, I went on the journey to start making a website (a blog! please no shade), with zero web-dev experience. my first port of call was Youtube, and after sinking hours of my life in, I did end up finding some useable knowledge (ZulieWrites), on an obscure channel for creative writers, I ended up learning that my methods were wrong, and the general idea on making no-code websites. From there, the whole website designer hunt began.

Let me tell you now, there's no feeling quite as unhealthy as the one you get when you find out something you believed was a forgone conclusion, is just the tip of the iceberg. Realizing that hosting, websites and domain names were three different things was a shocker, and that the "free" tag, never actually applied to all three of them (cries in broke), I went through a bevy of sites, Odoo, Go-daddy, Hostinger, Ghost, Squarespace, Framer, Wordpress (this one made me depressed when I found out the bar to make a free website was high) and a few others. All the while my mind was asking "why call it free when it needs a subscription plan after 7 days". At the time of writing this, my fatigue has gotten tired of me, but I am glad, not just because of all the stress, finally i met a friend to help me with it, basically transferring my struggle, and voila, a blog!

Now the end, the blog is up (by the time of posting), and though i've basically gone through a gauntlet of very avoidable stress (if I had money), I am grateful for it, because believe it or not, i'm going to cobble everything together and make a course out of it (kidding, it'll be a free thing), since knowledge is meant to be free, and a world with free knowledge is a fun one(as said by Ridah).

Till next time.