BEYOND PERFORMANCE AND PROFIT.

"Writing is programming, person, and purpose before it is performance, product, and profit," Mr. Pojo.

My journey with my writing coach is one I take pride in retelling. It all started in December 2022 at a camp meeting (Empowered Camp). He was one of the speakers, and as he spoke about his writing, I fell in love. I hadn’t read any of his works, but I immediately knew I wanted to write like him.

After his session, I met up with him and expressed my desire to be coached by him. He smiled and gave me some of his materials to read. He made it clear that his coaching style was different, more like embarking on a suicide mission, but I was adamant. I was blinded by the outcome—becoming an eloquent writer.

I expected he would give me specific techniques or teachings that would automatically transform me into an amazing writer all at once. So imagine my surprise when the first task was to consistently read the Bible. In my head, I was like, "What does writing have to do with the Bible?"

He didn’t teach me how to write as I had expected. Instead, he took me through a self-discovery process, changing my ideology and giving me what he calls "The Fair-enough Perspective."

He gave a lot of what I called "Not related to writing" tasks, and my performance and consistency in personal development, fellowship, and growth were his standards of 'doing well.'

Over time, I got better. From being able to write only love poems, I can now confidently write about just anything. It seemed like magic, but progress comes in minute or subtle ways.

A writer is simply one who writes. Whenever I was given a writing task, my coach would accept whatever I wrote. He didn’t demand flawlessness; rather, he preferred that I engage in the art more often. The more I wrote, the more I could confidently say I am a writer. So I became a writer by doing the work of a writer—writing.

People often view writing in terms of performance, product, and profit, but these are mere rewards. Rewards are never free; they are earned by doing the work.

Work precedes reward, and for writing, the mandatory work involves your ideology, person, and purpose. Why do you write?

For me, I write to express myself. I am more expressive through writing than talking. But loving the art of writing didn’t make me a writer; doing the work of a writer by submitting to a superior system, obeying instructions, and having the willfulness to become one did.

Dearest reader, to obtain the identity you desire, look at the root of that identity and prepare to do the work. Writing is an identity every writer embodies, just as engineering is an identity every engineer embodies by doing the required work.

The sheges associated with my writing journey...nor be one day talk. 

@favvy_Okwans🖤