TO BE A WRITER… (6)

To be a writer is to become...

And I don’t mean become in the motivational speaker way, I mean the real thing, the gradual, everyday transformation into the kind of person that writing naturally flows from. Because writing is not just an action, it is a product, a product of who you are becoming.

Sometimes people ask me, “Favour, how do you write? What are your steps?” And honestly, I never know what to say. Not because I’m trying to gatekeep, but because I didn’t exactly follow a step by step process. I didn’t sit down one day and say, “Okay, step one brainstorm, step two outline, step three write.” 

No. I became first. Then writing started coming out of me like something that had always been there, like software that finally finished installing, and once it installed, boom, I could write.

That is the truth about writing, it doesn’t start with your fingers, it doesn’t even start with your pen, it starts with the becoming. There’s this popular quote that says, “You don’t chase results, you attract them.” And it sounds like one of those things people put on wallpapers, but it’s actually very true. Because how do you attract results? You become the kind of person that is worthy of what you want. That is the same way writing works.

Before you start writing consistently, you first become the kind of person that notices details, thinks deeply, pays attention, and feels things without running away from them. You become, and then writing becomes your output.

I like to say that before I was a writer, I was first a reader, and that was one of my earliest stages of becoming. Because reading built something in me. It stretched my imagination, introduced me to different voices, different styles, different ways of thinking. It taught me how words can be arranged, how emotions can be captured, how stories can breathe. It didn’t automatically make me a writer, but it prepared me.

Over time, other things joined, mentorship, life experiences, pain, growth, curiosity, silence, conversations, exposure, even heartbreak, even healing. All of it became ingredients. And slowly, without even noticing, I became the kind of person that writing could come from.

That’s why I don’t believe writing is something you force. Yes, discipline matters, practice matters, consistency matters, but even those things are fruits of becoming. Because if you become the kind of person that takes writing seriously, you won’t need too much motivation, writing will start to feel like your natural language.

So dearest reader, to be a writer is not just to write. It is to become the kind of person that has something to say, and the courage to say it in words. Because writing does not start from doing, it starts from becoming. And when the becoming is complete, writing becomes inevitable.

@favvy_Okwans🖤.