Close your eyes and think for a moment about a story that you read that made you stop to look around like,

Omooooooo.

An idea so simple yet brilliant in its execution, or a world so expansive it feels illogical that it doesn’t exist. 

Do you ever wonder how the ideas occur to the writers? Or where they were that inspired the story?

I found myself thinking of that once I came across an Instagram reel on something called the Cathedral Effect, which suggests that when you work in an outdoor environment or high ceiling environment, it lends itself to loftier ideas or creativity. So I did some digging. In their paper on the Influence of Ceiling Height, J. Meyers-Levy and R. Zhu state that “The effects produced by high or low ceilings actually occur because such ceiling heights increase or decrease vertical room volume, which in turn stimulates alternative concepts and types of processing.”

Hold up. I want to write about collapsing stars, burning moons, and vast people. I want to write worlds that will please the kid I was, the one who tore through any books I could lay my hands on. But I need help. Does being confined to four walls and a very low roof limit me? Is my imagination hindered by my reality?

Follow who know road. 

If anyone has the answer to this, it’ll be writers that have blown abi?

 As I could not find famous writers and interview them, I googled them (brilliant idea, didn’t have to go to the Vatican for it either)

J.K Rowling had the idea for Harry Potter while stuck for hours on a train commute. Tolkien apparently wrote down ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit”, the words that became his brilliant books, on the back of an exam paper he was supposed to mark.

Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games trilogy), got the idea for her books from camping in front of a TV. Khalid Hosseini was watching a documentary about the Taliban banning kite flying. So, he wrote a short story that would later become The Kite Runner. 

The postulation is not that all great ideas come from open air and the great outdoors, but you’re following my train of thought abi?

Puzzles. 

In 2020 I wrote the first work of my adult life. Sixty thousand words written in the confines of lockdown. After months I typed the last words in the first draft of that story and it taught me a lesson. Writing; fashioning worlds from nothing, is power, and it is as unpredictable as all great power is. For some, seclusion can be the crucible for wonder. Some people can barely write in open spaces; they need silence, solitude, and a low roof to create concepts and worlds from nothing. As I wrote my book, I took strolls around the house during my breaks, and read as much as possible. I even drowned myself for a bit. Each of those things made up a piece of the story I was trying to write at the time. 

An idea can start as one thing, but it often ends up as an amalgamation of different places, experiences, and moments. 

People.

 In his acknowledgments for the third book in Morning Star (Red Rising #3), Pierce Brown says the seclusion in a cabin that had worked for his first two books in the series did not work for the third book. The isolation was not what the story required, and he found himself able to go on once he was reunited with his friends and loved ones. He goes on to say friends are the pulse of life, and I agree.

The ideas I’m most obsessed with right now came from conversations with my people. 

A bad joke.

A shared moment.

A “What if?”

A conversation with a friend can take you from a character name you think is cool to a terrifying antagonist you do not even know how to defeat yet. 

Your Cathedral may not be a place but rather, the people in it. 

Living, breathing cities.

The loftiest ideas can come from where you are, both physically and from a life point perspective. Eloghosa Osunde’s Vagabonds! tells of a Lagos that is dazzling in its unseen realms. She draws inspiration from many things, but the influence of the city is so telling as she deifies it and peels it apart wonderfully (Read V! Kids). 

Chimeka Garricks calls on his love for Port-Harcourt in A Broken People’s Playlist. Every story feels like walking to TransAmadi (looks left and right.) and the city comes alive in the pages of the book.  

As I grow as a writer, my work holds my place close and is inspired by it. Calabar is where I became an adult, and the writer in my almost always comes back no matter the genre, because it is a place I understand, and you need to understand a place to illuminate it.

Where do you get your best ideas?

What I have been reading…

- “Alone With You in the Ether” by Olivie Blake

I didn’t want to slip into a slump after reading Babel so I figured I’d take in a smaller body of work. Olivie Blake’s novella may have been 250 pages, but the story I tore through in 24 hours didn’t feel like it lacked anything. Her use of mathematics and art as vessels for this love story is remarkable. The characters were so vivid and human; from Aldo to Regan to the people in their lives. I left this book with a question, a simple one that I now ask myself often.

“What’re you thinking about today?”

What I have been watching…

• Pantheon (2022): Pantheon is brilliant. A show based on short stories by Ken Liu, this animated series is so whole, the plot tackles a world not too different from our own, and the devastating technology it is now armed with. It literally has a 100% rotten tomatoes score, and they canceled it? AMC you will crumble!

• Succession: The Roys are insane, I cannot emphasize how twisted and sick they all are. The corporate espionage, the acting. Sarah Snook and

• Creed III: If there’s a Creed movie, I’m watching it. I wasn’t disappointed by this one either. Creed III is a strong follow-up to the brilliant second installment. Michael B. Jordan cooked on his directorial debut and I’m excited about what he’ll do next. 

What I have been listening to…

• On Form - Burna Boy

I think "I Told Them" was a good album, and there are so many songs I rate, but On form was Burna on form (*looks left and right again), so this is the song. 

• Role Model - Brent Faiyaz

It is such a great bounce.

• SETE - K.O , Young Stunna, Blxckie

Just trust me on this. Listen to this song.