The city is still dark when my alarm blares at 5 AM. I don’t need it; I’m already awake, staring at the ceiling, counting heartbeats, chasing half-dreams that fade too quickly. Sleep and I have long maintained a complicated relationship—lovers who can never quite synchronize. I roll out of bed, feet meeting cold floor that sends a shock up my spine, an unwelcome but effective jolt into consciousness. The city below still sleeps, buildings silhouetted against the navy pre-dawn sky, windows dark except for the occasional insomniac or early shifter sharing my solitude.

Writers don’t sleep, not really. Our characters whisper to us in the dark.

The first thing I do is breathe. Ten minutes of meditation—sometimes a luxury, sometimes a necessity. I sit cross-legged on the worn cushion by the window, palms upturned on my knees, watching my breath cloud the glass. The quiet seeps into my bones, filling the hollow spaces where yesterday’s discarded sentences still echo.

Each inhale draws in possibility; each exhale releases the fragments that didn’t work, the metaphors that collapsed under their own weight, the dialogue that rang false. Then, I run.

The treadmill purrs beneath me, a mechanical beast eating miles as I push forward, going nowhere. The glass walls of my apartment frame the city like a pulsing canvas, buildings stretching into the horizon. I like watching the sky change, the sun creeping in like an afterthought, painting the clouds in watercolor washes of amber and rose.

Sometimes, I imagine the sun is reluctant, as hesitant to begin its day as any of us mortals below.

By the time I step off, my shirt clings to my skin, heartbeat hammering in my ears. I’m sweating, awake, alert—ready to see what the world is screaming about today. The New York Times waits on my screen, the headlines a mix of tragedy, triumph, and things I wish I could unsee. Wars in places whose geography I had to relearn, climate catastrophes that seem increasingly apocalyptic, political scandals that would have been career-ending a decade ago but now barely register. I sip my coffee—black, bitter, necessary—and let the world’s weight settle over me like a familiar, uncomfortable blanket before pushing it aside. There’s work to do, and the world will continue its chaotic spin whether I bear witness or not.

By 7 AM, I’m at my desk, the mahogany surface cleared of everything except my laptop, a notepad with scribbled ideas, and a mug of coffee gone cold. My fingers hover over the keyboard, waiting for the first sentence to fall into place. It doesn’t. Not right away. It rarely does. Writing is a push and pull, a negotiation between what I want to say and what refuses to be said, between the story I planned and the one demanding to be told.

Today’s battle is a scene in my latest manuscript. It should be simple—Bekere standing at the edge of a decision, the Ajibade twins waiting, their dialogue crisp, their motivations clear. But it isn’t working. Bekere feels wooden, like she’s reading lines from a script she doesn’t believe in, a puppet with visible strings.

“I can’t do this,” Bekere says on the page, but her voice is hollow, unconvincing.

I delete. Rewrite. Delete again.

“I won’t do this,” she tries again. Still, something’s missing. The twins—Fola with his razor-sharp wit, Folu with his cautious intelligence—stand like cardboard cutouts, waiting for direction.

Hours pass in silence, except for the tap-tap of keys and the occasional groan when the words refuse to cooperate. Outside, the city moves in its relentless rhythm—cars honking, people rushing, life continuing. Inside, time stretches and contracts around my frustration. This is the part no one tells you about—the sweat, the self-doubt, the endless rewriting until the prose feels like it could breathe on its own. The unglamorous, often painful labor that precedes creation.

But then, something shifts.

“I won’t sacrifice who I am,” Bekere says, and this time, I feel it—the tension in her spine, the slight tremble in her voice. “Not even for you.”

Folu steps forward, his eyes flashing with that particular blend of outrage and calculation. “It’s not always about you, Bekere.”

A line lands just right. A phrase sings. The scene clicks into place, and suddenly, I’m not in my apartment anymore. I’m there, in the world I created, walking beside my characters, watching them come alive. The air grows thick with possibilities, with the electric charge of confrontation. I can smell the lavender in their living room, feel the indecision that tugs at Bekere’s soul, taste the metallic tang of fear as Folu reaches for her. 

This is why I do it. For these moments when the veil thins, and the imagined becomes more real than reality itself.

Not every day is like this.

Some days, the words betray me. I want to write…need to write, but everything I put down feels like a cheap imitation of what it should be. The voice is wrong, the pacing off, the dialogue stiff. I’ll sit for hours, producing paragraphs that I know won’t survive tomorrow’s read-through, sentences that limp rather than dance. I tell myself to push through, that bad writing is better than no writing, but deep down, I know when I’m forcing something that isn’t ready to exist.

On those days, I step away. I let the frustration simmer in the background while I cook elaborate meals I don’t have the appetite to eat, or reorganize bookshelves that don’t need reorganizing, or stand under a shower so hot it turns my skin red, hoping the steam might clear the fog in my mind. And when the sun sets, I do the only thing that makes sense—meet my best friends for drinks.

I arrive at our favorite spot in Las Colinas 30 minutes after our scheduled time. The Uber driver took a wrong turn, then hit unexpected construction, but if I’m honest, I was late leaving my apartment, still trying to wrestle one more sentence into submission. A text from Ndidi buzzes on my phone: “Let me guess, the words were holding you hostage again? We’ve ordered your usual.” If anyone would text me about my tardiness, it would be her. She’s ever impatient, her mind always three steps ahead, waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

The bar—Midnight Oil—buzzes with life, conversation rising and falling like waves, glasses clinking, music low but steady in the background, some indie band none of us recognize but all of us will be streaming tomorrow. It’s crowded but not claustrophobic, dimly lit but not dark enough to hide in.

I spot my besties before they see me—Ndidi nursing a cocktail with a name too pretentious to remember, her nappy curls piled high, her lips painted the exact shade of red that matches her confidence; Karla already laughing at something Vicente said, her head thrown back, silver earrings catching light; Vicente, animated as always, hands painting pictures in the air as he talks, his beard trimmed closer than the last time I saw him.

I slide into my seat, sighing dramatically, collapsing into the familiar comfort of their presence.

“Let me guess,” Karla smirks, sliding my drink—whiskey sour, extra sour—across the table. “The words weren’t cooperating?”

“The words,” I say, taking a grateful sip, the tartness making my eyes water, “were conspiring against me. They formed a union, went on strike, and left me staring at a blinking cursor for hours.”

Ndidi chuckles, but there’s something heavy in her eyes tonight, shadows that weren’t there last week. I store it away, waiting for the right moment to ask, to probe, to listen. Vicente, meanwhile, is in full critique partner mode, leaning forward, elbows on the table, eyes bright with curiosity.

“What part gave you hell this time? The rebellion scene? The confrontation with the twins?”

I explain, detailing the scene, the dialogue, the endless rewrites. How Bekere refused to sound authentic, how the twins felt flat, how the tension I knew should be there evaporated on the page. Karla nods, offering suggestions—”Maybe she’s too certain? What if she’s torn, deeply attracted to Fola while being married to Folu?”—her background in psychology always filtering into her literary advice.

Ndidi listens, her usual sharp insights cutting straight to the problem—”The twins control the tension. You need to deepen their confrontations. Give us more drama.”

Vicente, however, leans back, studying me with the look he gets when he’s about to say something either brilliant or ridiculous.

“You know what you should do?” he says, grinning, swirling the ice in his glass. “Write Romantasy.”

I nearly choke on my drink, the alcohol burning my throat. “Excuse me?”

He shrugs, self-satisfied. “You’re good at tension, at slow burns. You write internal conflict like nobody’s business. Imagine what you could do with a world of magic and forbidden love. You could build something epic.”

I scoff, rolling my eyes, but the idea plants itself somewhere deep, taking root in soil I didn’t know was fertile. A world where magic has rules, where love has consequences beyond heartbreak, where the stakes involve kingdoms and curses and cosmic balance. Vicente sees it, the way my eyes unfocus slightly, the way my fingers twitch as if already typing, and he smirks like he’s won.

Then, Ndidi sighs, a sound so heavy it could anchor ships.

We turn to her, conversation pausing, and she swirls her drink, staring into it like it holds answers to questions she hasn’t even asked yet. The crimson liquid catches the light, reflecting onto her face in patterns that look almost like tears.

“I just wish life worked like romance novels,” she says finally, her voice soft but steady. “You meet someone, you fight through obstacles—miscommunications, timing, whatever—and in the end, it’s perfect. No doubts, no mess. No waking up one day and realizing you’re in love with someone who’s slowly becoming a stranger.”

Silence settles, heavy and meaningful. We know what she means. Her three-year relationship with Dayo is unraveling, thread by thread, and there’s nothing neat or romantic about it. No dramatic betrayal to rage against, no clear villain to blame—just two people who once fit perfectly, now chafing against each other’s edges.

Karla reaches for her hand across the table, her touch gentle but grounding. “Real life isn’t a romance novel, babe. It’s messier, more complicated. But that doesn’t mean you won’t get your happy ending. It just might not look like what you expected.”

Ndidi exhales, nodding, blinking rapidly. “I know. I just… I thought we were endgame, you know?”

Vicente raises his glass, his usual joviality tempered by genuine empathy. “To better endings, then. And to the stories we tell ourselves while we wait for them.”

We clink our glasses, laughter breaking the weight in the air, conversation shifting to lighter topics—the latest Netflix sensation we’re all pretending to have watched, the new restaurant that opened downtown, Vicente’s disastrous attempt at online dating that involved a case of mistaken identity and a very confused elderly woman.

By the time I leave the bar, the night feels lighter, despite the hour. The frustration from earlier, the war with my words, the doubt—it all seems smaller, more manageable. The city streets are quieter now but still alive with possibility, with stories waiting to be told.

Maybe Vicente is right. Maybe I should write a Romantasy. Maybe I could create a world where magic flows through veins like blood, where love can literally move mountains, where my characters could face challenges bigger than themselves. Or maybe tomorrow, Bekere and the Ajibade twins will finally talk to each other the way they’re supposed to, their voices clear and true.

I step into the night, streetlights casting long shadows, and for the first time all day, I know exactly what I want to write tomorrow. The words are already arranging themselves in my mind, no longer adversaries but allies, whispering sentences I can’t wait to capture.

This right here is the writer’s curse, the writer’s blessing.

To live in two worlds at once, never fully present in either, but always listening for the stories that connect them.