S4 Ep. 258 From Prayer To Practice: Writing As Discipline

SPEAKER_00: Hello there. Welcome to the World Cafe Podcast. This podcast has been designed with created content that centers on the power of words. Can we really do anything without speaking? Can we really do anything without the agency of words? Yes, that is what this podcast is all about. And I am your host, Amakri Iswe, your neighborhood word trader. I believe in the power of words, for it is the unit of creation. I trade in words to profit my world. He brought us out that he might bring us in. And here we stand, feet upon the soil of promise, the air heavy with the scent of milk and honey. Yet milk is not birthed in the stillness of idle pastures. It flows from the hands that tend and the heart that guards. Honey is not gathered from flowers alone, but from the relentless hum of bees whose stings are the sentinels of their sweetness. The land flows, yes, but it flow is guarded by the laws of discipline. The sting must be stealed. The stum must be tamed, lest the blessing be squandered in the hands of the careless. For the Lord your God is not the patron of sloth. He is the author of diligence, the master craftsman who shapes the soul through labor. So lift your eyes from the noise you have called prayer, and enter the quiet furnace where communion refines. Here your petitions melt into alignment, your cries are woven into his counsel, and your strength is harnessed for the harvest. If every promise carries the weight of its process, and every blessing bears the discipline of its demand, then tell me, O child of promise, what sting will you stay? What stump will you tame to fully walk the land he has given you? Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and good everything. Welcome to the World Cafe Live Show. How are you all doing? Ah, yes, exciting, exciting, exciting. I started the show by reading a piece I wrote recently. I just shared that with you. And how are you? Yes, let us. We need to address that before we go into why we're here. I really ask that not rhetorically. I ask it because I care. We care. Part of the reason why we are here is because you're there. Yes, listening to me this very instant. Thank you. I appreciate it. Sincerely, I do. Well, where I am is pretty config, and the weather was amazing. Ah, yeah. So I read that because I want to talk about the much I do about writing. Yeah, writing. We're big on words and we are big on writing and we're big on creativity in this space. We add to that conversation. So I thought of coming around just to like add to this conversation, the much I do about writing. Writing is therapeutic. I must begin from that point. Very therapeutic. Um I see it as a stress reducer. I see it as a way of balancing your mental health. Yep. Writing. A lot of us have who are interested in writing always ask that question: how do I start? Where do I start from? You know, this is not motivational speaking now, but this is more or less like disciplined speaking. If there's anything like that. First of all, I want us to look at any form of discipline you get involved in. It always starts with this, what I call it, low entry point, the struggle. You're trying to pick up your energy, you know, and you climb like um, what's the word now in pharmaceuticals they use? A dopamine drive, it builds gradually, and it gets to that point like wow, excellent, and boom. A good example of it is people who are into um bodybuilding, exercising. Uh, you you you you look at it from that point of view. Somebody was trying to describe, I was listening to uh what's her name now, Chandra Rhines. I think that's her name, the the name and face behind Greece Anatomy. She's a screenwriter and all of that. So said imagine you want to start exercising, like running long distance or short distance that the case may be. Initially, you feel this fatigue, but again, you know, your muscles have what they call muscle memory. So the more you flex it, the more you know you get better at it and you build. And this is how writing is. You get as in how do I start? Start. Start, yes. Pick up a pen, pick up a paper, your digital uh script or what uh notepad or whatever, and you begin to scribble. Somebody will say, Well, what meaning would I make if I'm just scribbling? Okay, let us start from recording your experiences. So the piece I just read to you, I titled in Milk and Honey. You know, I went to church for a conference, men's conference. I sat out there listening. It was organized by Pastor Pojo Oyema Day. Uh, and uh he invited a lot of people, Lakey Alder and the rest of them. So I sat down there. I always preempt. That's the truth. My pen, my notepad. So one of the speakers, in course of speaking, uh zeroed into the children of Israel, the promise God made to them, taking them to the land that flows with milk and honey. So I sat down to play it in my head. The land flows with milk and honey. Some people, some writers or readers will say that was metaphoric. Okay, let us put it in literal sense. Where does milk come from? Milk comes from cattle, cow, as the case may be. Where does honey come from? Bees. So, how do you harness milk and honey? If I understand it from my elementary agriculture, you milk a cow, but there's a technique to milk enough cows. If you don't know that technique, you're sorry, you can't smile anymore. If you understand what I mean by that, because the cow will kick the living daylight out of you. So, in other words, you have to learn the technique. The cow enjoys that fondling, so to say, and breast milk, I mean the milk comes out. Then how do you harness honey from bees? This thing, you know. So you must learn the art. So I wrote it down and I began to go through the process. You see, the process. I want to communicate a message from this the message of discipline, prayer, uh, hard work, learning. So when you go through the piece I just read to you again, you will hear all of this. It does not promote uh laziness. Yes, the land flows with milk and honey, but excuse me, you have to walk the land, you have to, you understand. So I put it down. So, how would you describe that? In writing, you want to express something that you want it to be so real that whoever is reading it comes into your world, so you're right from the point of experience. Have you experienced a milking of a cow before? Have you experienced where they harness honey from bees either by looking or by participating? That's it's either participatory or should I say uh associating, if there's anything like that. So it means you need to move out from where you are to that place and get this is part of writing. So now you have laid out this frame, you need to fill it up, you need to move. Like I said a while ago, your muscle has memory. So each time you flex it, each time you flex it, they just pick up that rhythm and they respond. They respond. So each time you flex it, each time you flex it, you're building memory muscles, as it is called. Then over time, it is apparent. You come to see your body is well toned, your biceps, triceps, your heels, or whatever, your thighs, your calf, whatever. You know, you look so like you were shapened by a carpenter or something. But it comes about over and over and over and over and over again. So that is what writing is, and also writing, writing provides the opportunity for escape. Yeah, you're not living in denial now, but you want to escape. So you want to escape. What do you do? You go into writing. You can write about what makes you happy, what makes you unhappy, and how you can get out of that place. So let me also tell you one thing that drives my writing, the scriptures. Yeah, scriptures. When I when I sit with scriptures, the word of God, when I read, I ruminate, I begin to see things I need to express in writing, like sit down and write. So it it creates this community atmosphere. So I connect with divinity and I am putting down thoughts. Thoughts that sometimes I ask myself, if I share this, will it not look like too good to be true? Or would somebody not say what you have written is not true? But I take that courage to express it. And I sometimes I put it out there, not all the time. Sometimes I put it out there, and I get this feedback and all that. It's not as if I'm I'm interested, so much interested in the feedback as far as feeding my ego or dopamine high, that I see that response as people need to hear it, people need to see it. It's reaching out to somebody out there. So that is an aspect to writing. You must have that experience. Now, some people write, go into writing like in a formal sense. What do I mean by that? You want to write a story, or you want to write a piece, and you now have like an outline the way you want it to flow. And we always somehow our minds are wired to always start from the beginning, like the beginning, like the genesis. But I've come to also see that writing, you know, creative writing sometimes for me as a person, you could start from the middle, the middle of the story, or you start from the end of the story and go forward. So let me explain what I mean. Sometimes we pick up a material because it's voluminous. Because it's voluminous, but you're interested, you want to read it. Sometimes what a lot of us do is go to the conclusion. You read the conclusion, you read the middle, you can tell what the beginning is. That's how you know writing. A good number of us do that. You know, you pick up a material, it's like, ah, this guy, you always write to so let me just go to the end. I read the conclusion. Okay, I go to the middle, I can tell you what the beginning is or what the person is writing about. So, and I go ahead. You get me? So, writing could come in that form. A good example of that is for those of you who watch movies, and I've said this before, and I'm going to say it again. You know, George Lucas's, what do you call it, uh, Star Wars. Uh Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings was written backwards, or rather, was shot backwards. The movie. So, what we saw first was the end of the movie. So imagine that kind of creativity. They are telling you how the story ended before seeing. They shot that in the early or late 70s or so, or I think late 80s, George Lucas's Star Wars. What we're seeing now of Skywalker and all that, that is the beginning of the story. What we saw was the end. The beginning for those of us who grew up with Star Wars generation. Then, if you if you watch Lord of the Rings, same thing happened there. Peter Jackson, you know, shot Lord of the Rings backwards. He told the story backwards. The end was what we saw. The beginning of that Lord of the Rings is the Hobbit. You know, he shot the Hobbit over like 20 years after, if you remember, how the ring came about, how Frodo, how they went for the uh King's Jewel and all of that. Okay, that's movie. But put it in writing. Imagine telling a story backwards. You begin from the end. Oh, how this hero or the villain died. You state it and all that, and you begin to write how what led to his death, or his dying, it mustn't be dying, or what led to the conquest, the victory. And I think that's how God created the world. Like scripture says, Christ was slain from the foundation of the earth, it was reaching. So he was telling the story backwards. You see, God telling the story backwards. So why are you looking at me that way? That's how I write, that's how I get my inspiration. Sometimes uh writing comes like tasting, like when you taste, you taste a particular, what I say, candy, you give it a taste, it's sweet. So you're on your palate, your memory interprets it, and you now tell yourself, okay, you go away. It happens to all of us sometimes. You open maybe a pack of biscuits or a pack of plantain chips or ground nut. You take a little, you cover, you close it, you toss it into your mouth, you chew, you grind, you interpret it, you take two steps forward, you come back, you open it, you pour it. Tell me that has not happened to you before. That's how it is, even for writing. And before you get to the room, by the day, by the next day when you come back, what you bought in the morning has gone halfway because you take a little, you go, the taste, you you've created this taste in your memory, and it's so sweet and it's suiting and it's comforting. So you go back, and that's how it is also for writing. So you put the pen down, you write something, and you kind of slow yourself down, and you think you go back, you move away. Through the day, the taste of the right, the writing, the right of just keeps all over. Then you go back again. Maybe you encountered somebody, you went to the supermarket, I mean the supermarket or something, neighborhood shop, you encountered somebody, and the encounter fits into your thought, what you've been writing, you go back and you fuse it into the writing, and maybe that's the needle. Then you you go to bed, you wake up in the morning, and in course of your business of the day, the other piece presents itself and you put it in. So it comes in frames, that's what I'm saying, you know, different frames. But at the end of the day, like an artist that you are, you begin to put the different pieces together to form an image. It's just like sometimes when you look at some creatives, some people who are into that space where they use pebbles, just arranging the pebbles little by little, little by little, little by little, little. You see, as they're arranging it, images coming out, images coming out, a pattern is formed. You know, they keep going sequence by sequence, sequence by, and it takes days. As you're receding in your view, you're beginning to see the image, and it's like, wow, so is writing. So you don't have to, you don't have to like put yourself in anybody's mode. Learn what works for you as a writer, and you begin to put your thoughts down. One thing again, I've seen that affects a lot of writers, we always look for external validation. Okay, I don't think it's right. It's like dancing. I always say make the fall part of the dance. If somebody says that's not how to dance, ask the person. Okay, show me. This is not how to dance, right? Okay, go ahead. Let me see what you can do. Surprise, you'll be so surprised. That thing you just did, he or she would fuse it into his or her style. So that is it. It is not like, okay, this is called uh, what do you call it now? What do they call that in dance now? Uh those steps they make and all of that. And oh no, this dance is hip-hop style. Oh, that one is that. No, it is what resonates, your rhythm and your uh uh putting it out there. Writing is a beautiful thing. Writing is a beautiful thing. One other thing I think affects a lot of us from writing, it is grammar. How do I sound? So one day I asked somebody, can you think in your local dialect? Maybe you're Ishan, you're a Shekiri, you're Urubu, or you are a Scandinavian, you're from Norway or something, you're typical, or you're from Zulu. Can you think in Zulu? If you can think in your native dialect, writing will be so fun for you. Why? Because there are a lot of materials buried in your local dialect. Yes, I know English sometimes finds it difficult in expressing it, but as a writer, there's a way you will break into that space and create your style to express your dialect, and your audience will appreciate it. Why? Because we're speaking spirits and somehow words go beyond letters. There's a presence on it. That's why when you pick up a material, you're reading it. It's not your voice you're hearing, it's the voice in the material, the persona. Have you experienced that before? You pick up a book, you're reading, it's not your voice you're hearing. You're in not even a writer's voice, there's a voice in the, you know, the persona as it is called. Then you must learn to research. Do your research. You know, recently I just realized that physical libraries are becoming obsolete, and we depend so much on digital libraries. But I have come to also realize digital libraries are limiting or limited. When you go to a physical store with books, as you're going through the what do you call it, shelves, the sight of the books alone does wonders to you. You can pick up a material, you open it, you spend 30 minutes just glancing through before you procure it or something, but that experience reinforces your resolve to sit down and write. Sometimes when you go online to do certain researches, you may not get those materials. You won't. And you come to see that the volume of your reservoir expands very much. Your vocabulary, your skill, it increases because you've gone into that physical space, physical library and all that. And I was asking myself the other day, you know, having a conversation and in a monologue, do we have a physical library in Abuja? I was just, you know, I know uh the former president recently that uh former military president uh IBD Ibrahim Badabose Babangida launched the presidential library. I know uh former president to president uh his excellency Lushegwo Passenjo has in a presidential library. I I don't think they're in Abuja, but where you know the states where they are, wherever the locations where they're located. But imagine having access to such libraries with books, you sit down, you want to create and experience, you know, your vocabulary and all of that, you know. So it is amazing. Another thing again about writers that it's so sweet. We document history unconsciously to us. So let me give you an example of what I mean by we document history. Now, so many times you know, when you pick up materials, it talks about uh the king, the head, the lead. It seldom talks about the in-between. So, but when you go to into physical libraries and you're researching, you'll be amazed how you will read about peasants. Let me give an example of what I'm talking about. How many of you like pizza? Everybody will scream, pizza. Okay, pizza is a high-end meal, correct? I know everybody will shout, yes, wrong. Do you know that the story of pizza was the poor people in Rome who could not afford bread, they took those, thrown away, whatever, steal bread, I mean, whatever, you know, and just put vegetables and stew and all of that. Oh, you didn't know that's the origin of pizza. You won't find that in so many online whatever, but go to libraries, research, you will see it. Do you know that at a time, lobster was a food for the poor? Uh, you didn't know? Okay, I'm telling you now. The same story of pizza, but all of a sudden, when the kings, the bourgeoisies, and all of that started like fancying it, shops and what have you started making it a high-end meal, and boom, who documents that? So you come to say that in your writing as a writer, take for example, you like going to certain joints to eat. Joints, I mean like place of you know, where they sell food, and you want to you go there to eat all the time and you like what you eat, you want to express it, then you describe it in your writing in a book. That experience it goes into the archives, and over time, other readers and writers will pick it up and make reference to it. So you have recorded a piece of history which is now part of a larger. So that's it. So you you maybe you may set out for comfort writing, you may set out just to, like I said, therapeutic writing, you just want to and all of that. But all of a sudden, you see yourself, you're creating this universe, and people are coming into it. That's what writing is like. So, what it says is writing easy, it depends on what you call easy. For me, I see it as life is not easy, but life is possible, and when a thing is possible, it makes it easy, achieve it easy. Did you get that? Yes. So if you say it's not, it's possible, and if something is possible, then achieving it becomes easy. The thought of that, so you approach it from that perspective and you write, and you put your thoughts out there. You know, you journal it, you sit down, you write. You could tell yourself daily, I'll put in uh 30 minutes, I'll put in two minutes. That's it. I'll put in one hour, I'll put in five hours, and all of that. But you must learn to experience life so that you will be armed with sufficient ammunition to write. What do I mean by that? Growing up, I'd seen movies, you know, like uh James Bond movies, uh Simbad and the Seven Seas. Don't mind me, I'm not that old. I'm only just going back in time. Uh so when I see these movies, I see images. One of it is in Europe, then I didn't know that, but I see it in movies. Like in uh Moonraker, I think, when James Bond came, I think that scene was shot in Venice, came out of the water, his boat, the gondola, turned to a vehicle, climbed the stairs and you know, through the streets of Venice, and pigeons were flying. I mean, it created this beautiful memory for me as a person. And I said, I would like to, I would like to see this, I would like to experience it. So God blessed me. You know, there was a time in my life I lived in Milan, yes, Italy, San Donato. And there's this place, Duomo. If you go to Duomo, there are a lot of pigeons. I love going there because of that. You see, I saw it in a movie, so I love going there. Then ice cream, there's this place. They have one of the best, in my opinion, ice cream in the world. Don't mind me. The groom, that's what it's called. Wonderful. Then there's this part of it, Emilia Vittore. You know, a short uh what do you call it now? Ah, then you're something well paved. And I realized most city centers in Europe have this design. Duomo is a church. Then Emilia Vittori is just by it. Why am I telling you this? It forms part of my writing. So when you read some of my write-up, I describe the way I play with words. I'm only taking you into these things. You know, there's this place called, I think it's called uh Naveli. You know, somewhere, yeah, in Milan. It's like when you get there, it's like you're in the Netherlands. You know, you have something like what we have in Jabi Lake Moor, or in somewhere in Lagos, Marina, or no, not Marina, you know, where you have these water bodies and all that. But there's well clean. At night, when you go there, the only thing you should be wary of is mosquitoes. So you have to rub the mosquito repellent cream, the delight, the water, nightlife. So you see, I'm thinking into my words when I write that experience, I've experienced it. Like if I want to talk about nightlife, I go there, I evoke it and I express it. So that's what writing is. Like, you know, I decided to come share this, the much I do about writing. It's like I said, not easy, but it's possible. And its possibility creates the window of ease. Like you do it, you know, and uh I can go on and on and on and on. But I need to, I need to let you go so that you can start that journey of writing and uh just to let you know I help people write. Some call it ghost writing, I'm not a ghost. You know, some call it ghostwriting, but I'm I ain't no ghost, I'm real, don't mind me. So I do that, and uh I always talk about it. I've written a couple of books, yeah, for to be precise, you know, and uh I've helped a lot of people. I think I've done one of these days, I'm going to bring all of them on the show or on my page and talk about them, the experience, different experience with different uh clients, you know, and what uh they want and how I help them bring it to life. But it's beautiful. I always say this, which you know, I believe in the power of words. Why? It is the unit of creation. I trade in words to profit my word. I call myself the wordsmith, your neighborhood word trader. Did you get that? That's what I do. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being there. Thank you for listening, thank you for following. Thank you for being part of this experience. It always gives me this joy. Yep, we're available on all the social media platforms that you are involved in. Facebook, TikTok, uh, Instagram. Uh, I forgot to mention Thread. We're also there. We're threading and uh Spotify. We have a YouTube channel. You want to know the name of the channel? Is my name, I'm actually so we just look for what you see there. Do subscribe uh and hit that notification button so you'll be the first to receive this juicy, juicy content that will inspire, energize your life. Thank you. I can go on and on and on and on, but I need to run so that I go put together more juicy conversations to bring to yours truly. Till I come your way again. My name is Amakri. Amakri is the way. Bye for now. Awesome time it has been with you on the World Cafe Podcast today. Thank you for being there. You can catch me up on my social media handles: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, all at Amakri Isobaye. Also, you can get copies of my books at Cocktail of Words, The Color of Words, my HRO Notebook, and Hoker's Focus on God on Amazon and Roven Heights online bookstores. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel at the same address at Amakri Isobe. I'd love to hear from you and how this podcast has impacted you. You can leave me a message at my email address, amakrigaribaldi at gmail.com. That is A-M-A-C-H R-E-E-G-A-R-O-I-B-A-L-D-I. Yes, till I come your way again. Bye for now.