If you want to know how to write, write.

Lekan Otufodunrin

Below is a personal experience that happened just yesterday.

I write a weekly column for The Nation Newspaper on Sunday which I once edited.
Getting a topic to write on weekly is not always easy despite all the available issues and incidents in the country.
You must know the details of what you want to write on to be taken seriously as a writer and columnist.
The best way to ensure you don't miss your deadline is to always think ahead of what to write about and have it ready possibly a day earlier.
However, sometimes you may not know what to write on until when it's late. Some topics may occur to you, but you will dismiss them for various reasons.
Yesterday was one of those kind of days as I struggled to decide on a topic by mid-afternoon hours to my deadline for submission.
I looked through headlines and didn't find any I was sure I could write on. Even when I was lucky to have someone drive me home in my car to try and write something, we spent all the time discussing other issues.
By the time I got home about 6pm, two hours ahead of my deadline, which is for late submission, I was sure I would call in to ask that another article  be used to fill my space as I do once in a while.
But the writer in me won't let go. Ahead of 7pm I saw the story of the explanation by the State Security Service that the recent detention of the Executive Director of the International Press Centre , Mr Lanre Arogundade was due to mistaken identity.
What kind of spurious excuse is that I wondered. As I read to the end of the story I knew I couldn't miss the opportunity to let the SSS have a piece of my mind this week. Next week would be too late as other issue might have come up that may not make the detention topical.

Seeing I had just about an hour to miss my deadline, I typed my thoughts quickly on my phone notepad. I was angry enough about the  security agents trying to remind us of the military days in a democratic administration to have more than enough points to make.

Sensing I may need some twenty minutes to edit and reread my piece since  no one was around to help me do that, I sent a message to the editor asking to submit a bit late.

By the time I was through after some struggle to decide on the right headline considering that I was telling the SSS to tell their tales to the marines, I was glad I was able to find a good topic at the nick of time.

If it was a case of mistaken identity as they claimed, I asked the SSS to show us the picture of the Arogundade look-alike they are looking for.

Talk of a day in the life of a writer.