When Memories Become Nightmares - A Written Series from the Akua Projects by Rakia Ari - Where This Began on October 15, 2019

From Writer's Block to Ebook: My Project's Unexpected Journey

Ever get stuck? I mean, really stuck?

A while back, I was fighting a massive case of writer's block, and this whole project started as a little exercise I created for myself to just get something on the page.

The inspiration came from a movie series I'd seen. It was one of those where they took a bunch of short films and wove them into a larger series. I still can't remember the name of it or the network (so frustrating!), but the idea stuck with me: from small acorns, do great oaks grow.

So, I set a simple, low-pressure goal. I'd post two-sentence "story seeds" every week. I knew daily would be way too much pressure at the time, but weekly felt doable. I paired these little snippets with some stock images I’d bought and posted them mostly on Instagram. It was just a way to keep the creative muscles working. Later on, I even compiled them into a short video (posted at the top).

The whole time, the "grand plan" was to eventually use each of those little two-sentence entries as a prompt for a full short story.

But... you know how it goes. Life happens.

I'll be honest, I never made it to a full 52 entries. I had moments of inspiration, but then I'd skip weeks. Those weeks turned into months. And for a long, long while, the whole project just sat there, collecting digital dust.

Then, after way too much time had passed, I decided to revisit it. I had all these seeds, so why not try to grow them?

This time, though, I decided to use AI to create my images for each story. And that is when things got really interesting.

I quickly realized that to get the images I actually wanted, I needed to be way more detailed in my prompts. This, in turn, made me look hard at my own writing. I had intended to write stories that spoke on more than just one culture, but I found that my stories weren't painting a clear enough picture for the AI to "see" what I wanted.

It was a real "aha!" moment. If the AI couldn't see the diversity I was aiming for, a human reader probably couldn't, either. So, I had to go back and adjust the stories themselves—to add the detail, the color, and the specifics needed to paint the appropriate picture. The AI, in a weird way, became an unexpected editor that forced me to be a more descriptive writer.

And that brings us to today! I'm genuinely so excited to be republishing this whole process as an ebook. I'm still deciding on the final layout, but I'm going to include everything—the original two-sentence exercise (the "before") and the finished short story project that grew out of it (the "after").

I was really tempted to go back and edit that finished project again, but I've decided to add it "as is." It just feels more honest, you know? It's a snapshot of the entire messy, stop-and-start, unexpected creative journey.

It’s funny how a little exercise to get unstuck can take on a life of its own. What started as a cure for writer's block ended up becoming a lesson in descriptive writing, all thanks to an AI. Crazy.

Anyway, that’s the story behind the project. Thanks for reading!