Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has described the writer’s block she experienced after becoming pregnant with her first child as “terrifying.”
The acclaimed Nigerian author, 47, shared in an interview with the BBC’s Emma Barnett that writing gives her meaning, making the inability to do so particularly unsettling.
She recalled how something changed within her, preventing her from entering the “magical place” where she could write fiction.
Adichie welcomed her first child, a daughter, in 2016, and last year, she had twin boys, who are now 11 months old.
During her pregnancies, she experienced a persistent “foggy feeling” that impaired her ability to think clearly.
For someone who values clarity of thought, this emotional state was deeply unsettling.
However, she eventually regained her creative flow and is now releasing her first novel in over a decade, Dream Count, which follows four women whose lives take unexpected turns.
Widely recognized for her exploration of themes such as feminism, gender, and immigration, Adichie gained global recognition through her 2012 TED Talk We Should All Be Feminists, which was later sampled in Beyoncé’s song Flawless.
In her conversation with the BBC, she reflected on various topics, including parenthood, grief, and artificial intelligence (AI).
As a mother of two sons, Adichie is determined to raise them with emotional awareness and resilience.
She believes boys lack “wholesome” role models and hopes to teach her sons to be in touch with their emotions while also standing up for themselves.
She humorously added that she wants them to be the kind of boys who “never start a fight but, if you bring a fight to them, they will beat you up.”
Since writing her last novel, Adichie has also endured personal loss, grieving both of her parents.
The sudden passing of her mother on her father’s birthday in 2021 had a profound impact on her, shaping Dream Count in ways she hadn’t initially realized.
When revisiting the manuscript, she was struck by how much it explored the dynamics of mothers and daughters, making her feel as if her mother had helped her find her way back to writing.
Adichie also expressed strong opinions on AI’s impact on human creativity, arguing that generative AI should not be credited with storytelling.
She warned that widespread reliance on AI could make people “increasingly stupid” by diminishing their creative abilities.
Even tasks like using AI to summarize emails, she believes, weaken essential skills.
She emphasized that summarizing requires creativity, imagination, and intelligence—capabilities that should not be outsourced to technology.
Through her experiences with writer’s block, motherhood, grief, and her reflections on AI, Adichie remains a powerful voice on creativity and human connection.
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