I established my first writing routine when I was 13. The school year had just ended and I’d won a stack of books for being the best student in a number of subjects. The pile included several 60-leaved notebooks that I decided to fill with short stories.

During the holidays, I completed a collection that included masterpieces such as “Honesty is the Best Policy”, “A Stitch in Time Saves Nine” and “Honour your Parents”. Sadly, the newspaper editors I sent them to never wrote back and I suspected that they felt threatened by my genius. Nevertheless, through the holidays, after I’d spent an acceptable amount of time pushing my breakfast around the plate, I sat at my desk until it was time for lunch. Sometimes, I was forced to take a break when someone in my family wanted to use the ironing table that doubled as my writing desk.

It wasn’t long before I realised I had two kinds of writing days. On most days, I dragged my pen across the page, glancing over my shoulder at the wall clock to check if it was lunchtime, astonished by how long it would take for a minute to pass by, hoping that someone would come and iron a dress. I did write, but I also drew lots of squiggles in the notebooks because the right words just wouldn’t come.

I traded notebooks for a laptop years ago and I no longer draw squiggles. Instead, I scroll through my Twitter feed, order pizza, file my nails or watch another cat video on YouTube. I wander around online but until I hit my daily word count, I only leave my desk to make some tea, eat or to answer the door. At 7pm, I give up and spend the rest of the evening catching up with the news. Usually, the only satisfaction I have on such days is that my total word count has gone up, if only by a few words. Sometimes, I even manage a thousand words or more but even as I hit save, I suspect that most of the day’s work is destined for the recycle bin. I know I’ve been writing in circles, looking for a place to go.

I scroll Twitter, order pizza, file my nails – but I'll stay at my desk until I hit my word count

Once in a while, I have special writing days. The first of its kind happened when I was completing my first story collection at 13. I sat down at my desk after breakfast as usual and within what felt like a minute it was already dark outside. I’d taken breaks during the day, to drink water and to visit the loo, but I barely saw any of the things or the people around me. At some point, the world I was imagining had become as real and compelling as the one I lived in, if not more so. All I wanted to do was sit at my desk and explore it some more. My mum allowed me to stay up that night since I didn’t have school the next day and I crawled into bed just before dawn, exhausted and excited.

Even now, when after days of writing in circles I stumble across something that feels like a portal into another world, I usually work through the night, take a short nap in the morning and go back to my desk as soon as I’m up. When I had a full-time job, I would write dialogue and sketch characters on my commute and during meetings. Now, I forsake showers and regular meals and stay at my desk for hours, taking breaks to drink tea and eat something sweet, usually cake. I ignore emails and delete the social media apps on my phone, and after a while I no longer know nor care what day of the week it is. Those special days are not measured in minutes nor hours but in chapters completed and sentences perfected. They don’t even feel like days, they are periods I spend in a magical place, unbound by the rules of a temporal universe. Usually, by the time I hit save before taking a nap, my word count has gone down but the world I’m creating feels more tangible than it did before.

The peculiar thing about those special days is that they sneak in like the regular ones; I never know when I’m going to write a sentence that transports me via some invisible threshold into another world. Now I think of those moments of magic as my reward for pushing through on the days when the process is quite tedious.

Hours: always more than I thought it would take

Refreshments: enough chocolate to keep cocoa farmers and dentists in business

Words: fewer than I had when I started

Number of times I’ve gone online to research something and ended up on Twitter: guilt-inducing

• Ayòbámi Adébáyò’s Stay With Me is published by Canongate.