Hello helpful blogger friends,
I read all the suggestions and my friends here gave me a few of their own, and I promise I considered all of them...I tried to write on a couple of topics but it was much harder than I imagined. So I decided to wing it, let all my thinking and research go to waste, and came up with this.
And I'm pretty darn proud :')
Feedback is appreciated :)
For Want Of A Better Word
n.
A usually temporary
psychological inability to begin or continue work on a piece of writing.
It’s a lot more difficult than anyone
thinks.
For a person who constantly uses a
keyboard or a pen to express how I feel, having the biggest writer’s block just
before a creative writing assignment deadline is one of the most frustrating
feelings in the world. I’m sitting here locked up in my room to avoid any
distractions, human or otherwise, with my fairy lights on and a mug of coffee
that was empty before I had typed out even a single word. For a blogger who
writes a blog that more people than I expected read, it’s horrible to have
seemingly unending periods of uninspiredness and tons of incomplete posts lying
in my drafts folder waiting for a spark of…what’s the word? My command over
vocabulary turns into a worthless bunch of words and phrases that just don’t
fit what I’m about to say. Actually, I’m not even sure what the point of it is
anymore.
Last minute stress works for me in most
situations, so much that when nothing else succeeds, I can almost count on a
burst of motivation to jolt my mind into action in the final hour. I don’t have
a problem with articulation. My catch phrase is, “you know what I mean?” And
mostly, you DO know. I can conjure up enough synonyms to get my meaning across
without too much worrying. But there are points in time when words don’t flow,
ink begins to blot, and my keys get clogged with dust.
I’ve tried free-writes with no constraints,
I’ve tried mindmaps, even tried being utterly profane (because somehow
cusswords come so very naturally when nothing else does). I find it easier to
write in sadness, so I have gone to extent to depress myself into some state of
written coherence. Heartbreak, nostalgia, empty Nutella jars, and reading SMS
language all make for brilliant catalysts to break the wall of…another word for
silence…that’s propped up in my head. And when I’m really desperate, I pick up
the last Harry Potter and read the last three chapters. The battle of Hogwarts
makes the tears flow like nobody’s business.
Hyperactivity, though the extreme
opposite of what I just said, can also be attempted. It can force your brain to
concentrate. I turn to music in such moments. A little Backstreet Boys can do
wonders to your energy late in the night, I’ve learnt. There exists nothing
that Jason Mraz cannot cure. Coldplay takes you to another level of
productivity. I might actually write a few sentences, God forbid. I get into a
rhythm, typing faster and faster, hoping that the slump is behind me. But of
course, iTunes must not cooperate. Justin Bieber begins to blast through my
laptop speakers, and all is lost once more.
It becomes harder to be confident of my
writing skills at all. Can I call myself a writer when I can’t fucking write?
What kind of writer and hopeful-in-the-future-author can’t mould words into a
story and make them effortlessly flow across a page? Did Shakespeare ever doubt
himself? Did J.K. Rowling ever find herself in a state of absolute…damn, what’s
the bloody word…? Would it make me feel any better knowing that the creators of
books that my grandchildren will read to their grandchildren also had similar
suicidal feelings when writer’s block slapped them across the face? I don’t
know what to say. That’s a symptom.
I become adept at losing faith in
myself. I know very few people with lesser self esteem in any case, and
writer’s block further reinforces my non belief. I begin to think my brain is
telling me something. It shut itself down because what I want to write about is
not worth the effort. I make a list of all possible ideas that cross my mind,
doodling and all. Yet everything I churn out, my brain disagrees. It creates a
sense of dissatisfaction with my feelings. I think I’m not doing them justice,
leaving them incomplete and somehow slightly unfelt. I don’t know how to
explain it in a way that makes it comprehensible, I’m too unsure of it to do
that. And again, I guess, that’s the problem in a nutshell.
What would I do if not for my ability
to write down what I think and how I feel? How do I conduct myself knowing that
there are things to be written and words to be inked but my mind is not up to
it? Frustrating isn’t the word, it goes beyond. Insert an appropriate
metaphor
here.
I use writing as a release to clear my
head, but writers’ block is an entity censoring any clarity-filled thoughts.
It’s a sadist little bastard, you know. It creeps up behind me when I least
expect it and suddenly that’s it, I have to say goodbye to MS Word and my
notebooks for a bit. It’s better to not try since that only makes me feel
worse.
The easiest way to deal with it is to
not...but just let it pass like any other horrible feeling. And when it comes
back inevitably, I will (try) to treat it like an old friend who turns up for
undecidedly long vacations and eats all my food without asking (I could try
another analogy but I can’t think of one). It’s one of the downfalls of being a
writer, I guess, learning how to deal with your own ineptitude and still
forging a path for yourself that you can proudly walk down.
I want to end this rant with a quote I
read by Ernest Hemingway:
“There is nothing to writing. All you
do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
THAT pretty much sums it up.
-------
Love,
Kanika
