The Block

Every person, woman, child or man, who has ever written more than a word in this particular life know with pain the phenomenon called fondly and in fear, the writers block. Words flow from your pen or finger tips onto the computer like water from a broken dam and then suddenly with no warning they stop. Period.

You can try anything you like, including self punishment of every description, not a word worth anything will emerge from your soul.

I am in the middle of one right now. When I said soul, two lines above, I meant it. Because nothing creative ever took birth from anywhere else.

I have read a lot about the remedies for this strange situation. I tried to squeeze words out of the dry sponge of my mind. And failed. Nothing happens.

At such times I think the best thing anyone could do is have a look at life and nature. Listen to the birds if any live around your place. Look at the grass grow. Dance on the sidewalk. Scream in your mind.

Do anything. And realise that nothing works. Too many rules and too many senseless things in the mind. My mind is crammed tight with things that mean nothing and do not add anything to the world or to me.

What is creativity after all. It is an experiment in generating stuff which is better. And mistakes happen. Even the great Creator makes mistakes. If not, how are we here !

So I have closed my Scrivener. Maybe sometime later, maybe a day or two later, the blasted tree will put forth new leaves. It might even bloom sometime.

Till then frustration is my friend. Obstructed labour. That is what the writer’s block is. The child screaming without noise in the despair of death, the mother screaming in the reality of imminent demise. Cut the belly open. Don’t wait, it is time for the LSCS.