Nishanth S Coontoor
Writing, especially when you have an idea, is like opening Instagram or Reddit. Ideally you want to space it out so you don’t exhaust yourself. Also, and more importantly, because you need to do your day job which pays the bills.
So, you open the gram for 10 minutes. Time yourself. Once done, you call it your quota of the day.
10 minutes later, you start getting restless. You just told yourself that you wouldn’t open Insta again till tomorrow.
The restlessness increases. What about the New year resolution you made just now in May? Might as well start in 2021 because 2020 is cancelled?
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Not having written anything for the past one week means I have this mental deadline to write one asap. I sit down with a hot cup of Red Label chai like they do in the movies. I take a sip. I take a deep breath. I look outside the window to the sun and the trees and the birds. But its 10 pm now. I only see my neighbors – one doing dishes and another watching TV. A rom com, really?
I close my eyes. I try to imagine sitting by a meadow. The creativity will begin to spontaneously flow through the words I will begin typing out now. Any moment now. Any, any moment now.
Nothing. I stare for a whole 5 minutes at the blank copy of Microsoft Word (Compatibility mode). I have the Writer’s block.
Writer’s block is that feeling when you have the ideas and the motivation to work on a piece, but the words and the flow of the piece just don’t form in the head. The frustration comes from not being able to accept the situation as is and simply let it go. It happens to all writers – including those in academia.
I begin trying out different tricks to fool the brain.
Maybe a change of scenery will help? But the outdoors turn out to have too many distractions. Maybe a Starbucks will work. Isn’t it the place where all writer’s I see on Netflix shows do their best work and win the book deal? Oh, the quarantine. I already know it’s not the coffee or tea tea latte.
Maybe some good A R Rahman music on Youtube will help. Soon, I am lost in the comments section of the bottomless pit that are Youtube playlists. ‘Anyone listening to this song in 2020?’ right above the ‘Anyone listening to this song in 2019?’ comment. Both by the same commenter, one year apart.
I decide to take a power nap. I wake up the next day.
What causes the writer’s block?
Here are some of my observations so far:
1. Self-doubt. Overthinking if an idea for a story is good enough.
2. Starting problem, big problem. I don’t know how to start the story.
3. Worry about it not being your best creative work.
How to cure writer’s block?
Again, some tried and tested methods that have helped so far:
1. Accept, I know this is hard, that maybe now is not the time to write. If you are the kind that needs to be productive, finish other chores.
2. Take a break by going outdoors.
3. Write down the flow of the piece on paper. If it’s a short story, what are the pinch points and the plot points. What will the climax look like?
4. Write something out as draft number 0. No structure is okay. Just get it out of the system.
5. It hasn’t worked for me but changing the desk location or re-arranging your workspace may work.
Image by Lukas Bieri from Pixabay