The Frustration of a Writer’s Block

What I thought was only a myth actually happens even to the best of us (modesty shall prevail eventually). The dreaded writer’s block has afflicted me, an uncommon yet over worked and abused condition which takes away from a writer ( 2 blogs so I guess I qualify) his sense of imagination rendering him worthless to himself anymore. I haven’t written a post for extremely long and in the interim period have written very little else. So how did this excruciating disease afflict my mind after having taken that entire gamut of keep-the-writing-going vaccines? A question worth pondering about.. Let’s rewind the past few weeks and attempt to reach a formidable argument which can thus cure me of this condition.

Here we go…

Work is my true master and I love being its slave

Really?? Work? That’s your excuse!! You walk in at 9 and get out by 6 and have the rest of the evening to make sense of life and put it down on paper, so don’t you dare give me that as an excuse. But wait, I never said that work drains me or leaves me unfit to write. Unlike many people who will scoff at this idea and others who will sink into it like quick sand, I am enjoying work. It challenges my faculties, pushes me to think (not like I had given up on it till now) and makes me want to go back for more. I know you all are waiting for me to burst out laughing and say I’m kidding but I’m not and NO my boss won’t be reading this. So strangely you get a little wrapped up in what you do, you think it, you plan and begin to believe it’s all you have. While that is not such a bad sentiment to throw at my baffled readers, it surely cannot be the path of my existence. So yes maybe the work got to me but no excuse to run away from what quite surely drives my yet to be defined existence.

Chennai and building a life

So one is thrust upon this world with a new city, a new job and asked to switch to a mode you never knew you had. ‘Life is your responsibility’ mode. Considering I had a day’s break to segue from college days to work bays I could not ask for a timeout and it really isn’t a tag team sport now is it. So besides finding my way around a new job I also had to fit into a new city with a complete identity of its own, of the kind I have never experienced before. This was surely made easy thanks to friends you should die for and my general ability to love any place I have lived in (Look up Binnaguri on the Indian map and you shall know what I’m talking about) But Chennai kept throwing surprise after shock at me. Falling in love with this city, for me, and I may have an army full of detractors, but it been the easiest ever. From finding small places to eat to neat pubs to drink to a little piece of heaven on a terrace to live, I covered the basic needs quite easily. There on, discovering this city and its many facets, faces, facades has just been fascinating (Read Chennai, Oh Chennai). Well, maybe then discovering this new city has absorbed me in a much needed journey of self discovery coupled with a desire to have something of my own, but could it possibly have taken away from me the only talent in my repertoire, my writing. I think not.

A Lot like Love..

So besides being my favourite romantic comedy, this feeling is quite possibly another reason for the condition. So without breaking into a cross between a tap dance and a highly questionable Bhangra like jig, I surely do have all the symptoms of the much dreaded yet breezy ‘K’ word. So taking off from there, the last month has been a whirlwind discovering this whole new side to life. Something that has reinvigorated me and shown me a whole new path. You spend sometime with a person and life’s perspective begins to change, that is not some filmy funda, it’s a real life in the face believe-it-or-not kind of awakening. So every day seems a little more beautiful than the previous, the motions you go through everyday begin to have an end to it and if that end is in a little house full of all that you love, it just begins to fall in place. You start getting that epiphany they all talk about, of how life suddenly clears its windscreen one day for you and you see clearly again. That vision is upon me and surely I know who has helped me see it and that makes this feeling all the more special. So evenings spent in deep conversation and the thrills of life, early mornings spent in despair of leaving that beautiful vision, the day spent constantly hoping for the evening to come.. Could this be the reason then for my writer’s block? Hmmm…

I guess I will never know the correct reason or the set of reasons but I surely know one thing, these set of reasons have surely helped me advance to the next level of my writing, not necessarily in my skill but surely in my persistence and need to churn out the good stuff.

And funnily, in the process of finding the reasons, I have forgotten the fact that I have been cured..

P.S. If you are still searching for Binnaguri, you may take longer than you think.

And if you are wondering what is the ‘K’ word. Learn some Tamil.