Writer's block

Experience is real, rest all is superficial. I can assertively say this, having experienced what they call ‘a writer’s block’. I had read about it, a few of my fellow writers had touched upon it in their writing/conversation. Till that point in time, for me, it was all superficial. I could never appreciate how it could happen, more so, why at all it should happen. From the time I started blogging, it had always been easy for me to gather my thoughts on a particular topic and express them in words. Since I had no benchmark in my mind, I was able to express myself freely without any bias. Also, since blogging was new for me, every time I had something fresh and original to write about. No wonder, for me, ‘writer’s block’ was like an imaginary ghost, which would appear only if I wanted it to.

One of my friends who enjoyed reading my blogs once shared that he suspected a sense of hurriedness in my blogs. He asked me if I was writing each one of them in one go. When I replied in affirmative, he suggested that I should space out my writing, which will bring in an added creativity. I liked his suggestion and tried spacing out writing the blog which I was currently working on. As I was so used to writing each blog in one go whatever amount of time and effort it took, spacing it out was something new and unusual. It took many days and a serious effort on my part to resume writing from where I had left. Those were the first signs of my ‘writer’s block’. However I didn’t take it that seriously since I felt that doing something new would naturally call for carrying out some adjustments. As soon as I finished writing it, I forgot about those signs.

For the last three months, I’ve been really struggling to write. At the first instance, there are no fresh ideas bouncing my mind. It appears I’ve been facing a drought. Secondly, whenever I have attempted to write, I’ve challenged by a thought that this blog of mine has to be necessarily better than all of my earlier blogs. This has dissuaded me like anything from writing. The third and the most disturbing thought has been how will others feel after reading my blog. Will they like it? Or will they feel that it’s not as good as the previous ones? More than disturbing me, these thoughts have actually annoyed me. Before this, I always used to write just to express myself. It was not for anyone else, but for me. Of course I used to feel elated when I used to receive an applaud. But it was not what I used to write for. Perhaps too much of accolade spoiled me. I didn’t realize when I started writing to impress others.

Yesterday, while I was organizing the apps on my phone, I bumped into a beautiful TED Talk called ‘Try something new for 30 days’ by Matt Cutts. Matt shares how by doing something new (and even crazy) for 30 days altered his life for the better. He mentioned that how by writing on every single day for 30 days, he could complete his novel. Most importantly, he beautifully made me realize that although his novel wouldn’t be in the category of bestselling novels in the world (in fact it would be far from being a good novel), after writing it, he could at least introduce himself to others as a novelist rather than saying that he’s an IT nerd.

It was as if his talk opened my eyes. It almost shook me and reminded me of the very objective for which I had started blogging in the first instance; to express MYSELF. While I did that, in the process, if I entertained others, it was only a bonus. His talk actually removed my ‘writer’s block’.

Now I have taken a 30 day challenge to write every day and I’m quite excited about it. Most importantly, I’m happy that I’m writing again freely to express myself!