Written By: Anayat Sekhon
You’ve resolved to
complete that dreadful writing assignment; to answer a humdrum prompt; to write
the Great Indian Novel; or to coax a classic out of a mind dulled by the
soporific ramblings of the rabble. Armed with renewed gusto and ambition, you’ve
gone to great lengths to make sure that your working environment reflects the
grandiose pursuit of perfection your insides ache to embark on. The coffee is
the right temperature. The lighting is soft; the curtains are assiduously drawn
so that the pristine, cream-coloured leaves of your notebook seem aglow with
the promise of a higher purpose, provisioned for by blue ink. The desk is
uncluttered, and half a dozen books are stacked neatly in a corner; the titles
are meant to serve as a tantalising glimpse of your own literary vision come to
fruition.
But then half an hour elapses, and the most productive
thing you’ve done is reimagine the Ferns-’n’-Petals
logo on the top-left corner of the page. As if Narcissus seized you, your
marginalia consists solely of your name scrawled repeatedly in different fonts.
Or, you’ve reverted to cubism, and you’ve
made Picasso turn in his grave by sketching a most ludicrous cubic contraption.
On top of the page are angry dots produced by repeatedly pressing the nib of
your pen to paper, as if the force of your pitiful attempts at pointillism
would beckon your layabout muse to you. Writing, your la grande passion,
morphs into the odious alternative to doing your own laundry. And the mind, not
to be outdone, deploys its defence mechanisms to excuse itself from facing the
reality that you are, in fact, an unproductive piece of shit. It dresses up
your failures as the natural outcome of your perfectionism, or your propensity
to procrastinate, or your unresolved Oedipal complex.
Writer’s block. The
arch nemesis of creative invention, the remains of your ego and well
thought-out tattoos. It is crippling because broad acceptance of a writer’s
work is tantamount to validating his self-conception. We would all like to
believe that an endless reservoir of original and interesting personal insights
is at our disposal, thanks to our possessing abstractions such as a ‘highly-developed
personality’ or a ‘creative
bent of mind’. And these insights,
once committed on paper, would successfully capture the public imagination.
This idealistic point of view cannot be reconciled with the fact that we view
and experience our creative forces as unpredictable, uncontrollable flashes of
brilliance that peter out on a whim. Our figurative muses are terrible teases;
half-crazed minxes; sadists beyond reproach.
Views and advice on writer’s
block are as diverse as the authors themselves. Phillip Pullman claims it doesn’t
exist and is an outcome of the fledgling author’s
inexperience. Maya Angelou advises that you write tedious, nonsensical,
repetitive things between bouts of creative inspiration until you “convince
your muse you’re serious”.
Hilary Mantel says it’s best to leave
the irksome piece of writing and divert your attention for a while in ways that
would create a “space for your
lost words to show up”.
Through a motley mixture of personal experience and
research, I have imbibed 8 strategies to cope with writer’s
block:
•
Think, and research- but don’t
fall into the trap of passivity and egotism:
It’s important to
brainstorm ideas for writing projects and put in the requisite amount of research. But researching too much is a
trap that anyone who likes gathering information for information’s
sake falls into. An information overload engenders complacency and passivity
because you’re so busy ‘gathering
influences’
or ‘exploring new
avenues of thought’ (procrastinating)
that you don’t actually start
writing.
•
Start. Don’t
sweat the small stuff. If you can’t
bring yourself to write, lower your standards until you can.*
You are not expected to be Proust in the first draft of
your writing assignment.
•
Keep stress at bay. Write
about something silly.
I’ve been doing
this for a while. I take an English word that sounds ridiculous to me (like
poppycock) and write a stanza or two on what the word means to me. It allows me
to keep things light-hearted and firmly in perspective. Acquire the ‘brute-force’ method
of writing through a writer’s block. It’s
like blowing your nose to relieve blockage.
•
Create an atmosphere
conducive to creativity.
What sparks creativity, and what keeps your creative
juices flowing? It’s a subjective
question with many answers. Your creative streak could be awakened or sustained
by finger-painting, meditating, walking, listening to certain kinds of music,
watching a good movie, or drinking an obscene amount of liquor. Whatever works
for you.
•
Write regularly.
I cannot underscore this enough. There are many ways to
inculcate the habit of writing regularly: keep a journal or a dream diary (try gethermit.com,
an online journalling resource), or join a community-oriented writing platform
like wattpad.com
or writerscafe.org.
I write on quora.com
semi-regularly, and I also recommend 750words.com, which provides
statistics on your writing speed, themes and mindset as you clock in 750 words
every day.
•
Use mind maps or diagrams to
sketch an outline.
Mind maps provide a visual representation of the material
that you plan to incorporate in a piece, and are incredibly useful when it
comes to structuring, filling gaps in, and editing text effectively. While pen
and paper are suitable for mind-mapping, some mind-mapping resources include
Coggle (www.coggle.it)
and MindMeister (www.mindmeister.com).
•
Stop caring about negative
feedback.
It is inevitable that no matter how finely you hone your
craft, someone will hate your writing with a vengeance. Constructive criticism
and setbacks have their place in a writer’s
journey of personal growth, but it is important that they don’t
get to you too much. Most of the time, your biggest obstacle is going to be
your own internal naysayer. Silence it, and half the battle is won already.
•
Minimise distractions.
No good writing was ever done with twenty-something Chrome
tabs open in a different window. It’s
essential to allow yourself the mental space to ruminate and allow inspiration
to give rise to tangible creative output.
None of these tips can allow you to overcome writer’s
block unless you couple them with thorough introspection, optimism and personal
insight into your own writing style. Writer’s
block is daunting, but certainly not insurmountable.
References:
*(’Lowering
your standards’ until you can
write was advice given by William Stafford, who had about 6000 published poems
to his credit)
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