Writer’s Block, A Cure and Some Juvenile Poetry
I HAVE TO CONFESS.
I’ve finally been infected. I was dreading it would happen to me someday. There’s a disease which strikes us writer’s once in a while, or may be more than just once in a while. It’s happened to a few people I’ve known. I also now know that it’s happened to so many people I’ve never known, but still somehow know, because they were famous writers.
Well, someone like Shakespeare! Yes, I believe he too was infected by this strange disease. He got cured pretty soon, and continued doing what he’s best known for. They even made a movie about this. It was called Shakespeare in love. And what’s the disease he suffered from called? It’s called Writer’s Block.
Ah, you’ve had it once, na.
Never had it? Beware, it’ll strike you someday.
My literary skills are not even one percent of what Shakespeare’s were, but then diseases don’t give a damm about who you are. There’s nothing to stop them from coming at you. And infecting you.
Writer’s block!
Every writer dreads this. The Wikipedia describes it as a condition associated with writing as a profession in which a writer loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies in intensity.
What are the symptoms? I’ll tell you mine.
1. You have difficulty in composing an sms. So you forward a saved joke instead. You then call up the person you send it to and apologise for that stupid sex laden joke and verbally convey what you intended to sms, even if it was a simple request for a date/meeting/anything else.
2. You have to send a mail reminding someone to read your script. It’s actually the third reminder. You decide to convey this in a humorous, hatke away. (If writers can’t do this, then who will?)
The only hatke thing happening is that you can’t write a single line. You resignedly decide to forward your last politely worded reminder. But something inside you urges you not to resend that. . . . Hatke likh,hatke likh…it keeps saying.
You finally type in Abay, Padha kya?, then click on the send option and quickly sign out.
3.You switch on your computer and log into your PFC Author’s account, intending to write in that long delayed post. But for the next two hours you can only stare at the blank white screen, interspersed by periods when your screen saver comes on. Suddenly an idea hits you and you hit on a few keys. But 96% of the screen is still blank. The white screen stares at you. You stare back. This process gets repeated until you finally give up afraid that you’ll get the cyber world equivalent of snow blindness.
You make a mental note of wearing your Sun glasses the next time you use the computer.
4. You’re on page 37 of your script. You’re about to start writing the next scene. It’s all set up in your mind. Your fingers hover above the keyboard, waiting for that moment when the words will gush out of your mind and onto the computer screen.
Nothing like that happens.
The words continue to swish around in your mind, only they don’t stream out as sentences. Not even a trickle.
CUT TO A FEW WEEKS AGO
It all started a few weeks ago when a writer friend of mine asked me if I’d ever heard of writer’s Block.
“ Where’s that? ” I casually inquired ” Is it a building society in Andheri where all screenwriters live? ”
The writer friend smirked and replied ” I’ll ask the FWA to think about floating such a society. But seriously, it’s a disease which afflicts us writer’s…”
” Disease?”
“There are times when you can’t write. It can last from a few days to ….”.
“…..to till when?” I asked, somewhat alarmed.
He shrugged his shoulders and replied “ I don’t know. I’ve never had it….can’t afford to…after all, I’m a TV serial writer. I have to write an episode a day”.
I nodded my head understandingly.
A WEEK LATER
I had to sms someone. I spend thirteen minutes trying to compose a simple ‘thank you’ note. It finally consisted of one word-THANKS!
Emails took longer. I kept rewriting them. That didn’t work out. So I resorted to ‘cut, copy and paste’ from mails in my Inbox. That worked for a while until a friend rang up and politely asked why was I replacing her name with mine and resending the same mail.
I’d rather not mention my attempts on writing anything else.
I called up my writer friend and declared that I’ve been infected by writer’s block. He laughed his head off and hung up.
A few minutes later he called back. He sounded serious this time, or so I thought. He asked me to describe my symptoms. He listened carefully and then said “Sounds interesting. Can I use some of this in my TV serial. One of my characters is a writer…actually an Urdu Poet”.
He started to laugh again. This time I hung up.
A FEW DAYS LATER
My writer friend called me up and inquired if I was feeling better. I replied I hadn’t attempted to write anything for the past few days. He asked me hold on for a second and passed on the phone to someone else.
“ Hi, I’m………”
“ Sir…Sir….Sir” is all that I could say.
We’ll call him ‘Sir’ from hereon.
“ I hope you don’t have speaker’s block too” Sir said. He sounded bemused. He continued “ OK, quickly tell me what you’re experiencing”
He listened patiently, and then said
“ What is it that you want to write immediately”
“An article….for PFC, which stands for….”
“ Passion for Cinema! Hmmm….. I suppose it’ll be a few paragraphs long. That shouldn’t really be a problem”
“ It is…it is. I can’t write anything at all”
“ Hmmm…..Now, that is a problem. By the way, is writing your profession?”
“ No…Not yet”
“ Hmmm….that could be one reason. See, you’re not bound to write every day or …”
“ Sir, given an opportunity I’d like to write everyday”
“ Then get your ass down to Mumbai and slog it out like we’ve done”
He sounded angry but I was wrong. He guffawed and continued “ Listen carefully. Stay off the computer for a couple of days. Write as we used to do ages ago. Samjha kya?”
“ Well…..”
“ Write a few lines with a pen on paper. Or use a pencil. Oh, I used to love that scratching sound….khreeech,khreech”
A few khreeeches later I realized the call was over.
I finally had a prescription. I tore out a sheet of paper and hunted around for a pencil. I found one but it needed sharpening. I hunted for a sharpener, found one too. Job done, I sat down to write. Khreech,khreech went the pencil.
An hour later, I noticed that the pencil had grown shorter and the floor was littered with curled up pencil shrapnel’s. The page finally had something on it.
My mobile rang. It was an unfamiliar number. I answered “ hello”
“ What have you written?”
It was Sir.
“ Written…?”
I looked down at the sheet of paper. It was full of lines drawn at random, crisscrossing each other.
“ I couldn’t write any lines, so I drew them instead”
He was silent for a few seconds. He then guffawed in a now familiar way.
“ Never mind. Frame the sheet and hang it on a wall. Now tell me, very briefly, whatever you’ve written in the recent past”
I briefly described everything I’d written so far.
“ Hmmm… Go through whatever you’ve written, and do read every page. When you’re through, take a deep breadth….”
I heard him breath deeply. He continued, slightly out of breadth “ …and start writing. If you still can’t, then I’m sorry, I won’t be able to help you further”
The call was over. But my anxiety wasn’t. So, I took a deep breadth and started reading what ever I’d written recently. It didn’t take very long. I haven’t really written much. Who’s written this, I asked myself and checked out the name of the author. It was the same as mine.
This is not me, I told myself. I couldn’t have written all this.
Nevertheless, I took a deep breadth, put on my dark glasses and sat in front of the computer.
A FEW HOURS LATER
It’s past midnight. I’m dialing a number.
Sir answers.
“ So, you finally been cured!”
I don’t reply. I press a key on the keyboard. The darkened screen is slowly lit up, expanding into an unending white expanse.
Sir speaks up after a few moments.
“ Your silence conveys your answer. Well, I tried to help you out. Believe me, this has worked with others. Hmmm…..maybe they had deadlines to meet..”
“ Sir” I wail out desperately “ I too have a deadline to meet, I told you about the article I need to publish…..”
“ …On PFC? Hmmm…let me think”
He took a minute or so. I remove my goggles, chuck them away and shut down the computer.
“ You there?”
“ Yes, Yes”
“ Do you have anything that you’ve written a long time ago?”
“ long time ago?”
“ Yeah, like when you were in school or college”
“ In school or college? I used to write some poetry in school. Never wrote after that”
“ Poetry. That’s it. Read your poems, and publish one of them instead of an article”
“ Publish a poem that I wrote in school? No way. We don’t publish poems on PFC, unless it’s a movie review written in verse.”
He ignored this remark of mine and continued,
“ Don’t you want to get cured? Where are your poems?”
“ I’ll have to search for them”
“ Search, and when you’ve found them call me up”
I didn’t have to search for my poems. They were all written down in an old notebook, tucked away in a file which included my mark sheets, amongst other things. I had written a few poems over a two year period in school, a couple of them were published in my school magazine. I read through them and say out loudly “ KIDSTUFF”
THE NEXT MORNING
It’s eight in the morning. I’m having a bath and can hear my phone ring. A few minutes later, I step out of the toilet, and check out the missed call. I had guessed right, it was a call from Sir. I didn’t intend to call him back.
An hour later. The phone rings again.
“ I knew you wouldn’t call back. Now quickly tell me the title of the poem you’ve selected for publishing”
“ I’ve selected none…”
“Interesting title” A loud guffaw follows.
“ None won’t do. OK, tell me about the last poem you wrote”
“ Hmmm….”
“ Hmmm….well hurry up, I have to finish writing a scene. I’ve been working on this for the last two days. It’s surprising, it’s never taken so long.”
“ Sir, do you think Writer’s block is a contagious disease?”
Sir took a while to reply.
“ You think I’m going to be infected next?”. He chuckled. “If I were, I’ll finally be able to take my family for that long overdue vacation. See, writing is what we do for a living. I’m not a prolific writer like your TV serial writer friend, but I too need to write as much as I can. At the back of my mind there’s always a fear that my creativity might just dry up someday. In your case, I guess it’s all in your mind. You’re chasing a deadline; you need to get past it. Just go ahead and publish that poem of yours”
He paused for a while, and then continued “ Have you seen Shakespeare in love? You must have seen it. The Bard suffers from a bout of writer’s block. He eventually overcomes it, by falling in love. OK, such stuff happens in films. It happens because we write what happens in films”
I paused and then replied “ Sir, you asked me about my last written poem. It was about falling in and out of love…..”
“ Falling in and out of love. See, that’s a topic which is related to cinema, happens in almost every movie. Publish this poem, it’ll be…err… what’s that word…it’s being used so much nowadays…yes, it’ll be cathartic”
“ Sir, those poems were purely juvenile stuff, you know how it is at that age”
Sir sighed. “ I know how it was…that’s why I want you to publish it. You need to start from where it all began”
“ What began?”
“ Your writing, bhai. Anyway, it’s your decision. It was nice trying to help you out.”
He, as I’d got used to by now, hung up abruptly.
So, dear readers, here is how I intend to get cured of Writer’s block.
This is a poem I wrote a long time ago.
A GIRL I KNEW A LONG TIME AGO
A girl I knew a long time ago,
A love we shared a long time ago,
The way we drifted apart,
I dreamt about that time, some time ago,
A nostalgic morning is this,
The Birds still chirp like before,
The day still dawns like before,
But the dates have changed and moved a fore,
When our glances first met,
Across the room and over the tables,
Love at first sight was it,
Like what you read in books and fables,
Sailing in those seas of love and love, and nothing else,
Two lovers were we,
When the stars came out at night,
We thought there was nothing besides the stars and you and me,
I remember dancing throughout the night,
With my hand across your slim waist,
Your Blue eyes and strawberry lips too I remember,
But I’ve forgotten what your kisses felt like,
I never really fell in love again,
Sometimes I wonder if you ever did,
A first love is something to cherish,
What follows next is mere flirtation,
Thoughts of those days don’t come by easily,
Though in my dreams, them I do sometimes trace,
A day will come when I’ll forget your name,
And someday, even your face.
KIDSTUFF, isn’t it?
Is it a cure? I’ll let you all know when I find out!
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Whoa… u typed all that and ur still seraching for a cure?! Dude…
BACK WITH A BANG!
Super Awesome, and like ravptor said, you’re still searching for a cure?
Loved the poem, surely not juvenile!
Well Arun,
I am just out of school(12th i.e.)– so I can understand how you felt when you wrote that poem.
.
Besides, it was fun reading your experience. Thanks for sharing.
You’re cured alright.
Well i loved the article and the poem and i surely hope you’re cured…..
Nice one Arun…keep it coming…The ‘Sir’ is very intriguing…
hahaha. great post! Happy Khreeching.
Well Arun, looks like an interesting case of lost and found here ( with respect to writing ).This makes for a very vibrant reading and yes the ’sir’ seems to be an interesting character.Write on, khreech,khreech……
@Ravptor,Jehan,Samir, Jibin and Gony
Remember the last time when you were unwell? And someone told you that you look fine, you look better. You end up feeling better, you feel you’re almost cured.
Guys, thanks for the encouragement! I do feel fully cured.
@ D&C,magik and Sethu,
Bring out the pencils and the sharpeners! As you sharpen a pencil your mind gets time to think, to focus; you end up with a sharper mind!
‘Sir’ intrigues me too. Wish he didn’t prefer to be so anonymous.
Do try out writing on paper once in a while….khreech,khreech…….
KIDSTUFF?
My kid stuff poems were all direct curses to pythagoras, Newton, Fermat and all the other mathematicians who had sucked the poetry out of my life with calculated precision.
Sample this:
“I am a boy who wrote 1 as ONE
When two numbers meet each other
Can there be any FUN?
Three sides and Mr Pythagoras..
I am searching for my GUN
”
he he :-)
I passed my maths –
so you shall pass this one too..
writer’s block for a PFC post, give yourself a break!
please suffer writer’s block in the service of an higher purpose. in one sweep, you have belittled writing, and in an overlittling manner, demonised writing for PFC..
unless you meant the post as a funny one. too much effort. happy affliction :p
@ Thani – This was meant to be a funny post. Yeah, I know I put in too much effort, but whether it’s a post for PFC or for whatever goals I’m pursuing I need to write as best as I can.
As I pointed out in my post, Writer’s block can afflict anyone, which ever ‘purpose’ you’re writing for.
‘Demonize writing for PFC’- I don’t think any author or reader on PFC is going to be petrified of posting articles here after reading my post.
:-)
:-)
Arun, you have indeed written well, which is all the more reason why a reader, such as i, went mental by the end of the post, with all the talks of the B-word.
better block, next time, eh?
In a different post by Salik – there is a mention of block too!- the writer’s block
I have not been afflicted by this disease –
because I am not a writer. (thani – ‘tell me something new bro, we all know that’)
however as a paid programmer – I have experienced bouts of self doubt when I could not write a simple algorithm to add two numbers together.(didn’t I tell that I hated numbers – hey I grew up to make a compromise with them)
My problem is that after years into programming that i primarily meant to swindle money from the client in the big booming names of ‘Architecture, pattern, SOA, etc.,’ , catch phrases for which every client falls hook line and sinkler, simple coding is not possible by me!!!
I relearnt programming for a while and wrote like a fresher to get myself back and took a sabbatical for 1.5 years from ’standard’ programming to do something that really built systems.
Now I am able to program with a ‘minimalistic’ vision.
So your ‘funny’ post does have some seriousness associated with it, intentional or unintentional, to you or others.
And ‘higher purposes’ always cloud present realities and rob one of everyday fun. I hope you keep your sense of humour intact so that when you reach your higher purposes you find that you are not all alone at the top, but have enough people to party there!!
@ VPJ – That was a cute Limerick, and I see that maths is still of invaluable use to you!
You’re right when you say that the post does have some seriousness associated to it, an incurable block can be career threatening.
If and when I reach my ‘higher purpose’ of writing, I’ll definitely have you on the list of people to party with, and ‘Sir’ too!
Your post was due and what a nice treat you have given…mazaa aagaya… well the symptoms u have given are right specially the one where u decide to write a post for pfc and after next two hours, the out put is a blank screen and same is the case when writing a scene on paper, lot of khreech khreeech… i think many people after reading your post will come to know about a new disease they are suffering i.e. called writer’s block… but u have writen so much and too in such beautuful way that i can 100% say that u are cured and now i have to think about my self and need to have a thought provoking session about how to get cured of writer’ block and i hope u will give me some tips to get rid of it…
The poem was awesome, it was my like seeing my life recited in english.