The most dreaded thing in a writer’s life is “writer’s block”. According to Wikipedia, “Writer's block is a phenomenon involving temporary loss of ability to begin or continue writing, usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity”. I am aware of this fact for quite a long time now but never experienced it. But over the last few months I have started maintaining a blog of mine so did quite a bit of writing once in a while. It was going good but then suddenly the tempo went down. Then I got busy for a whole month in selecting a car for my wife and then once the car was bought, I got busy with other things. Lots of interesting things happened in my life after the car came to our home. Many funny things happened daily. Every day I used to think I will write. Days passed. No output. Why was this happening? What is the reason? Oh God! Never imagined I will be facing writer’s block. I thought this only happens to fulltime writers not to every Tom Dick Harry. But here I am: A Tom Dick Harry type writer not able to write despite having ideas in my mind. So Writer’s Block struck me.
I got lot of free time daily. Every time I decided to write a bit and sat in front of my PC, I did all other things except writing. I played games, I read news papers, I watched a little porn, did this, did that but no writing. Initially I didn’t mind. I started enjoying this “Writer’s Block” thing. Seemed very fashionable. As now I am in the big league. I started imagining a lot of things. As my writing became nil my day dreaming increased by leaps and bound. One day I had a dream. I dreamt that I was sleeping with Arundhati Roy. Once the job was done we hugged each other and I asked, “Aru why can’t you stay away from your human rights drama and devote yourself to fiction writing. Where ever there is a problem you make yourself available. See what you did to Ratan Tata in Singur. Why are you doing all this? You are such a talented writer. Keep writing otherwise I will not love you anymore.” She looked at me with eyes full of tears. “I can’t write darling. I am suffering from Writer’s Block”.
“Its 8am and you still sleeping. Get up. I said get up. What are you? Rajar beta, otho bolchi (King’s son, get up I said”. Ah! My wife. God! Why do talented people get so harsh treatment from their wives? I got up and thought of the dream. Poor Arundhati. People write and say so many things about her without understanding her problem. She also was suffering from “Writer’s Block” and look what happened to her. It’s good I am not a fulltime writer otherwise God knows what I would have been doing now.
Again days passed. My appraisal was over and as usual I got very average rating. To top up my grief, our company was pondering on a across the board pay cut to fight the global recession. I just took a car one month back and have to pay the EMIs for the next three years. If there is a pay cut how will I survive? I seriously started thinking for getting some part-time income source. But then it’s easier said than done? For every job there are a thousand candidates. What to do? What will happen if I lose my job?
I started watching and listening to lot of personality development, self improvement videos and tapes. I need to improve myself. If ever I lose my job I should be in a position where I can get a job again. Fast. I started writing down a list of things I can do. Writing topped the list. But now the question is how writing can give me money. No idea. But need to keep writing. May be just for the fun of it. May be if I love writing, writing will love me. I tried to write. But I wrote a few words and then started watching porn on my PC. I kept trying. Every night I kept thinking of Arundhati. May be she could give me some tips. She is a prize winning author. It’s no joke. She could have helped me out with some useful tips. Nights passed. She was not there. Then I saw a film called “Finding Forrester”. There is a scene where Mr Forrester ( A famed writer) says to Jamal (a young writer), *Punch* the keys, for God's sake! I took this advice and sat in front of my PC and started punching the keys. It worked. My style of writing is very easy. All you have to do is punch the keyboard and rest is taken care by MS Word. I have to just make sure that I don’t break the keyboard. I kept on punching. No more Writer’s Block. As I told before Writer’s Block are for writers, not for punchers like me. So friends whenever you feel you are not able to write you just keep punching. The only difference is they will call you a puncher instead of a writer. I don’t care if they call me a puncher. Do you?
