The block had hit hard.
Poised for the first word in days,
“Martyr,” her hand wrote.
Tag: writer’s block
Aftermath of a Challenge
One morning a couple of weeks ago, I sat in front of an open document, fingers poised over my keyboard waiting for the words to flow.
They didn’t.
I was stuck. I didn’t know what to do. I sat there for about an hour before deciding to do something else. I browsed through The Daily Post looking for ideas when I found the section on blogging challenges.
It couldn’t hurt, I thought and dove in. The first challenge that interested me was the Incredible Blogger Marathon Challenge. Now that is one good title. It triggered my curiosity and piqued my ego to just the right level. I wanted to be that Incredible Blogger. And a posting marathon is a challenge I could take.
I took it. It was a ten-post challenge, but I could take up to 15 days to complete it. I challenged myself to publish a post a day and finish the challenge in ten days.
The next two weeks was one of the best spells I’ve had in my blogging experience. It wasn’t easy as eating pie. It was as complex as baking one myself. But it was great fun. I had to think in ways I hadn’t done before. And the weirdest thing is that I had to first explain to myself how I felt about certain topics, before giving words to my thoughts.
It warped my head, but it gave me something to write about every day. It kept me going, even if I didn’t want to.
And now, it feels wonderful when I look back. It forced me to explore a whole new area in writing and I’m glad I took the challenge.
Have you ever taken up a blogging challenge? How did you feel afterward?
The Writer’s Day
It’s no big deal, he told himself. He had done it before, he could do it again.
He just had to sit and write.
Remembering an old article about the effects of crouching on your chair, he pulled in a little closer to the table. Now he felt comfortable. He moved a frantic finger across the trackpad, cursing the stupid auto-lock system. He entered his password and into his document.
Blank screen. As he placed his fingers over the keys, he noticed how dirty they were. Last night’s mustard lingered near the speakers where he had put his ear to check if they worked at all. He tried to wipe off the mess with his fingers making it worse. With a deep sigh, he stood and walked over to his cupboard to pick up a wet cloth.
He yanked the wooden door to see a pile of smelly underwear, masking a couple of laundered shirts and jeans that hadn’t seen soap in ages.
Pushing it all aside, he began looking for the cloth. After about ten minutes of rummaging, he decided he’d rather clean his cupboard first.
And so he began.
As he rearranged his clothes, he found the old letters from his once-girlfriend. She had broken his heart so bad that he could neither forget her nor hate her. He had hidden the letters to keep himself from falling into depression again.
He opened them, nevertheless, and sat poring over her words of endearment, smiling at the way she circled the dots of her ‘i’s and curled her ‘l’s. He loved her handwriting.
Before he knew it, tears started streaming down his eyes. How could she have left him? All of a sudden, he realised he hadn’t eaten all day.
Maybe I’ll be fine if I get something to eat, he thought. He walked over to the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. There was some bread left over from two days ago, and he grabbed them without grace. Tossing a couple of slices into the toaster, he poured himself a large cup of coffee.
Five minutes later, he was back tapping on his trackpad, cursing the auto-lock feature. He took one look at the blank page. And then at the wall on his right. It flaunted covers of the New York Times Bestseller, with his name flashed in big golden letters.
That was five years ago. He had emptied his soul into that book, and it had paid off. But every day since then had been nothing but a blank page. The day his love stopped loving him, words did too.
You Won’t Be Read, and It’s Ok
Writing for a living is tough. Not everything you write will see the real world, and you have to be ok with it.
Becuase when it comes to writing for someone other than yourself, you have to say what they want to read or need to know.
There’s no darlings in professional writing. You don’t have to like what you write. If it works, it works.
And it’s hard. For someone who wants to write drunk and publish as is. For someone who wants to write just because she wants to write. It’s hard when a personal blogger starts writing for her company’s “business-class audience.” You’ll have to make sacrifices you don’t want to. Talk to people you’d rather avoid. You have to smile as you accept their pin pointing as sense — though, most of the time, it is.
Rework becomes your watch word. Deliberate word choices, phrases, and jargon become your world while a clever pun takes the backseat. Because, remember, remember, your audience isn’t pun(n)y.
An official “content writer,” has no balance. You don’t know where the “need for content” ends and where the love for words begins. It’s constant juggling between contrasting worlds, and it puts you off, it blocks the writer within, and scoffs at the crouching figure at work staring deep into her laptop screen.
But somewhere along the way, you realise it’s ok. Sometimes, someone who knows better will cut off most your content. It takes time to see the big picture, or think for the greater good, but you’ll see it. You’ll see that nothing matters more than seeing your audience satisfied. And, somehow, those sleepless nights of tapping away at the keyboard fades into thin air.
Then it’s yet another day at work.
Rework
I scroll through drafts
old rants, and musings
interesting, a few boring
so much of controversy
splashing enlightenment.
Perhaps I should rework,
rekindle dying flames.
People love old stories,
advice from grannies.
I could just rephrase
the title and the lines
No one would know
that I’ve reused words.
No one needs to know
of that great block
blocking my world.
Because none knows
it is that intimidating
to stare, sitting on a table,
at a blank page, unable.
The Chaos Within 