Friday, February 11, 2005

writers block

for weeks i have been struggling to write something meaningful. in part i have been hampered by my on-going internship. the work has been killing and yesterday was the first night in three that i slept peacefully. but personal battlefields aside, i have just felt drained (numerous water breaks notwithstanding).

the worst part has been holding onto a strain of thought that seemed interesting enough to explore. many a times i would be working on some problem in my code and suddenly a queer thread would intrude upon me and make its presence known. that is to say an atomic bomb would go off in my head. but unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which struggle to this day with the aftermath, mine is short lived. so i have a lot of half finished drafts lying about on my blog, unpublished, lame, mutilated with hovering thoughts, blind with unsure feelings, and senseless with blinded perception.

i like to think that i write with passion, pushed by inspiration. the sad part is that it comes but rarely. not passion, but inspiration. trembling hands, quivering fingers, tensed tendons, brows furrowed in thought, are all laid to waste with just the catalyst missing. the one that brings it together and in the darkness binds them. (evidently i have Lord of the Rings on my brain again. am reading the Book of Lost Tales and History of Middle Earth these days). so what really is inspiration? dark and mysterious, it borders on the edge of consciousness. its amazing what a few rounds of the good ole janx spirit can do for bouts of brilliant insight into the most troubling questions of life. having partaken in the aforementioned activity quite recently, i now think i have a grasp over inspiration. do i hear gasps in the back there? calm down and take a sip of water.

inspiration (in my best oratorical style) is nothing but a desperation to write. the important thing is recognising that point of desperation. of course, now everything can be explained in the light of this new idea. some people are so desperate that they can write everyday. some people are hit by such large bouts of desperation that it leads to a verbal diarrhea in their writings. let us analyse this a little further. i am motivated to write because i treat writing very cathartically. its a way to get rid of jumbled feelings and tangled thoughts that would, left to their own device, start feeding on my focus. once these reach a critical mass, out pours my hearts content. let us call this the Point of Desperation. i am sure there are as many motivations behind the Point of Desperation as there are writers. now having established a concrete theory, lets move on.

since this blog is all about me and the self-aggrandization thereof, i will talk only about myself. i feel terrible frustation at the fact that i reach my Point of Desperation only once every few days, and in some extreme cases, a few weeks. i squirm under the bubbling froth of emotions inside until they all reach the Point of Desperation. whats worse is that i instinctively know that a given day is not the day for critical mass. that knowledge is a burden of great weight. i wish it not upon my bĂȘte noir.

this post is dedicated to all those who wait patiently for new posts to appear on my blog site. now you know you suffer not alone; i suffer with you.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

why don't you go ahead and publish the random thoughts and wandering threads of insight..? maybe then you'll see a connection?

does it need such precise structure?

Be free,

Bellz