Sunday, January 1, 2012

Writer's block without even starting

Its been a while since I last posted. I've always believed that writing is an art- like painting or composing a song. It requires an original mind with an original idea. I guess I think a whole novel is going to fall into the empty living room of my brain and I am going to type it all out in one go, as if the words are themselves jumping from my mind on the pages into that "one" book so great, so intense, that even I start believing what a great writer I am. But yesterday I realized it doesn't work like that. An idea does take birth, but you have to work at it, develop it, think about how it fits in, how it tangents off, how to end it, where is it going and more importantly where its taking you. I guess what helped was a movie that was coming on TV, 'Finding forester'. I loved the parts I watched and would want to watch the whole thing uninterrupted. At one point, the protagonist's mentor/friend tells him to write. The protagonist pauses to think, so his friend tells him to first write, not to think, just write down whatever is flowing and then to sit down with the first draft you have so written and think about it and read it with your mind, edit it, better it. A couple of days back, a half formed idea for a short story popped in my mind. And this time I've decided to work with it, give it time and nourishment to grow, be patient with it. And who knows, it might actually turn out to be a happy ending. 

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