A writer’s fear

The fear of not being able to write is a deep-seated fear inside every writer. It pops up on those days when you have not written a word for days. It’s not that you don’t want to write, words are constantly creating havoc in your head, but you keep postponing it for another day. It happens one morning when you realize that you haven’t written a single long piece in a very long time. It happens while you are sipping that morning coffee and that half-written story keeps coming back to you, waiting for its promising end. You promise yourself that you will finish this strong dose of coffee and immediately sit in front of your laptop and the words will come rolling out and you will finish that story in half an hour, the story was unnecessarily fretting about its promising end. But what if you take these long writing breaks and words abandon you, that is a fear that no writer can escape. So you quickly gulp down the hot cup of coffee and open your laptop and open that half written story and start reading it to get into the flow of the story, you finish reading it, pat your back for having written a good one, then put your fingers on the keyboard, pausing and wondering what to write, but unfortunately you don’t know where you want to take this story. So, you try to analyze the options in your head even though you know that analyzing is not the way to write a story, go with the flow has always been your philosophy, but what to do when there is no flow. Suddenly, you feel like your fear has become a reality, words have abandoned you because you have abandoned them for so long. But you are not the one to give up. So, you press the enter bar and think that you will start with a new paragraph. You write the main character’s name, put a verb in front of it, start writing some random lines, and then you pause and read it, and you know that it is utter crap. You delete it, shut your laptop, and go for a walk. And mind you, it turns into a long walk admonishing oneself. You tell yourself that you just need to find inspiration and then this story will turn into an award-winning story, you like the idea, let’s find inspiration. What is inspiration? You look around, the crowded city streets, people in a hurry to go somewhere, a dog sleeping peacefully in the middle of all this, nothing works, so you decide to go to a bookstore, what better place to find inspiration than surrounded by words. You hop into a rickshaw and head towards the nearest bookstore. A sense of relief fills in as you see so many beautiful books waiting to be read. You remind yourself that you are here for inspiration and not to buy a hundred books. You walk through the aisles, picking books that attract you, reading a few lines here and there, some engross you, some don’t. You see some books you want to read and pick them up, promising yourself that you will only buy these two books and nothing else, but an hour later, you have five books in your hands and no inspiration. You buy them and silently head home, ready to give up. You are angry with yourself for being lazy and not finishing the story when you were in the flow. You go about your day, trying hard not to think about not being able to write. Finally, you hit the bed with all the disappointment of the day, you are tired of trying so hard, so you tell yourself it’s okay, you may or may not finish that story. Then you wake up in the morning, all fresh and ready to conquer the day, make a hot cup of coffee, sit in front of your laptop, and start writing a new story. Words come gushing out, your fingers don’t stop typing till you have finished writing it, you put the last full stop and look at it with pride, and then you pick up the cup of coffee to sip only to realize that it has gone all cold. But you smile and say, “Well, I wrote a story,” and go about the day with a big broad smile pasted all over your face.