Writer's Block!

“Writer’s block”, I guess that is what inspired these words that follow. I read a book about journalism recently, which prophesized that a person cannot aspire to be a newspaper columnist if he cannot write. Typing will do too. Fancying myself to be the next Dilip Padgoankar, Jug Surayia or Dave Barry, I started writing this piece. But soon I found, as I stared into the screen that I did not know what to write about. I wondered whether this is what is called as writer’s block. Well I am not really a writer to qualify to have writer’s block, but what I was enduring could not be called incognizance or absence of ideas, but rather an absence of concrete opinions about anything to comment upon volitionally.

As music was playing loudly in the background maybe my chimerical and fertile imagination was not triggering. But I was in no mood to turn the music off even though I felt that my chances of a portentous arrival in the league of the Padgaonkars and Barrys would be compromised. I settled to just turning the volume down. Now that the music was really in the background, these noumenal notions started to take shape. For the uninitiated, “noumenal” is an adjective for a word which describes an idea or an object that can be intuited only by the intellect and not by the senses. I went through many such topics as I tried to grasp on to one that would inspire me to write.

It wasn’t the words that failed me but my own opinions about these subjects. To effectuate what I am describing let me give an example. One of the topics that is always haunting my intellect is the subject of capital punishment. I would love to put on my pirate’s bonnet and grunt “Off with your head, mate!” whenever the Finance Minister tries to tax my fringe benefits or when someone’s mobile phone disturbs the acoustics during a seminar or when someone drops a catch. But then my assiduous big head comes up with conflicting opinions about the subjects, like the fact that my boss’ fringe benefits being more than mine is actually bad for my boss. This capriciousness about the subject incapacitates me from commenting about it.

So vacillating are my opinions about this that I find it difficult even to satirically justify its authenticity. I find this particularly appalling because satire is one of my strongholds, as I am often accused of being very cynical and satirical in my opinions.

Obtuse humour is one of my favorite topics. Whether it is writing about anatomical oddities or pseudo pretentious habits of people I enjoy a free flow of thought and opinions. But about other more challenging notions I fail to take a side or change my mind.

Whether or not it is writers block, it has definitely made me believe that I have become obstinate. The encyclopedia gives an interesting quote made by a one Lady Asquith. Quoting in “Fine art of political wit”, she says,

“He has a brilliant mind, until it is made up.”

This sort of aptly describes my condition. If only I could have concrete opinions about all subjects, I could probably write long articles about them. Until then at least writers block limits me to write such articles as the one you are reading now. Nevertheless, writers block does help to build my vocabulary. It makes me write articles that have words, I have never even heard of before. Again this makes me undecided whether writers block is good or bad.

Note: I wrote this piece a long time ago for a different blog. Decided to post it here since I have not been able to write anything else for a couple of days now!