Writer’s block is lack of boredom

I started writing when I was 8, if my memory serves right. Not that I am too old to have forgotten my own journey but as each day passes, I struggle to out speed myself. Each moment weighs as heavy as a lifetime making my memories fade a little more each day.

“Please don’t enter my room”, I yelled at my younger sister as I closed my personal diary with anger and threw it in the drawer. This is the youngest memory of my intimate affair with words that my mind serves.

For almost 20 years now, this is the only way I write — in secret.

I often romanticize the concept of writing. The whole picture of sitting amongst the wilderness with a hot cup of coffee, cigarette and laptop gives me goose bumps. I am not sure if this kind of environment really gives writers inspiration or is it just overrated.

For me, ideas often come to me when I am performing menial tasks, tasks which require no conscious effort — taking a shower, washing utensils, riding the same bus at the same time, crossing the road, having the same conversation with the same people.

This is when my subconscious finds refuge from me and weaves a story and that is when I have an urge to write.

I don’t know about you, but I often find myself writing during work where my sticky notes take half the portion of my desktop and excel the other half.

I scribble the words urgently on anything I can find, the urge to write happens at the weirdest times, often when I am not prepared for it, often when I have people standing around me, often when I have strict work deadlines, often when the phone is ringing or my pasta is burning.

My affair with words is like forbidden love, I crave for it but I can’t have it wholly. Maybe because pain has always been the best muse for me. The daily struggles, the everyday mundane routine where I feel like a robot just mechanically doing things I am supposed to. Writing is my only breather.

So, maybe I need this mechanical madness or calmness around me to drive me insane.

So, if you have a writer’s block maybe don’t think of writing. I know how that sounds, but this is what Einstein , a more reliable source, did. He discovered ideas during regular chores not in a lab.

So, talk to people sometimes stupidity is an inspiration or watch an old classic or do your dishes. That is how all classic authors found their muse.