I Want To Write But I Don’t Have Good Ideas…
I met a girl on a date last Saturday. An intellectual woman. During our conversation, I enquired about her long-term goals. She replied, ‘I want to write but I don’t have any good ideas.’
Now being a writer myself, I had heard and said those words a million times. It’s a normal thing in our profession. Most people call it — writer’s block. Although I find it too negative a term, I believed in it once and that there was no escape from it.
I have been out of ideas many times. I had a writing job where I couldn’t write anything for weeks.
One of my seniors frequently said, ‘I doubt that you even write.’
But I simply didn’t get any ideas. Moreover, I believed that good ideas would come naturally; without trying too hard.
Every day I took a fifteen minute walk to reach office. During which, a lot of things came in my way that appeared as ‘usual happenings’.
Until there came a day when I decided to observe everything.
The day started with noticing a beautiful tree which had yellow blossoms. It was located at a stone’s throw from my house, but I never noticed that it looked so beautiful. I looked around. People were rushing to work. Not everybody had time to stop and admire its yellow flowers. It was okay. To each, his own.
I carried on with my walk and decided to have street food for breakfast.
Stopping by a tea vendor, I relished some cookies with chai. The vendor had a small shop — filled with old newspapers, some glasses, a stove, a kettle and a cookie jar. The jar was made of glass and its cover had turned black due to rust. For no reason, it appeared like a jar from the mystical lanes of Morocco. A jar that managed to jump out of its fairy tale, into the real world. The more I looked at it, the more thoughts sprang in my head.
Having finished my small breakfast, I resumed to walk.
Sitting on the footpath, a cobbler sold brown colored, traditional looking chappals. I spotted him every day while going to work. That day I walked up to him to try a chappal. I put it on and asked about the price.
‘How much for this?’ I enquired
‘Saab, just 350 rupees,’ he replied.
‘Are you joking? Shouldn’t be more than 150 bucks.’
‘What are you saying, saab? I myself have made this. A lot of effort goes into just coloring.’
During a brief conversation, the cobbler mentioned how he would wake up in wee hours of the morning to stitch and paint his footwear. My mind got flooded with thoughts again. It was intriguing to imagine his work and lifestyle.
I had never had so many ideas in my mind before. I reached office and started to write them.
The writer’s block had disappeared. Because I looked at the usual happenings unusually.
I remembered the movie Finding Neverland — a semi-biographical drama about how J.M. Barrie got inspired from people around him and penned down Peter Pan.
What I realized was: Ideas are everywhere. You just need to observe things and mold them into a story.
Make no mistake, a good piece of writing takes birth from inspiration. And inspiration lies everywhere around us.
