Why I can't write

When I watch a movie, read a book, listen to a song on the radio or see a billboard, a million ideas, questions and abstract thoughts buzz around my head. My natural response is to put them on paper but then I stop. I can’t write.

There are a few very reasonable reasons why I can’t and many more unreasonable ones but I’ll stick to the reasonable ones; of course they may seem unreasonable to you and if they do, I’ll take it you’ve never seriously attempted writing.

The first reason would be that unless I capture the delight of the moment and immediately set down to writing it, it just never happens. Call it laziness if you will, but I’d like to think of it as an artistic inability. A poor excuse in even worse choice of words but then you will have to let it go, because I had the idea of writing this two days ago.

Plagiarism. Just the word is enough to send shivers down any budding writer’s back. I’ll be presumptuous and say everybody who attempts writing have read at least a book or two that has really affected them. When an emigrant can pick up the accent of the nation he goes to after a while, is it really impossible to pick up the style of your favourite author? What separates a bad writer from a good one is that the good one has a style of his own, the great ones seem simply to write like everybody else but add a quirky touch and I’m not talking about the plot. I’m neither good nor great and I wouldn’t want to fall among the bad.

The great writers themselves are a source of agony to me. When I read something that is brilliant I want to cry, irrespective of the mood the piece suggests. It is because I’m not sure I can write anything as good as that. I cannot call myself a writer when these geniuses do too. It just isn’t justified.

Then the case of writer’s block. When nothing inspires and if suddenly a small crack in the wall appears and inspiration does trickle down, the words are all missing. To feel numb and then unable to express what you feel is worse when you know you had the medium to in the first place. I could still spout out nonsense but critics do not look kindly upon a budding writer’s block, even if the critic is your mother and I tell you this from experience.

“Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” A quote from Joan Didion’s ‘Why I write’. I don’t think I could have put that across as accurately as she has (look up my third reason again) but i know it is as true for me. When I write I delve into a part of me that has answers; so though I can’t write for all these reasons and more, I know I stoically still will impose my writing, be it in my journal or a blog.

-Shruthi