This is not about what happens when writers face that notorious mental blank that threatens to destroy their confidence and their existence as writers. Rather, it is about just one writer and the many obstacles in her daily life that threaten to destroy her completely.
Like many others, whether writers or not, she wakes up in the morning brimming with energy and ideas. In fact, she has not slept the previous night, so caught up was she in the process of putting together the bare bones of her next story. But she is not tired. Instead, she is all fired up and raring to go. Aware of her limitations, she has not thought up a magnum opus. Hers is just a small step. An effort she can fit into the hours of a normal work day so that she can rest the next night with the feeling of a job well done.
With a spring in her steps, she goes for a constitutional. She thinks through the holes in her story and comes up with solutions — to be jotted down as soon as she returns home. Happy that everything has shaped up well in her mind, she turns homeward — when reality strikes.
While she was cruising along the road and deciding what her animal characters should do and say, the neighbourhood cat had other ideas. It found its morning meal in the milk packet that hung from her door. All kinds of nasty epithets flow from her as she mops and scrubs and then races to the grocery store nearby to replenish her stock.
By the time she returns, boils the milk, prepares the tea and coffee and everyone sits down to drink, mundane routine has obliterated the contents of her mind. “What was it that I had planned?” she wonders, looking at the blank sheet of paper she keeps near the door to record her morning thoughts as she steps in.
“Ah yes, the cat,” she thinks, getting back one thread of her thoughts — just as breakfast intervenes. The household is small, but with one senior, it is demanding. Someone wants egg while someone else wants porridge. More tea and coffee is needed. Some with sugar, some without. What about fruit, someone says. And of course, it is washed, peeled and cut into a bowl and then handed over on a platter. (Self-help apparently implies going through inspiring books to help you better yourself — washing, peeling and cutting fruit or anything else is not covered in the contents of those books ..,)
When, finally, the breakfast show is done, she takes up position before the monitor. Three sentences get done. Three glorious sentences.
And it is lunchtime. There is a repeat performance of the breakfast show, with more varieties and larger quantities. That done, the rest of the household proceeds to rest after the onslaught on their palates, but it is back to work for her. Unfortunately, it is also working hours for couriers, call centres, banks, delivery companies and other sundry callers at the door and on the phone. Those who are resting enjoy their rest while the writer prowls around, the only one awake and ‘available’ at siesta time.
Hurriedly, she deals with all disturbances and goes back to the computer. Only she knows and cares that she is trying to get her fourth sentence written. Which she does. She even manages to complete a paragraph.
However, there are more meals to conjure up, more clearing and cleaning, more help needed for the old and infirm.
She is beginning to feel very old too.
But she is on the second paragraph now and tomorrow, she will try again. It is after all, just a month into the New Year.
Resolution and resolutions cannot die so soon.
