A
blank virgin sheet of paper is quietly staring at you, cursor blinking
idiotically. You stab the keys in determination, for write you must. Then
BACKSPACE sends it all back to the womb of your mind. Half-baked ideas; you
jeer. They just won’t do. You wish that
was ROTATRIM and not Microsoft Word, so you would crumple that accursed sheet
of paper and eat its innards: Writer’s block! It happens to the best of us.
Three
hours have elapsed and your boss’ disapproval is doing havoc to the last
vestiges of your sanity. Three hours and that blinking cursor is still mocking
you, timing you out, tightening the noose around your neck. The editor is soon
making that call and you won’t have a story for him to print. An excuse just won’t
do; plagiarism will no doubt come back to bite your nether regions. What to do?
You’re
now sweating plasma. This is your twentieth attempt at writing something and it
reads worse than the last. The chair you’re seated on is dissolving your butt;
it’s frozen and doesn’t feel like yours anymore. You sweat some more and in
frustration, you snap the laptop shut. To hell with that!
Rising
from your seat of thorns, you strip off your sticky clothes that are clinging
on you like a second skin. A warm shower
is in order. No, that cold refreshing beer first. You open your throat and toss
that in with cold lunch leftovers. Now the shower, warm, and then cold, with
hope of kick-starting that brain of yours that chose the one time you need it
to go on holiday.
In
the middle of the cold shower, the electricity is disconnected. For the longest
2 seconds of your life, you contemplate sobbing like the big boy you are. Face
muscles distort grotesquely as you think about it. Right before you let the Nakivubo
channel flood, the bulb flickers on. An idea hits you! You quickly rush out and
plant your naked self on your chair to finish your story. You click ENTER and
heave a sigh of relief.
Book author Cyrese
Covelli is quoted to have said that, Writer’s block doesn’t exist…lack of imagination does. Writers
don’t really have the luxury of not being able to write, for writing is their
craft. A soldier will not say he doesn’t feel like going through drills in the
morning just because of a slight drizzle; the mother won’t say that she doesn’t
feel like cleaning her baby up after they soil themselves. They simply ignore
those lazy bones and trudge on. You
never know you might surprise yourself and pull out a rabbit at a drop of a
hat. Good luck!
