It's Ok not to be Ok!
I always waited for the right time to write especially after having my second child. My walls were often decorated with sticky notes to remember my to-do list and my year planner was rarely filled with anything despite its yearly replacement until I joined a writing group that changed my life.
Well, it wasn't a sudden transformation. Thank goodness I loved to read, so I read more than I wrote on the writing platform. Then, a writing retreat was organised and I found myself writing more than I used to. Before then, my last poem was dated April 28, 2017. I had thought maybe I had developed a permanent writer's block. Nothing was working.
First, I blamed my marriage, then childbearing, and then the life of a working, full-time mum but one piece of advice from the retreat kept ringing in my head - "You don't have to write it all. You can start with a line per day. Just write frequently. Be consistent! Just show up everyday! Write something daily!" But even all these seemed too much of a task.
Every day I'd get new ideas but because I don't pen them down I always tend to forget. So many possible write-ups became impossible. Many of my great articles were never born. Numerous mind-blowing poems became a mirage and I plunged into a state of melancholy reading so much from other people without having much to show for myself.
Often, writers experience a block - a period when inspirations fail to become words but I discovered my challenge was never a block but procrastination. So I decided to always carry my diary in a tote bag. My tote contained all my essentials even when I found myself in unplanned places. After all desperate times, they say, call for desperate measures. The reason for this is simple. Anytime a new idea pops in, I bring out my diary and pen it down.
Ideas, I have discovered, come from our daily routine; washing, cooking, in the marketplace, and even in the toilet. Funny, isn't it? Today while the Reverend Father dictated his sermon, an idea popped in and this article was born. I wrote just a few lines, read from others later in the day and completed this beautiful piece at midnight. Of course, I had my earphones pouring music from my inspirational playlist into my subconscious. This works for me when I need to ease stress.
This reminds me of an article that opines that we often want a perfect essay so we overuse big words and expressions which makes our writing too stiff and boring. The writer prided himself on his ability to write 480 000 words a month without running out of ideas. You don't have to make it complex. Keep it simple like tweets on X but also engaging like X's comments.
Sometimes it's ok to be overwhelmed. That's the storm before the calm. Don't wait for the right time to start. JUST DO IT NOW!
Sometimes it's ok to be overwhelmed. That's the storm before the calm. Don't wait for the right time to start. JUST DO IT NOW!