Envoking creativity, beating the dreaded writer's block
When I was younger, I never had any difficulties allowing my fingers to explore the keyboard creating page after page of colloquialisms and grand masterpieces. Spending hours, even days in my room just writing. Nowadays, I'm struggling to write a few sentences. With this writer's competition looming ahead of me, I can't afford to be stuck finding words that used to come so naturally to me. So I began thinking about what used to help me back then.
I had very few distractions. I didn't have the internet. It was a relatively new thing and it was still a 24k/bs dial-up connection with the ever so popular dialling sounds. It was only available on the family computer and I was allowed access only at limited times. There were no social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook or countless fun pages such as youtube or readit. If there were, I wasn't aware of them. We didn't have pay tv so we were stuck with whatever horrible show was on at the time, and being a teenager at the time, there was very little I was allowed to watch. I had no game consoles or hand held gadgets. The only thing I did have was my desktop computer, a few old games and Word. Plus a selection of music which helped to drown out whatever happenings at home.
I battled depression which I did not know about at this stage and my friends did not understand. This made me pretty much a recluse so my social life was next to none. The friends I did have were not real friends. I couldn't really say my schoolwork suffered because my schools curriculum was substandard. The work was somewhat easy and so long as I got my assignments in on time, no one really cared about homework. As a result, I had plenty of spare time.
I didn't have a job either. Apart from not wanting to work in the cliche fast food restaurants, looking back, I probably wouldn't have coped working in a fast paced, stressful environment. I had no idea what I wanted to do for work. All I knew is that I wanted to write.
Hence, so far, amidst fruitless dead end jobs, I have continued to write. And I have decided, this is all the job and work I would ever want.
I do remember that working alone in my room with music playing worked. So did caffeine. I recall countless nights where I stayed up, buzzing on my mix of milo, malt and coffee. These days caffeine doesn't do much for my anxiety but one cup envokes the same barrier bulldozer effect I used to have. So with coffee pot brewing, I ponder over my keyboard once again.
In conclusion, what I need to do is to return to a place or space where I can be free of aforementioned distractions and focus completely. Question is, where is such a place?
S. McWilliams