Blink, blink, blink, the cursor goes, reminding you that you haven't managed to write down a single word for the past half an hour. As the glass of ice cold water next to you catches condensed droplets of water that slip onto the coaster, and the sunlight peeking through your curtains highlights the microscopic dust particles gently settling over your untouched keyboard, you get lost in the world that is living and breathing in your head, but which has no tangible form of existence. Even though your senses tingle just below the surface of your skin everytime you transport yourself into this mystical ecosystem you've created, it feels gruesome, almost pathetic, to try and convey these sensations through words alone.
And the more your lower back throbs from your awkward hunch that this activity demands, the more it becomes evident how immature it is to believe that you can write a story with a sane mind, a mind that is considerate of people and compassionate towards time.
Ask any author (you will usually identify them by the hint of sleep deprivation in their eyes, and their mildly off-putting aura), and they will tell you in just how much detail they absolutely dread the process of birthing a story, a novella, poetry, or whatever floats their boat. They will tell you just how meticulous and mysterious the practice is.
Sometimes you're stuck on the same line for a week, maybe two, trying to figure out exactly why it sounds like a three-year-old with no sense of language has written it. You sit, huddled in front of your medium of choice, usually a laptop, and silently tap away. For you, time and gravity bend differently.
For you, every interaction, every character, every scene is painstakingly collaborated, this fact is with respect to an author's multiple lives, the ones inside and outside the mind.
You occupy your steady hand, fixating deeply within yourself to search and pry and figure out what to write next, but there's a twilight limbo of opportunity where your mind is in harmony with your hand, this state is rare, and I believe few people can write, word for word, what they wish to.
But it's all about practice, is what they tell me. It's all about learning to listen to yourself. How will you write your stories, if you can't listen to them?
You will realize that each word, each sentence, each character, and each story is sentient, in its own manner.
If you've tried writing a book, you'll realize just how little you're actually writing it. And in most cases, a world will form by itself, the laws dictated by some mystified core of the story, one not in your control by any means. And if one's willing enough, he surrenders himself to his own words and lets them flow as per their will.
I wonder, really, where this comes from? The world, the laws, the consciousness? Like a mother, you feel responsible, almost authoritative over your story, as if that train of thought, that incident which one subjects oneself to, is solely unique, solely curated by you? Yes and no.
Call it yours, if you wish. Your words, your story. For, to keep our sanity, we must believe we are in control of something in this hauntingly expansive universe.
Whereas, once you truly rid these thoughts of "I" and "mine", a trancelike state overcomes you (however transitory this state may be), and suddenly, writing is the sole activity which can soothe your spiraling mind. It silences thoughts, and allows you to give into the enigmas foretold by the little voices echoing from everywhere you look, and it becomes ever-so-slightly easier to blend into the world of others.
We wake up, everyday, and find ourselves trapped in the bubble of society, practicalism, and humanistic grandeur. You arrive from point A to B, and you are told not to think about it, do not think about it at all, just move on to the next best thing, move ahead with your life. What stories are, is none of that, none of that pointless hustle, that staggering-for-the-heights type deal.
Stories preserve a part of yourself, the part that simply joys itself in the afternoon sun rays hitting your cheeks in shadow intervals in the bus, the dank fragrance of classrooms full of people that have lived a life you cannot even begin to fully comprehend. That part of yourself which still treasures the feeling of when you first blushed, when you cried the hardest, or when you got your heart broken by that very person who etched themselves deepest into your psyche.
Stored deep within your mind, stories fertilize your deepest memories, your most primal desires. No one writes a story they don't believe in, or rather, very few finish writing without a doubt in their mind and sanity in their souls.
An activity like such is worth getting lost in for hours, days, and if you're lucky, a lifetime.
Day in and day out, it refuses to bend to your will. Words will sound wrong once they've been used enough, or begin to look like incomprehensible Egyptian hieroglyphs all together. Sentences will lose their entire meaning with enough edits. Days or weeks of your hard work could be flushed away with one stray thought cascading into massive plot holes.
Your patience and will are tested every single time you sit down to write. But to have purpose in this life of yours, there needs to be a defiance within your mind, a part of yourself that you need to push to fight for what you want, and all the hurdles that come between you and your story will become just that, hurdles.
It will never get easier, nor will you ever feel satisfied with what you've created. However, this endless loop of life and death may become a little more poetic, a little less burdensome, if you pick up a pen, lose your mind a little, and attempt to conquer the world in your own way.
