Category: Art Of Storytelling

A few years ago I lost two jobs in a day.

I resigned from a job with a very reputed IT Company to take up a six-month contracting role only to realize at the Exit Interview what a mistake I was making.

I went back to the contracting agency saying I was not joining. The same day I told the reputed IT company that I was not leaving. The problem was the IT company said that they can’t guarantee whether they can give me my job back. The contracting agency said their client might have offered the job to someone else after I refused to join.

You must be thinking what this has got to do with me not being intimidated by a blank page.

I am coming to that soon.

This was all my doing. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been. I had to sit at my desk and pretend to work for the rest of the day and wait. The whole time I felt helpless, angry and lost.

When nothing could calm my nerves I took a pen and a pad and started writing everything that came to my mind. My hands were shaking and my heart was pounding. But I kept writing. I scribbled every feeling I was experiencing. I wrote what a fool I was, how could I make so many mistakes, how unjustified and out of character my behavior was and how I should be punished. I filled three pages before I lifted my head.

All of a sudden I started feeling good.

The problem didn’t seem that big. I became hopeful that some solution will surface.

That day I discovered two things. One, stream-of-consciousness-writing (also known as free-writing) is an excellent way to calm your mind.

Second, freewriting is a great way to overcome the fear of a blank page.

I had filled three pages without stopping.

I was not worried about how good my writing was, or whether it was making any sense, or how rich my vocabulary was. I was just writing my worries away.

Many a time our most fluent and uninterrupted writing comes in the moment of despair when our inner-critic is pushed aside. Whenever I have gone back to read my diaries, I have found that it is the most logical, intimate, and touching writing I have ever done.

I don’t think “writer’s block” actually exists. It’s basically insecurity — it’s your own internal critic turned up to a higher level than it’s supposed to be at that moment, because when you’re starting a work — when the page is blank, when the canvas is open — your critic has to be turned down to zero… The point is actually to get stuff on paper, just to allow yourself to kind of flow.

– Philipp Meyer

Why do we have fear of a blank page?

That blank page became a phobia because you begin to think that whatever you wrote on it was not good enough. I didn’t wake up at four in the morning to write crap, you start saying to yourself, I want it to be good, at least my best, if nothing else.

Right?

Wrong.

Most of the time what I write is rubbish. It is what I do with that crap later on that makes it worth publishing. From the rubbish comes the useful material.

Many people when they can’t write good enough material in the first draft or can’t extract useful from the rubbish quit writing altogether.

That’s it.

All that desire and big claims of being a writer one day gone at the first sign of failure.

You got to write rubbish in order to get better and you ought to write a lot of it.

Jennifer Egan captured it perfectly in her advice on writing:

“You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.”

If you persist, over time, that blank page becomes an invitation.

Margaret Atwood recalls a definitive moment from English author George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’, where the hero of the book purchases a notebook, which draws him in.

She feels that this is descriptive of how the blank page affects a writer:

“There’s something compelling about the blank page. It beckons you in to write something on it. It must be filled.” 

— Margaret Atwood

Tools can help

I love the sight of the blank page on 750Words, an online writing app. It is a digital way of writing ‘morning pages.’ If you don’t already know what ‘morning pages’ are, it is an exercise first suggested by Julia Cameron, in her book ‘The Artist’s Way.’

Since the very first time I used the site 750Words I liked it. It has a friendly white space that is soothing to the eye, an Arial font that is big and not intimidating and 31 boxes at the top for each day of the month that gets crossed when you write 750 words precisely.

The site has a reward system too where you get badges for reaching milestones. It gives you word count at the end of the page and an analysis of your writing speed and mood.

It is a very effective way to make you write every day.

To me the blank page on this site an invitation full of possibilities. I can write a poem, a story, a blog post or the things that are worrying me.

It accepts anything and when I finish it gives a word count for the day and a ‘cross’ in the box.

And to finish off the story at the beginning, I learned through the contracting agency that their client hadn’t offered the job to anyone yet and would take me back thinking of my rejection as ‘having a bad day.’ Which indeed I was having.

From something bad, comes something good. Isn’t it?

Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash

Sometimes it helps to write a letter to yourself.

When you come to think of it, it is not such a weird idea.

The idea of writing a letter to myself came from Shaunta Grimes post How To Be Your Own Business Coach. Although her post is about sharing techniques she learned from a business coach, there was a gem right in the middle of it which intrigued me.

Shaunta’s coach asked her to fill out a form at the end of the month with standard questions regarding how she was going towards meeting her goals. She thought the form was a bit limited in describing what was going on. So, instead of filling out the form, she wrote her coach a detailed letter.

She was not clear whether her extremely thorough letter impressed her coach or frightened him, but it ended up being so profoundly helpful to her that she wrote one again the next month and the month after that.

She called them end-of-the-month letters.

That was a fascinating idea.

What if, instead of a coach, one write such letters to oneself.

These end-of-the-month letters could be a great way to assess how one is fairing against one’s goals and life in general.

Shaunta wrote:
“My end-of-the-month letter provides me with a real overview of how my business is doing — not just how I think it’s doing. I have a tendency to think everything’s okay, even when things are clearly not okay. Maybe I just don’t want to believe that things are heading downhill, or I’m so focused someplace else that I don’t even realize I’ve dropped a ball somewhere. Conversely, every once in awhile, I’ll find myself certain that the sky is falling, when really, everything’s holding pretty steady. Writing allows me to take a dispassionate top-down look at what’s really going on.”

I am the exact opposite of her. I have a tendency to think that everything is no okay and that I have achieved nothing. I concentrate on the things I have not done and tend to forget the ones which I have accomplished.

When I made a shift from competitive to a creative life earlier this year, I set myself some rules.

The prime one was that I will not waste time. As one grows older it becomes quite evident how little time one has left. Annie Dillard puts it so succinctly that, ‘How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.’  that was one thing I wanted to be aware of.

The only way to make sure that I don’t waste time was to keep a tab of it. I started keeping track of what I do each day in my daily journal. That journal is now a great tool to assess where my time goes each month and what I have achieved.

I sat down to write myself a letter at the end of September.

I wrote about what I was working on, what I was succeeding at and what was proving difficult. I realised that I hadn’t met the goal I had set myself for September. I hadn’t met it not for the lack of effort but because I had set it too early. Its time hadn’t come yet. I listed the new things I started in September and a number of things I accomplished. They were all there in my daily journal and I had forgotten about them. It was an eye-opening exercise, allowing me to see how far I had come in just thirty days. Because there were so many things that still needed to be done, I was feeling overwhelmed and underachieved. It was not a reason to beat myself.

The end-of-the-month letter made me realized I need to be kind to myself.

It made me recognise that I need to give myself more credit for the things I had achieved.

I noticed I was doing too many things which are diluting my efforts and adding unnecessary stress.

I have decided to concentrate my efforts on one to two projects at a time.

The end-of-the-month-letter helped me understand the importance of celebrating.

Life is short and art is long.

It might take me my whole life to get where I want to be. But that is not a reason to not celebrate little victories along the way. Each milestone well celebrated inspires us to achieve the next one.

Afterall it the journey which brings more joy than the destination.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

On my recent trip to the UK and Paris, I took thousands of pictures but whenever I think about the trip none of those come to mind. What comes to mind are the moments that were not captured in any of the pictures.

Photos are wonderful and we take so many of them when traveling but there is something about the written word that evokes a stronger sense of place and person. The little entries I made in my diary transport me to those places instantly.

Here is one:

“It is six thirty in the evening, I am walking back from Stonehenge. Sun is still bright. White clouds against the blue sky look magical. Sky is so low here. I feel if I keep walking I will be able to touch it just at the edge of earth. There is something special about this place and it is not the sky. Not even the landscape. It is the silence. Even though the place is full of tourists it is still very quiet here. May be it is the silence of the dead.”

And this one:

“It is five in the evening and I have made it to the top of the Arthur Seat in Edinburgh. The wind is so strong that both my husband and daughter decided not to climb the top rock. It is hard to find footing on the pointed and irregularly shaped volcanic rocks. I haven’t come so far to give it up now. Before they can stop me I start climbing, inch by inch, carefully balancing on almost vertical rock. Rock was not that dangerous, it was the wind. I get to the top and get the photo taken. I do not climb for the photo. I climb to test my resolve.”

But the accompanying photo does not capture any of that.

Neither do any of the photos capture the smell of the highland air, the taste of the Scotland water, the thrust of the Oxford Street crowd or the music at the Paris pub. I couldn’t take photos of my aching feet which made me regret every day that I didn’t pack my hiking shoes with ankle support.

I was not fast enough to take pictures of the double rainbow I saw from the train while going to Paris, neither was I ready to capture the fireworks which started unexpectedly when we were at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Those pictures are itched in my memory forever without the aid of the camera.

You can’t taste a snapshot.

“I am in the Selfridge, sitting in a cupcake eatery, order a cookies and cream cheesecake which my husband are going to share. I take the first spoonful; the creamy sweetness melts in my mouth. I get up declaring ‘I want one all for myself.'”

Bang! the memory floods back and I am back in the eatery tasting the cheesecake once again.

Did I take any pictures of the rude guy who double-parked his car just behind ours making us wait for half an hour, in rain, at Glenfinnan where we stopped to see the Harry Potter bridge? Even if I did, it wouldn’t have told the story.

Or these stories:

“We are walking back from a local pub in rain, hoodies on, umbrellas up, and between my daughter’s constant moaning that we didn’t let her call an Uber for a ten minute walk back home. My son-in-law is warning us not to step on dog-pooh and next moment he steps on one. The drama that followed afterwards was fun to watch. “There is one thing I ask you each time we go out, not to walk on dog-pooh, and you can’t even do that,” goes my daughter. At home, my son-in-law thrusts the shoe under her nose, “Would you like to smell it to make sure it’s dog-pooh and not just mud.” His action starts another row. Half an hour later, husband wife team is still on balcony trying to clean the shoe with wet-ones and earbuds.”

Or this one which will be told in dinner parties for years to come.

“I am standing in a line to go to toilet at Louvre museum. The line is so long that it is flowing out of the female toilets, into the corridor, way past the men’s toilet to the outside lobby while men are in-and-out within minutes. A young guy is trying to persuade his female companions to used men’s toilets. “What are the danger’s of exposure?” asks one of his lady friend. “Try using the first two cubicles,” he advises. Next minute a number of women raid the men’s toilet including me. Once you are inside there is no going back. Only empty cubicle was number 4. So I dash to it, praying all the time that when I get out there is no one using the urinal.”

I remember once reading about a kindergarten teacher who taught her class of five-years-olds how to take mental pictures at a beach excursion. “Take a good look at the sea… and the sky… and the clouds. Notice the color. Now close your eyes and try to see them with your mind’s eye. Take a deep breath and smell in the salty air, feel the wind on your cheeks, hear the sound of the waves. Lock all these in your memory. You will never forget it.”

I think this is the way to take pictures on holiday. With the ease of mobile phones, we spend all our time taking pictures rather than taking in. Maybe in your next travel, we can use the kindergarten teacher’s technique to take a mental picture and enjoy our holidays even more.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash