I am writing this right after I wrote my first ever literary piece - a short poem titled Ennui. Although it has been one of my life's dream to become a writer, I've never written anything of importance. Many a times I have sat myself down to write a piece and have found myself incapable of going beyond a few words. As clichéd as it sounds, I may be suffering from a bout of what is usually called writer’s block. Or atleast that’s what I prefer to attribute it to.
Coming back to my first ever poem, I really have no idea how it all came about. I must confess that I was indeed shocked at my own ability. Having never so much as written even a short passage, it was indeed a shock to me, to find myself capable of penning down a poem. If you’ve ever tried it, you would know that the process is fraught with complications and what not. Usually, it all starts with a thought and then the thought takes shape and form and once you have decided on the choice of words, you breathe life into it to give it depth and meaning. This is roughly the general procedure. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Not really. The whole process comes with a whole set of complications that are calculated to frustrate and discourage even the most endowed of the lot. It goes like this: when you have hit upon a thought, you are stymied for the mots justes (as it is imperative that you choose the apt word), and sometimes, you have all the best of words at your disposal, but inspiration and clarity of thought is hard to come by and you end up with having nothing much to write about. I’m always faced with the latter. The toughest hurdle is always at its inception, once you have that straightened out, you get into the flow of it and the rest of the pieces fall into place and you have the full thing wrapped up in no time at all.
After having said all this, I’ve discovered that there is no procedure as such to write a poem or as a matter of fact any piece of article. Its not something that can be premeditated upon. It is something that has to come naturally to one. So for all you wannabe writers out there, don’t fret, if you really have it in you, its bound to surface at sometime or the other, like it happened to me. What is really of the essence for this to happen is the trigger. Now that’s a separate subject matter altogether which I may write about in the near future.
