Writer’s Block– A Myth or Reality?

Writer’s block– I always thought I had one. A stagnant phase of time where I couldn’t hold the pen. Yesterday, I deep-dived into myself again and found something unexpected. I realized I never had one. It was how I perceived it but it wasn’t real. Now when I look at my past, I don’t see myself not writing at all. There were things I couldn’t express in words because of my emotional instability attached to them, but it never happened once that I stopped writing. Be it my work, my diary, blogs, social media, scripts for campus societies, theoretical assignments, or exams where I never wrote what was in the books but in my mind, all of it came from the bottom of my skill to write. If I couldn’t write a ‘book’, it didn’t mean I couldn’t do it. It was my fear, my imposter syndrome where I kept telling myself I couldn’t do it. It could be anything in the world but now I know, it wasn’t a ‘block’. If it was real, if my skill wasn’t refined enough, I wouldn’t have won the writing awards during those years. Words kept making their way out of my heart. It wasn’t just a talent, but a skill I adopted right after I gained my senses. It was kept in my system long before I knew it and I had no power in my hands to abandon it. My pen and words never abandoned me, it was me who held them down at times because of how overwhelming it could get.

When you lose the ability to hold the pen, can’t hold the grasp of words and can no longer structure your thoughts on a piece of paper, that’s a block. An outright withdrawal. It’s not about when you can’t write a specific thing. Your mind will tell you it is to make you feel at ease. But you need to counterattack it that it’s just a barrier between your mental and emotional state. Something you can do but don’t find yourself in the right state of mind to do so. A temporary phase.

But when it comes to a block, it doesn’t go away that easily. You need to come out of it on your own. It’s real but it’s not unavoidable. It’s real but it can stop existing for you, once you learn how to avoid it instead of losing your grip on your pen.

Might take a long time, but you need to realize what it is. A block? Or just a haze surrounding your mind?