MUSING OF A WRITER

MUSING OF A WRITER

It’s been long I wrote down a thing. This made me remember what David the psalmist and poet says “May my hand not forget its skills”

Perhaps, the issue I had was self-motivation. No, I’m not one of those writers who wait to be muse struck before dancing to the ballads coming from their soul. In fact, I do not believe in Greek mythology, or a guiding genie, or any source of inspiration other than from God. Whatever birthed a thing sustains it.

Maybe it was simply just writers’ block? But I don’t believe in that. Before I do, then I will have to begin the process of believing in Germans and Nazis and that some aliens from outer space were behind brainwashing Hitler so as to destroy the human race. Of course, I’m not saying there aren’t times it comes to a writer like a gushing wind and ideas like flies buzz through your finely creative mind and then you strike it, but not the muse striking you. You strike an idea.

 But to be blocked is way out of it. Often, what we experience when we feel “blocked” is a weight. Weight from the cares of this world, pressure from those other things that seek to grab our attention from our passion; I liken them to an evil seductress or mistress luring a man from the woman of his passion. Where goes inspiration to pen down a thought when thoughts that ruminate through the mind are laden with anxiety and many cares. Worries wear out the heart. 

Perhaps, it is in the way writers’ block is celebrated like an entity that every artistic mind must meet at one point or the other is what repelled me to the idea. I see it as a phrase that has substituted lack of self-motivation, a monster we have to fight day in day out.

A writer can be distracted. Yes. It is the ability to get back on track that I celebrate. And this ability is in everyone, the energy to steer our souls off the wrong course of lethargy.

Before I rambled on and on, let me not forget to tell you that I did a beautiful thing though while I went on writers’ hibernation (I’ll call it). I read a lot. Not because it has been said that reading gives you inspiration. I embedded my mind in works of arts from others not because I was seeking to glean inspiration or pluck ideas. But there was nothing else to do. Such was the state I found my creative mind. So, I read fiction and non-fiction. Yes. I read articles by the witty Joe Stein, browse through the work of Sam Lipsyte’s, read the  memoir of Maya Angelou (so, I can say I really now know why the caged bird sings), and some poems written by anonymous that I was tempted to make the word a name. I almost read the epic of Gilgamesh (thank God I didn’t try that). I did all that which some might think as a waste of time, gearing myself on to think that it was no waste. The knowledge I gleaned from those materials may come in handy someday. At least I had the strange and rare motivation to read. And in talking about reading, the teacher (Ecclesiastes) in his much musing concluded by observing that much reading is wearisome to the flesh.

‘teju duru is a free-lance journalist and artist. She devoted her ‘ lil’ heart to Jesus sometimes ago.