The Cost of Creation
Ryan was a successful writer who had started creating at the young age of 11. In just 2 years, he’d written a full novel spanning 470 pages. He was the talk of the town. Everyone appreciated him and he became a kind of niche micro-celebrity with his own fandom. The more he wrote, the more a certain problem started rearing its ugly head. Not his studies, but his free time. Sometimes, he played too long and couldn’t write enough for the day, which would be super damaging in the long run. Especially because he was working on his breakout novel, or so he hoped. He wanted to reach the stars and be with the stars, not as a transient has-been, but as a part of the upper echelon of writers, people who’d inspired and whom he wanted to reach the level. “I certainly can’t keep missing my time every day like this” he thought. ‘I’m writing at a snail’s pace’, was something he kept thinking to himself. So, that’s when he did it. He sat down at the crack of dawn. He took out his writing materials and penned down everything that came to his mind. Certainly inconvenient, certainly him. Let’s take a detour, and listen to what the consensus was, not just surrounding his books, but surrounding him. “He writes decently, but I certainly don’t appreciate him being a pain in the neck.”, says one of his classmates, who bore the brunt of his rather pretentious personality. See, Ryan thought of himself greatly. He had confidence, like a healthy person, but you can say he had a little too much – he had an ego. Such a common, simpleton-like personality would never have been the star of his class if it weren’t for his writing skills.
Ryan wasn’t like the traditional writer; he wrote very sporadically. He’d tried and failed in the past, to set a schedule and follow it, but all of the attempts were something he didn’t want them to be: transient. Some days, he wrote pages and pages of content, and others, he barely wrote anything, then he got angry, he tore up the paper and went outside, forgetting about it. With his reputation already being fickle and on as thin ice as you can get, he needed to prove them wrong with his writing skills. Let his work do the talking for him. It was only after he wrote his novels that he even started hanging with his friends, as before that, he didn’t have any. Whether this was because of his ego telling him not to hang out with such simple-minded folk or his egotistic persona turning people away from him, only he knows. Something changed inside him when he first wrote, he became closer to people than he ever was. “A loner no more, he waits for the surprises in store”. That moment when he published his first book, that one moment where he sent the manuscript to a small-town publisher, he and his parents knew that it was the start of something new. Successful, of that they weren’t sure, but they knew it was the start of something life changing and fulfilling.
That wave of confidence he felt was strange, but welcome. He’d never really done something like this. He felt happy and like he’d accomplished something. Another sign of his confidence, he’d just sent the manuscript to the publisher, and he’d already begun feeling like he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was still grounded in reality, but the shackles he’d built himself were as strong as twigs. So, now that Ryan was falling back into his writing-less slump, he needed to get back into the groove and prove himself once more. At the crack of dawn, he woke up. He took a pencil, sharpened it and lay it neatly alongside his white eraser, in pristine condition. He waited a bit, then he picked it up. He rested his hand on the table, letting the pencil grace the paper ever so slightly. He took a look at the pencil, his heart beating. This wasn’t it. But this was something. He had to write right now, or he wouldn’t be able to. His ego was too big to accept a defeat like this even before it happened.
He pressed the pencil on the paper. Glancing briefly at the story ‘til now. He started writing. It was almost like he went on autopilot. He got into the zone and wrote everything that came into his mind. And after 2 whole minutes of writing his heart out, he glanced back at the paper, with full intent to read. Only to end up disappointed. “He walked to grocery store” was all he’d written. He stared, blank. Was that all he could muster up? After days and days of what felt like his grand buildup of slogging until his eventual crescendo. He wanted to have written at least 10 pages of content to feel like he hadn’t lost time, and his talent. That’s what he felt like. Like he’d just been robbed of his talent that’d made him so popular. He tried again. He even recreated the exact setup of his writing station on the other days. He got really desperate, really fast. That’s why they call him a simpleton. He tore up the paper like he always did, and rushed out of there, tears in his eyes. But he wiped them before anyone outside could see it. He really wasn’t in the mood to explain his grief to others. He also didn’t want them to perceive him as a hack, not being able to write even after so many days. He wanted to write. But he simply couldn’t.
What Ryan went through was writer’s block. A problem multiple writers, even experienced ones face. You can call it” The Cost of Creation”. You can’t expect to write just when you feel like it. The second that inspiration hits you, it feels like your brain’s just been sucker-punched awake. We leave this story with Ryan, facing down his writing room, standing in the hallway. We know he will write again. But he doesn’t.
By Y. Jeyan
Visit our Facebook Page : Whiskers and Doodles
About Author
