#scurf99: what do you write when you have nothing to write about
or so you think and you are just really, really lazy
I’ve not been writing much. I’ve not been reading much. I’ve not even been pitching much. If it’s worth it though, I’ve been thinking a bit. And that should count for something. Last few days have been kind of a whirlwind. The virus is back with a vengeance, just like all our celebrations till early December. Not that we all need anymore time to sit back and reflect, but there’s a needle here that needs to be threaded.
While the new variant has seemingly sent me spiralling (I’ve lost count of my panic cries this year) and derailed some outwardly solidly laid out plans for the very very near future, but it has also given some much needed respite from obligations, appearances and commitments, so to say.
I would be remiss to say that this is a golden opportunity to do some much needed thinking, but I’m really desperately looking for a silver lining. I’ve had the time to think, to be, to just pause once again. And for that I am kind of grateful. As life had started to rally on, full throttle, reading, social things, outings, travels, etc., had threatened to overtake the much earned lull that had largely prevailed over my last almost 24 months.
The virus is now, as they say, becoming a part of our life and I am making space for it all over again, by shifting, moving, separating things around in my inner life. Shuffling existing miseries, exchanging them at the covid counter for new sets of omicron-addled anxieties, new sets of cries that sudden bursts of uncertainties send me running to.
I’ve also, subconsciously enough, turned back again to some known comforts, which largely includes listening to writers talk about their processes, lives and failures. Luckily enough I’ve found a couple of podcasts (no more YT interviews, plz!) that are unending as resources of calm and much needed pause.
Sometimes I play these podcasts as background white noise to my walks, sometimes I fall asleep to them, sometimes I mildly want to choke other people who don’t want to listen to them. But mostly, I am sequestered in my own corner in the house, listening to these headless voices drill some sense into my head from far off in time and geography.
Broadly what I learn from these podcasts, these talks and interactions is that all writers are immensely open-minded, imaginative and thinking people. As much as they love spending time with themselves, they also like listening to others, being that fly on the wall, scratching at the surface of seemingly banal things and keeping at it.
I’ve also gleaned that almost all of them (at least the ones that I adore) have actively worked against their environments, without giving much importance to myriad invisible the systems operating around all the time. That is not to say that they actively push against everything and everyone, but they do, every once in a while, love to take a stand. Which is so inspiring in a world of mostly spineless robots who will never be able to tell one bad thing from the other, because they are so busy not wanting to “piss the right people off”.
This is not a rant. Believe you me. More of a pile of observations, heaped one atop the other. I will also share three articles from the last couple of weeks that I loved reading and that take forward the risk-taking aspect of these writers.
Aside from that, I’ve been trying to rake the leaves up in my neighbourhood by taking to some customary winter-time walking around. The much adored, famed, feted, even lusted after 10k step count has been winding its way around into my devices and it feels alright. The last few months went by in a constantly shifting haze as I have battled one set of post-covid illness after another. To be fair, I really felt like Wasim Akram being played off some tough ones in the practise net by Shoaib Akhtar. Mostly I faltered a lot, cribbed, spent (oh-my-god) heaps of money, time, energy, figuring out all kinds of doctors in the area, then going to their clinics, balancing it all with work, with writing, with reading, with LIFE THINGS, then buying all those medicines, ruminating over them, having some of them, not having a lot of them, and still not feeling anywhere close to my pre-covid self. I guess that ship’s long sailed. And no, there’s no “but” to bookend this shitty story. If it helps, I did unsubscribe from a lot many substacks, while I’m still struggling with many other various kinds of newsletters.
I also had three major almost moments publishing wise. Not that any of those three would’ve changed my trajectory, but who’s to say. Yet, I would pat myself on the back for being able to write for the better part of the year. No matter how flakey I was health-wise, I kept my day job and I was able to push out some freelance essays and book reviews. Some great, some not so. And the ones that got the killed (the Guarded, Granted and Beloved three) did leave me with lessons too.
A lesson from the published ones has been, to quote poet Eileen Myles: “What’s weird about writing is that, in some ways, you’ve been sowing what you reap—you just don’t know exactly when and how you sowed it.”
I’ve not written a single essay that didn’t feel authentic down the basest fibre of my being. I’ve written a lot many things that I might’ve been thinking about for more than twenty of my thirty years on earth. I might’ve not given them my fullest, and I am certainly not finished with all of them, which is why they keep coming back to me in one form or the other.
Though what I do look for in the newer days will be a semblance of a routine, where I set myself up for a daily task rather than being shepherded around by commissions and pitches. Philosophising with M, friends and my mother has also been fruitful, as I have tried to curtail my book buying habits. What I do lack is dedication, I feel and maybe a semblance of clarity. Who knows where’s that to be found!
This last week of the year has seen me through a revolving door of being in and out of various states of drunkenness. I heartily agreed with Helena Fitzgerald when she rightfully coined this week to be universally called the “Dead Week”.
It also somewhat goes hand in hand that I’ve not had any ideas at all this past week. I go looking for them, but I am patient as they take their time to find their way back to me. Filling up the hours with walking, listening to podcasts and just doing nothing has been great, but it’s also filling me with a kind of dread for god knows what.
I want to somehow feel a bit enjambed. Get the poetic turn of phrases I used to get so easily earlier. Maybe writing poetry, working those muscles will help re-activate those brain cells (more left than right, please!).
I hope to get the mojo back and to at least be able to scribble down a couple of ideas every now and then. Not to pitch, publish but just so as to be able to pickle and preserve them? As Myles puts here:
I’m a writer—I can make mistakes [in my work]. I can go off, I can do wrong, I can need to be edited at some points. But, mostly, I feel like, if you stick with the sound, then there’s a natural line. It’s like music. I don’t want to stop it. Unless I can jump from [one point] to [another], like in a film, which I’m really interested in as an editing practice. If you know, either visually or sonically, where you are, then you can leap to another equally solid place.
I was on a podcast earlier this month and it turned out I was really, really shy and couldn’t even give a read of my own writing like a legit writer (who are they and where to find them). I crave the soothing effect of being in a new place, totally alien and so entirely new that it jolts me out of this delirium. I ache to be able to again observe a city, any city, as a language, and be able to write about it. I wish to not know the ways, falter, understand and then make a place my own in an absolutely gobsmacking non-touristy way.
That way in which I am able to wrap the words around a moment is golden and doesn’t happen so often. Conversations, punctuations, interventions — give me all of those and so much more. Overlapping chatter, signs, people, collision, noise, smells — all those things about the humidity of existing inside of a moment. I wish I could secure them all in one place, cajole them to the innards of a tin box and then scoop them out bit by bit every now and then. But I am also thankful that writing doesn’t work like that. That if I need to be in a new city, I need to make that happen physically and if it’s not happening that way then maybe make it happen in my words.
All of us writers become better writers when we write out of a transition of some sort. Sitting in one place seldom does it. Jumping thoughts sans any walls while writing is another thing that attracts me to it like a moth. Here’s some lists I’ll leave you all with. Read, share, exchange the joy of reading and writing!
Articles I liked reading:
https://www.the-fence.com/issues/issue-8/in-search-of-memsahib
http://softpunkmag.com/essay/the-language-of-your-fathers
https://www.guernicamag.com/toe-jam/
Articles I wrote and would love to know what you think of:
https://majusculelit.com/letter-from-delhi-2/
https://www.full-stop.net/2021/11/05/reviews/anandi-mishra/nowhere-nitesh-mohanty/
https://brooklynrail.org/2021/11/film/The-Endless-Hunger-of-Shiva-Baby
https://www.elsewhere-journal.com/blog/2021/10/29/walking-cities-with-my-mother
Said podcasts I’ve been liking/loving:
A thread on how to write better, which frankly I think all of us need to inject into our veins:
Music: Nach and Bijlee and Nach and Bijlee on repeat, forEVER! (i know, so unpretentious and not writerly at all, but a writer’s got to shake off the lethargy and get drunk and dance their heads off, too, you know!)
And that’s all!
Share this page with as many pals as you can! Here’s my website and hit me up for any requests, suggestions, tips.
My website:
https://anandimishra.contently.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/anandi010
Substack:
toodloos!