Creative Woes + An Announcement

I’ve been dreading writing this post and putting it off for the longest time. It seems like every time I take a break, it gets a little more difficult to return to the habit. Not for lack of ideas or interest, it’s mostly fear.

 

I don’t know how many people can relate to this but hopefully my fellow writers know what I’m talking about. Every time I take an extended break from writing, be it blog posts or fiction, I find that I come back to it with a certain amount of terror and insecurity. I begin to worry if whatever I’ve put up or written previously is any good at all and if anybody will want to read what I’m going to be writing next. It’s all in my head, of course. This period of inactivity builds up unrealistic expectations and not being the most confident person in the world, I can’t easily dispel the fear that surges through me as I stare at the blinking cursor.

I had a hundred different post ideas before the hiatus. Promptly, majority of them vanished from my sieve of a memory, leaving behind the dregs, which were neither the brightest nor the easiest to execute. While I turned them over in my head as I searched for words to flesh those out, their worth decreased exponentially until I was convinced each and every one of them were rubbish.

After churning out 50,000 odd words in November for NaNoWriMo, a 500 something words blog post looks like a piece of cake, mathematically (I could do with a piece of cake right now). Realistically, the more minutes that pass by without a single word written, the more the nagging feeling grows into full blown panic, often with the result of logging out and promising oneself to try again later ‘when inspiration strikes’. However, sneaky little inspiration fails to arrive on time and my posting days fly by, sticking their tongues out at me cheekily.

So, I decided to write about this feeling rather than hunt around some more for glorious ideas that are being very elusive at the moment. An average writing day is mostly comprised of lonely, long hours interspersed with a few brilliant moments. It is for those few and far between moments that bring with them the immense joy and power of having created something from nothing that I choose to write. Not for the eyes of others who read and may appreciate the words written at those precise moments, not for the fame that might come along when those readers multiply and certainly not for the rest of the frustrating minutes that fill those hours. This is perhaps unreliable but also fulfilling in a way that, paradoxically, I can’t put in words. This is why I had the courage to keep writing through the mediocre sentences, through the paragraphs that probably don’t belong and the words with better replacements. In the end, it will never be a waste of time, but an experience worth reliving and learning from.

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ANNOUNCEMENT: NEW BOOK BLOG!

From 2011, I’ve had multiple Tumblr accounts and unsuccessful blogs, which I neglected for I had no idea what topics to focus on. It’s a very diverse place with rules that are radically different compared to WordPress. Lately, I’ve been thinking that I want to separate the two aspects of Pages That Rustle that have co-existed so far – reading and writing. I decided to make this more writing-oriented. I want to complete all the little stories I started this year, so you’ll be seeing more fiction on Fridays. I’ll also be sharing updates on my new WIP that I started as a part of NaNoWriMo 2016. I’m accepting more guest posts, so if you’re interested, check out the new page that will be up soon for more details.

However, book reviews and related content will move to the new Tumblr blog, but I will probably be doing seasonal wrap-ups here as well. I’m not entirely sure at the moment, but I felt like I needed to talk about books a lot more than I’m doing currently and I didn’t want to create another blog, so I decided to change my existing Tumblr into a book blog.

If you’re on Tumblr too, this is the link to my blog – Unputdownable Books. Don’t be alarmed if you find it empty now for I’ve only just revamped it. At the moment, those of you who don’t have a Tumblr account can’t follow the blog, but I’ll try to add other ways to do so before long (if that’s possible) because I don’t want interested people to miss out on anything. If you’re an author about to publish a book and need a reviewer, do head over to the new blog for relevant details. I’d be thrilled to help out!

Before I make these changes permanent, I’d love your valuable opinion about this attempt. If you have any ideas or suggestions or just a bit of encouragement to offer, please let me know in the comments section below. I can’t thank you all enough for being such patient readers! 🙂