Random Ramblings of a Reluctant Blogger

 A writer’s block does not fill me with as much dread as does the far more trickier ‘writer’s flight of fancy’ does.

With the block, if it doesn’t roll over a period of time, one can find ways around it. But my fanciful takeoffs leaves me with zilch, and at times even invites the dreaded Block.

To break down the block is easy _ I just have to write! 

“Ah! Easily said, then done.” I can hear many screaming. No it is not, not certainly as difficult. And in my case, absolutely not as tough as fighting my ‘writer’s flight of fancy’.

Ideas keep floating up the brain wanting to break free. At times they wrap themselves with endearing words and sentences, all ready to be served. One needs just a piece of paper and a pen. 

That part ofcourse, had some limitations, for ideas come at the most inconvenient time, like when I am sleeping, or bathing, or just taking a stroll on a beautifully evening. (Ok this evening point is a bit of a stretch, I admit, given Chennai and it’s weather). But you get the drift. And these days one doesn’t need to have a paper and a pen. The ubiquitous cell phone is always at hand. And if you are too lazy to write, just record it.

My trouble starts as soon as the ideas float up. Delectably served as they are, all I need is to build on it. That I do, but riding on the wings of fancy, I soar. And not so much on the idea, but on what the idea and it’s culmination can do.

My mind is soon seeing a completed manuscript, even though physically I haven’t written a word as yet. A literary agent appears all of a sudden finding my ouevre highly inspiring and fresh. Very soon a wonderful deal is on and the bestseller has taken world by the storm. I am now a reclusive author, it adds to the enigma and in any case I believe people should be more interested in what I write, rather than who I am. Awards pour in, I have had to reject a few given that they were more keen about riding on my success.

I do acquiesce to some selected interviews and book reading sessions, a very, very few. And I woo the audience with my wit and have had them eating off my hands. My interviews are a big hit even then I agree to it, only on the special recommendation of my agent. 

Though there are a few more agents offering me better deals, I stick to my old agent, afterall some relationships cannot be measured by money. 

The requisite of reclusiveness means a lovely bungalow, a cute compact one, not very fancy, in the hills far away from the madding crowd. It also helps with keeping away the unwanted media from prying too deeply into my life. Not that I will be having a wild one, but it helps when just a few close friends and family get-together on occasion and everyone can let their hair down.

Success attracts critics like nothing does and nothing infuriates them like silence. Except for a few cryptic one-liners it pays to not respond to them whatsoever. My social media absence too raises many hackles.

Meanwhile, my original idea that had presented itself so beautifully is battling a thought process that it finds confusing. It screams “what the hell” and soon goes and locks itself in some compartment of the brain where it meets many of its ilk fallen prey to the flights of fancy.

Some time later another idea or a few old ones metamorphose themselves and rear their head. And all they hope is that they meet the mundane, the boring that actually highlights them.

For, the flights of fancy, though they fly high, they crash land even more fiercely proving a graveyard of good ideas.