Agony and Ecstasy

There are many woes of a writer, be it an author, critic, essayist, biographer, copywriter or whatever. A writer is a creative being, an artist in words, a painter who paints thoughts by means of words.

As the thoughts rush through the mind like a gushing bubbly stream, tumbling, rolling over pebbles crashing into waves, the writer labours and tries to catch them, before they are washed away, mingling into a new wave.

A sentence here, a remark there, it flashes across the mind and in a nanosecond, if it’s not recorded in that moment and put into words, it’s gone, receded forever, while sometimes or often one realises that it was the right or perfect fit. One curses and becomes disoriented for a while in frustration. The feeling is frustrating, so more scratches of the pen, additions and deletes and another new opening is done.

There is a constant battle in the mind, which is battering to the soul and tiring to the body already writhing in frustration, as the writer naming his or her first-born, the most appropriate name suitable for the creation, the labour of love. A name is a title given to match and suit the body and is embedded in the soul of the thought created. There is always a perpetual process of searching, studying, taxing the mind, in search for the right word, the perfect sentence. In doing so, there always remains an ambiguity, doubt, uncertainty in the mind. The great jigsaw puzzle of words is frustrating, fitting into the right corner, to provide a perfect picture, the perfect coordination.

The labour, the frustration, the hard work to create a perfect piece of writing, the author revises, reads and reads again, mulling over each word, trying to conjugate, infuse the right phrase, to connect into perfect harmony.

It is more akin to perfecting the colours, the creating of a landscape, the getting together the right pieces of the jigsaw into perfect coordination. The frustration into writing that perfect article, it is a toll not only on the mind, it’s the uneasy soul tormented, tired and of course the gentle heart with it the body , all worked up exasperated, sometimes jubilant, often when on revising become morose, yet to find a perfect missing jigsaw puzzle. One ill fitted puzzle ruins the whole landscape, the whole essence, which scars the soul, there is anger and frustration till it reaches perfection only in the eyes of the creator till it reaches the eye of the beholder.