I am novice to writing. I have a passion to jot down the ideas formed in my mind. Every day, I carry out different things which I wish to express in words. Like everyone, I come across ups and downs. I have a great desire to put those things in beautiful sentences. Most of the time, I have awkward dreams. Sometimes, I see myself visiting the unknown and untreaded places. At other times, I have a dream of doing something that I have never expected to do let alone planned. To cut the matter short, hundreds of ideas occur to my mind every minute and every hour. I experience a lot of problems and difficulties daily. I have read a few books and interacted to some people. Visit? I have traveled a few places.
When I am not putting my fingers in the keyboard or pen into paper, spate of ideas flood my mind. I feel as if ideas and feelings are going to burst out. They battle in my mind and vie with each other to come out of me. When the race is about to take off, I amass the courage to turn my fingers on the laptop to shape the crowd of ideas rushing in my head into an appropriate syntax. The moment I press the letters in the keyboard ideas fighting to come out of my brain get stranded midway. My fingers halt there. After a few minutes, my mind replete with floods of ideas and thoughts goes blank all of sudden. To put it other way, my mind becomes a tabula rasha, like a blank sheet of paper.
After the mind turns empty slate, I search blogs and write-ups catering suggestions regarding writing techniques and formulas. “One can write and be a good writer through persistent practice’, says a famous South American fiction writer. Write, write, write and write, says a popular American author of 20th century to the aspirant of writing both fiction and non-fiction. As I want more advice, I continue searching additional advice. A British author puts, “You have to be good reader to be a writer”. I take the last advice with seriousness. Guided by the specter of being able to write something, I procured Blue Mimosa, translation of Parijat’s Sirishko Ful and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”.
I flip through Old Man and the Sea. After going through twice, I manage to comprehend the summary. I try to figure out the themes, symbols, and other possible issues that the novella tries to project in it. Blue Mimosa? As it has around 100 pages, anyone one can do with it in a or two sittings. I read it in two settings. Characters, I remember as they happen to be Nepalese. Story? Yes, I can follow it too. But, I could not come up with a motif binding the whole story. I feel guilty for not being able to decode that.
Now, my tyro mind says that you have read two books so you can embark on your passion(oh, no let’s say whim). Again, I turn on the laptop. I try to write, write to be heard and to be
read.No, absolutely not. I try to put thoughts to mollify my interest. The interest of being able to put ideas in words. Unfortunately, by this time, not a single idea , not a single subject do I see, and feel to pen as my mind has gone tabula rasha.
ushakkathmandu 