Day 19: Emptying the Mind

Today is a free writing day. Write at least four-hundred words, and once you start typing, don’t stop. No self-editing, no trash-talking, and no second guessing: just go. Bonus points if you tackle an idea you’ve been playing with but think is too silly to post about.

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Free – writing probably comes easily to everybody. All you got to do is keep writing what comes to your head. Right now, my head is blank. Its spinning around in circles. I had a light fever this morning (meesa is Indian, so its 7:45 in the evening here right now).

Now, 400 words is kinda restrictive for a guy like me who is not used to writing anything less than a thousand words. Little known fact: I hated précis writing in school. I mean, I was really good at it but I didn’t like it. A teacher once shook my hand because she hadn’t met many students who could, thrice in a row, summarise a more than 1500 word piece in 60 words, in the first or second try (I did it in the first try, the first two times). It just comes to me, not particularly because I like it.

I hate bragging too. I really do.

I have been having this niggling sensation at the back of my head. Throughout the day, I feel like there’s something I’m forgetting, something I’m not doing right. And this has been going on for a while now. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and a few days ago when I sat down  to write, I decided to take up the story, The Elapsed Eventuality (which I’m writing and the first chapter’s on my blog. You can find it here). Now, I reread what I had written so far, all the notes I had made and stuff. Then I started making some character sketches and some drawings about the settings and that’s when I realized that the gauntlet hanging over my head just disappeared. I’d decided to just let the story build in my mind for a few days and I didn’t touch it much for a week. Now, that was a conscious decision but in spite of that, I felt like I should be working on it. I’ve always known, but this just reinforced the fact that I am really drawn to writing. What’s even more interesting is that I had no real inclination to write anything else in the interim though I did do some writing. Maybe I’m just very attached to that story.

So now I’m looking at the Fifa World Cup 2014’s match schedule which is pinned onto the soft board right in front of my desk. There’s the USA v/s Germany match that’s going to start in exactly an hour and a half. I think its going to be a heck of a game. Speaking of the World Cup reminds me of these people I know who are apparently really hardcore followers of football. I really appreciate the game, among a few others. Now the timings for the matches are really erratic here in India. It goes up to five in the morning. The next morning, the guys who have stayed up all night, ask me whether I saw Messi curl the ball in to put Argentina ahead or whether I saw Klose’s flip and I’m like Jonah Hill from Superbad, the scene that has gained hysterical proliferation thanks to 9gag and Reddit.

I’m just wiping some sweat off my neck now. And swatting half a dozen insects. And cursing the summer. And cursing the monsoon, which is extremely late this year. Just unnecessarily building up the suspense and draining our reservoirs without due warning.

Now, I’m just logging off. Over and out.