Write it off!

Island Color
Raquel C. Bagnol

My long silence does not necessarily mean I’ve stopped writing altogether. I was just well, silent. I’m going through a phase many are familiar with, a sort of a stuck-in-a-rut feeling when I woke up one morning and found that for the past weeks, I had been writing stories to comply with the weekly quota and to fill my pages.
Call it a writer's block. An intellectual meltdown to incapacity or whatever generic alibi you can think of but the naked truth is that I have deceived myself for years now, promising that I would develop a daily writing habit but until now, I don’t have proof of sticking to that promise. My career is heading nowhere and I feel I’ve been stuck with something.(Oh cut the excuses and face it’s real name- sheer laziness).

To get into the daily writing habit, I browsed through the internet for tips and journaling prompts, found millions of them and had them printed and cut into strips. I found the perfect plastic box with an opening at the tip so I can just pull out one or two strips, depending on the mood and write whatever is there, at least everyday.

The internet again provided me with a downloadable journal software where I could jot down notes and entries conveniently. Armed with determination to do something I wrote diligently for the next couple of weeks, then temporarily stopped. Funny there’s always a reason to put off writing every midnight which is my ideal writing time ( that’s usually the time Tom and Jerry are chasing each other on Cartoon Network on the television and I can’t afford to miss even one episode).

I keep on promising myself to write for 10 minutes a day but when I turn on the computer, I am always tempted to indulge in a few minutes (a.k.a. hours) playing Zuma, a computer game where a frog spits out balls and explodes when three balls of the same color lines up…(Warning: don’t try this or you’ll be hooked. I have wasted hundreds of sleepless nights and learned to swear and exhausted my patience and I still haven’t gone beyond Stage 12.)
Developing a writing habit is easier said than done.
I haven’t opened the journal in the last 47 days and when I finally did so this morning with renewed determination, I can’t open it because the trial period of the software had expired and there goes all my two-week writing effort down the drain. So much for my writing career. I’m not yet giving up. I’m downloading another software for writers- and hope I will not be writing another article like this ever again.