Not here… not now! These four words are indeed powerful and hold the secrets of creative outbursts within them. I realised it the moment I read a status update on FB today.
A friend from London updated her FB status:”…is sick of london weather already, don’t know how I am going to survive rest of the winters…”
This surprised me because I had heard such sentiments many times earlier too… from my friends in Delhi. So I wrote back: “Replace London with Delhi and winters with summers… (or any other city and season) and you’ll know what connects the whole world! :)”
Everyone is always wanting to be somewhere else… assuming that this somewhere else will be better than HERE and NOW. This got me thinking. is CREATIVITY too a process that is connected to such feelings. Yes, I think so.
Most of us who’ve wanted to write more than just 140 character tweets or copying smart sentences disguised as creative updates on FB have experienced this. Everytime these people try to graduate beyond a 50-word update to a one-page blog entry, they convince themselves that they’d do it some other time… or somewhere else.
They invariably tell themselves:
Not here. Not now!
Give me a notebook, then I’ll write
Else there’ll be no creative bite!
I have no laptop, I can’t write
Just give me that and then I might!
Its always time for something else
Theres always time for something else…
Up and down moments I’ll walk
To eat, to read, to even talk
And even words flow into me
To weave some story for no fee
Then why is it that I still wait?
Why do I say: Not here, not now!
(A poem that I wrote as I wrote this blog entry)
So clearly, the four evil words that prevent creative outbursts are: NOT HERE, NOT NOW! And they’re as valid for writers as they are for anyone else in any situation… even my friend in London who seeks happiness someplace other than hers.
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Arvind Passey
08 December 2010
