Writer’s Block: Bangalore Edition

I often find that when I am feeling numb and don’t want to write, the reason for it is simple. I am afraid of what I will write. All of this falls under the deceptively simple name “writer’s block.”

But why would I be afraid; that is, what would I be afraid of? There are a few possibilities, and I think it’s useful to go through them.

What Writer’s Block Feels Like to me, in the Moment

Writing, for me, is personal. I don’t really like using outlines, though I tell myself I should use them more than I do. Especially when I feel perpetually stuck. Like now. But for now, suffice it to say I don’t use them. And I don’t think I’ll start anytime soon. So why is there this voice in my head telling me otherwise? I think it’s just something my mind does to mess with me. To make me feel in control. Like there’s something I can do to change how my writing is going when I am feeling out-of-control.

Which leaves what I do instead. I sit at the laptop and stare at the blank page (or I do something else such as walk, listen to music, etc.) until I get an idea. And then I type out the idea and try to follow it  until it runs its course. Then I look for a new, related idea to add on afterwards. It’s tiring work. Not physically, but mentally. Emotionally. Sitting at the keyboard staring at the blank page can be difficult. But it’s not just the blank page, is it? That would imply that this only happens when I’m just starting out.

Unfinished Projects

I have a novel that I’m in the process of writing. My cursor is currently sitting on manuscript page 492. A hundred and forty-five thousand words already lie behind that cursor. You’d think that all of that weight; all of that accumulation of sentences and sentence-fragments would act like pressure, forcing the cursor to move forward of its own volition. You would naturally think that after 492 pages, I’d start to develop a rhythm. But that’s not what happens. What happens instead is that the cursor just sits there blinking at me like an owl in bright sun. Everything after the cursor still just feels like blank space.

Maybe there is pressure on one side. I mean. I do want to write. And I do want to finish what I started, whatever that may be. Even at my lowest; when I am most mired in frustration and writer’s block, I have to admit that that’s the case. That I want to write. I have to admit it based on the evidence. I co-founded a writing website. And I had another one before that. Also, I have like six writer-friends whom I call to talk about writing every week.

It would be easier if I just said I didn’t want to write. Because then not writing wouldn’t hurt as much as it does. But I do want to. I just don’t know how. And it does hurt. So for all of that pressure moving the cursor forward, there’s an equal or greater pressure moving it back.

Un…started Projects: Bangalore

Which brings us back to the beginning. What is it that I’m afraid to write? Why am I afraid of that blank space? Of the infinite possibilities, which one has me feeling skittish?

It’s not a lack of things to write about. I have had the chance to experience two new cities in the past 12 months: London and Bangalore. In Bangalore, I was afraid to write about India, and about Anuja’s family. Maybe not afraid, per se. Just unwilling. Contrast that to London. I wrote one essay per week from London, and when I returned to New York, I wrote two more essays. I was just bursting with ideas. About what it felt like to see Anuja again after a year and a half. About grief. And loss. About what COVID-19 has taken from us. The friend I’ll never see again whom I was too frozen to grieve for. I wrote and wrote. It was terrible, but also amazing.

So that’s one of the things that is scary. Those essays, as proud as I am of having written them, were no mean feat to put on paper. Each paragraph felt like squeezing blood from a stone.

When I reread those essays from London, I see pure joy. Granted, the essays aren’t about joy, per se. Like I said. They’re about belatedly dealing with grief and loss and pain. But why was I able to write those pieces? What gave me the courage to go to those dark places? It was the joy of being with Anuja again. Feeling held again. Feeling loved again. And feeling like I could hold and love again. They gave me the strength to plumb those depths; to excavate those old griefs. In London, it was just the two of us. Not so in Bangalore where I had to schedule moments alone with Anuja in between navigating this newer closer relationship with the rest of my family.

I love my in-laws. I love them a lot. More than that. I respect them. I’m glad I got to grow closer to them. But I won’t pretend it wasn’t hard. Navigating new relationships is always hard.

Telling Stories Means Looking Inward

This is why writing is hard for me, and I would hazard that this is why writing is hard for other people, as well. The only way I know how to write is to look inside myself. And there are beautiful things in there, but there are also ugly and difficult things in there. Things that hurt to look directly at. So. It takes time and energy to do what I’m doing.

I knew that before I went to Bangalore; knew that that is how my mind works, and that that is how my writing works. But I’m on new ground. I’ve met girlfriends’ parents before but never in another country, in another language. I knew it would be a wonderful and joyful experience to get to play with my nephew. To get to have those little conversations over dinner-prep with my brother-in-law. To get to just walk around on an unfamiliar street and see street signs in a different language. I knew all of that. What I didn’t reckon on was how tired I would be at the end of the day because of all of that. Too tired to process. Too tired to write. 

As I prepared for my trip to Bangalore some five months after my trip to London, I was expecting to feel the same rush of words onto the page. More, even. Imagine how much I would have to talk about.

Sometimes it’s Not your Story to Tell

And yet when the time came I found I was ill-prepared to discuss such things. Those weren’t my stories. As a privileged white person. As someone who grew up in a different culture. And as someone who is planning a life that will involve these people. I didn’t know what I might write that would sound perfectly simple and natural to me but would be insulting to them. 

London was One Thing

London was different in that respect. In London, I could look at captured treasures from the Middle East on display in a sterile and academic setting and know that it was my place to write about it. It’s everyone’s place to talk or write about it. I felt confident saying what I thought, because, as a citizen of the empire that is the successor to Great Britain, if I don’t talk about such things, who will?

Bangalore Was Something Else Entirely

But I didn’t have the same confidence approaching my “Bangalore Letters.” I didn’t want to be some gentleman-adventurer talking about the mysteries of the east. And I didn’t want to gossip about my new family whom, in some ways, I barely know. Even limiting myself to saying only good things would have been new and difficult territory. That’s not to say there is nothing I could have talked about. Just that I despaired of setting the right tone.

Plus, I didn’t have long hours to puzzle over the issue. I was busy trying to figure people out who were busy trying to figure me out. Tripping over myself trying not to be impolite to people who were tripping over themselves trying not to be impolite to me. It was a glorious mess. We had this whole dynamic of missed connections and false starts. It was brilliantly interesting, but, like I said, exhausting.

In short, as a privileged white person living in a country that still has an empire, writing about how England still suffers from the same types of corruption as the United States is just me calling a spade a spade. Whereas writing about the issues India has to deal with; issues that often specifically have their root in colonialist kleptocracy… that’s like breaking someone else’s leg and then asking them why they don’t get up and walk it off.

When I Have Writer’s Block, I don’t Always Know Why

I want to add parenthetically that these thoughts didn’t arrive fully formed. What happened in the moment was: I sat down to write a “Bangalore Letter” and found I could not. But deadlines are deadlines, so I found something I could write about. Then another week passed, and another essay. Slowly the idea took shape in my mind that there was a specific reason why I wasn’t able to write about this place the way I was able to write about London, or about my hometown of New York. And it’s been a few more weeks since then. And I’m finally able to write about why.

Okay One Bangalore Story

I’ll give you an example of something I found funny at the time but that I don’t think I could do justice in narration. Certainly not at the time. Now? We’ll see. 

The Context

It’s well-known that traffic in Indian cities is among the worst in the world. Mass transit is a dream, mirage-like, on the horizon. In the meantime, cars seem to go entirely too fast for the crowded streets… or they sit at a dead standstill while scooters weave between them. And street merchants go from car to car with bags of peanuts and the like. 

They’re really good peanuts. 

But I digress.

So with all of the dangers in the streets, you would think that pedestrian traffic would keep dutifully to the sidewalks. But you would be wrong. Because the sidewalks look like they have been hit with an earthquake. Some of the cracks are so deep they need to be mounted like stairs. That’s not even to mention the dogshit you step on thinking it’s a nut that fell from a nearby tree. And the frayed, dangling electrical wires that may or may not carry a charge. And the street-vendors with their scrumptious but awkward-to-navigate pyramids of watermelons or coconuts or ice-apples.

The Moment

All of which led to this perfect moment in which I was walking single-file with Anuja in the street. I shouted over the din of the traffic: “Why doesn’t anyone walk on the sidewalks here?” And as luck, or fate, would have it, a car was whizzing past us, close enough that our funny-bones were in danger from its side-view mirrors just as she said: “Are you kidding? The sidewalks are dangerous!”

Deja-Vu

The very next day, we had lunch plans with two of Anuja’s Bangalore friends. We were walking single-file in the street to get to our destination (a park, I think? I don’t remember) when Anuja announced to them, with a smirk, that I wanted to use the sidewalks. “Are you kidding? The sidewalks are dangerous!” her friend announced as yet another car whizzed past, within pick-pocket distance.

You couldn’t make this up. Well. You could. But you wouldn’t. In a way, it’s too mundane. As if the humor were a thin oil-slick winking its deceptive rainbow distractions on the surface of an ocean of post-colonial neglect and government corruption. But, for all the reasons I listed before, I’m not setting out to write muckraking articles on Indian governmental corruption. If I wanted to do some muckraking, there’s plenty to do right here.

Sometimes Writer’s Block is Systemic; Sometimes it’s Situational

So yeah. I’m afraid when I sit down to write. Even after all these years of experience doing just that. Afraid to say the wrong thing. Or to say the right thing but have it come off wrong. Afraid I don’t have the skill to navigate the gossamer web of interconnected relationships that make up my new family; to express how deeply I love them and yet how I am only just beginning to understand them. To understand their context, far more familiar than foreign but put at a distance by the littlest things. Like forgetting which rag is for the floor and which is for the table. Or remembering to turn on the electric heater five minutes before taking a shower.

We haven’t even yet mentioned the neuro-atypicality aspect. That I process information in a certain way. That it’s difficult for me to direct the flow of my emotions, especially when it comes to something as important to me as my writing. So these complex webs of worry and frustration often lead to me just shutting down. Like a car with manual transmission stalling in the middle of an intersection. There are specific things I know how to do to jumpstart my mind back to a functionality. But those things take time and energy. Everything takes time and energy.

London and Bangalore, Time and Energy

All of which is not to say I’ll never write about my experiences in Bangalore. (see how sneakily I just have!) but rather that these things take time. England is a Western country. Everyone there speaks English. Which itself is a reminder that colonization begins at home; because everyone there should be speaking Manx and Welsh and Cornish and so forth. But that’s a separate issue. 

The point is England was easier to talk about. Everyone has context. Everyone has seen TV shows and movies that take place in England. Not so India. Most people I know, unless they’re from South Asia, have seen at most one Bollywood movie (and probably not one that is particularly realistic). Other than that, maybe a Mission: Impossible movie used some Indian city as an exotic setting without remotely doing it justice. The point is there’s more to explain when writing about India than when writing about England. And I don’t feel like I’m the person to do the explaining. At least not yet. So yeah. I need time.

All of the feelings that came from the trip to Bangalore; that came from those long nights talking about this and that with my new siblings-in-law; that came from learning to navigate in a trilingual context where I speak only one of the languages… If I were to write about those feelings even now, the words would come out in a white-hot rush of joy and rage and frustration and confusion and worry and… I don’t know who would get hurt. However well-meaning I might be, I would be at risk of putting a foot wrong. And I’m not ready to do that.

So How to Deal with Writer’s Block? Write about It.

Like I said. Everything takes time and energy. Which we don’t always have to spare. So be kind to yourself. Sometimes the thing you need to do to be your best writer-self is take the night off. Or take the week off. Other times, you’ll want to power through. It’s really up to you. Up to what you’re willing and able to do. And those two things (willing and able) are not the same.

But the advice I always give my colleagues (when they ask) is: if you have writer’s block, write about the writer’s block. And so that’s what I’m doing. If I can’t put my feelings about visiting relatives in Bangalore into writing, I can at least put my feelings about putting my feelings into writing… into writing.

Well. I can try anyway.

Works fine until I get writer’s block about writing about my writer’s block.