The best place to be...

 

The best place to be in…

 

The moment when you feel like you have nothing to write, is the very moment you should start writing, because this “nothing” is the gap where a treasure trove of words are awaiting for you to wake them up so they’ll tell you about their pains and stories, and like a diligent transcriber, you’ll take the dictation and copy their dialogues and monologues and whisperings and sweet nothings in your notebook.

 

This “nothing” is the best place to be in. Within the inky abyss of this nothing-ness lays asleep a colony of creepy little monsters, also known as “words.” Some of these monsters had been sleeping in this n-cave for, probably the past billion years. Nobody ever tried to wake them up, partly because they had no idea that they even existed. It wasn’t until these crazy person called “writers” finally slumped down on their desks with their notebooks or laptops perched in front of them.

 

For at least half-an-hour, the writer gazed at the blank page, rolling her sleeves, clenching her lips, tightening her belly, flitting her eyes from side to side in agitation, until, quite suddenly, some blurry images of these monsters starting materializing in her brain. And she was jolted in a shocking curiosity that caused her to become even more restless than she previously was. Who are they, she was left wondering.

 

Her attention kept on flipping between the blank page and the images of these monsters. Nothing seemed to work. Life was approaching an impending doom and her dream of surpassing the success of JK Rowling was already shattering in front of her eyes. So, the writer stood up from the desk, despondently walked to the kitchen, and made herself a glass of coffee. As molecules of dopamine rushed into her brain, she felt hopeful, again.

 

Nothing could be gained by abandoning hope. So, she kept sitting there, gazing at the blank page, her curiosity for knowing the monsters was dwindling away with each passing moment. By the time, the glass of coffee was slurped down till the last bubble, she stood up again. She slapped the notebook cover, shutting the blank page, vowing to never come across it again. The world was always right. Writing was not for everybody. And she was not one of the lucky ones.

 

After this horrifying encounter with life’s brutal hopelessness and a depressing realization, the writer resigns herself into exile. She steps out of the house to wander like a stray dog in the park and sit on the grass with closed eyes.

 

As she sat with eyes closed, all she could see was darkness. It was a place called “nothing.” The writer had already resigned to her hopeless fate, which helped her surrender much more easily to this n-zone. For the first few minutes, nothing remained nothing, nothing but the ever pervading, empty, silent darkness. But then, something happened. The sound of a bird. A bird flitted past her, likely flying towards the nest for the night.

 

In that moment, a word materialized in the n-space, in this boring, bizarre place called “nothing.” A spark flickered in the darkness, dimly lit. At first, there was one word. But as the writer kept sitting there, still hopeless, another word materialized. Then another, and another, and another….

 

Suddenly, the writer’s head was rumbling with an entire forest of words, desperate and agitated to tell their stories, their pains, their lost loves, their unfulfilled desires and terrors. As the words pulled the strings of the writer’s attention, she had no choice but to run, to run fast and reach her desk. So she ran and like a car suddenly pulling the brakes, she hurried to the desk and like someone who has been possessed by a ghost, she began tapping the keyboard keys, taking dictation from these word monsters and collecting their stories in the empty ocean basin of the blank white page. The blank page was no longer blank, thanks to that place that nobody likes to visit, that everyone is terrified to visit, a place called “nothing.”

 

For others, this place is of no particular significance whatsoever.

But for a writer, this is the best place to be.

 

Nothing. The best place to be.