• By Sanjeev Verma

Let’s start with the story of British novelist Graham Greene, one of my favourite authors. He famously wrote 500 words every day. Rather every morning. That’s not much, right?

Wrong. Writing 500 words a day, Greene wrote and published more than 30 books, among them The Heart of the Matter, The Power and the Glory, Brighton Rock and The End of the Affair.

To those who talk about their inability to make progress with their writing, I tell them the Greene story. If they still talk about their fitful, uneven progress at whatever it is that they try to write, I tell them about the American Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway, perhaps the greatest American novelist of the 20th century.

In 1958 he talked about how he rewrote the ending to one of his most admired books, the wartime masterpiece A Farewell to Arms, 39 times. The interviewer, unsurprisingly, was flummoxed that a great writer faced so much trouble with his writing. “What was the problem?” he asked, “What is it that stumped you?"

Hemingway made an admission that has inspired frustrated writers ever since: “Nothing. I was just trying to get the words right.”

We are talking about two of the greatest writers in English literature. You would expect they wrote prolifically, fluently, without any fuss. Not so. They struggled. Like you and I do. Importantly, they overcame those struggles and became the wonderful writers we know them to be.

I like starting my writing skills programme with what the American novelist and short story writer Louis L’Amour said: “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

And don’t try to sound eloquent. Just write. First drafts are usually terrible. Any writer who claims every first draft she, or he, ever wrote turned out perfect is lying. It’s work on that first draft, editing—the mother lode of writing—that turns a piece of writing into something acceptable, or exceptional. The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

And don’t, please don’t, conjure up fanciful notions of the writer’s block to explain away your reluctance, or inability to write. The Oxford English Dictionary describes writer’s block as a periodic lack of inspiration afflicting creative writers. In other words, the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing.

Writing is not so arduous. Just look out of your window and find words to describe what you see. Think of the meal you had at your favourite restaurant. Write about it. Or put the film you saw the previous evening through the critical scanner: say it was execrable, or dazzlingly good. Now write why. All that is writing and the more you write the better you will get at it.

To be sure, there is a writer’s block. As a professional hack I faced it often. It’s a state where you are just paralysed, unable to respond to the call of the computer. The cursor’s blinking breathlessly, urging you, cajoling you, to type a sentence, a word, even a letter, but you stay benumbed, gazing achingly at the computer screen, hoping inspiration will come from somewhere, somehow.

It is from the stories of great writers that you can draw solace. Franz Kafka, the Bohemian author, wrote once: Another ten days and I have achieved nothing. It doesn’t come off. A page now and then is successful, but I can’t keep it up, the next day I am powerless.”

Practice will get you there. Write every day. Maya Angelou, the African American poet and civil rights activist, said: “Write nonsense if you have to. But keep writing, no matter if you’re pleased with the final result or not.”

The thing to remember at all times is that you have the capacity to imagine—no matter how silly it may seem. It will pass. To be replaced by something precious. And beautiful. It always does.