My brain is a maze.
My brain is the Cretan Labyrinth and I fear its Minautor. Half human half bull monster lurking in the depth of my most tenebrous thoughts. The beast hinders my creativity, intercepts the ideas before they’ve even fully bloomed and crushes them in its ruthless, vile grasp. It viciously scorches their feeble petals, and relishes upon their collapse.
The maze is a cluster of chaotic, distorted and eccentric thoughts devoid of sense. The Minautor is my writer’s block.
My name is Hajar, I am nineteen years old and I have discovered nothing, done nothing, been nowhere and there are absolutely no thoughts in my head that anyone would want to read about. It might be my self-critic speaking. It might be the animal, still. And maybe the beast is bigger than I am. I am not an Athenian hero brought up on Zeus’ hands and taught how to fight a legendary brute that terrorised a whole population. I am a teenage girl who has been facing the same blank page for the past hour and is frankly tired of it. I am not Theseus. I cannot defeat the Minautor.
When there’s a furtive moment of clarity, in which I am not too preoccupied about excerpting the last debris of logical thinking planted like seeds of knowledge in the dangerous territory that my beast has made its home, I ask myself ; How did this ferocious barrier build itself between my reflections and me ? Why do I sink in an oblivion of void and frustration every time I attempt to transcribe emotions and thoughts into a text ? The succession of words seems dull to my flaw-seeking eyes, my hand urges to erase it, and I find myself faced with a blank page again. Writer’s block.
It is, though, with a lightness of mind that I welcome the idea that I am neither the first or last person to undergo such a baffling momentary lapse. I seek my comfort in the image of Ernest Hemingway littering his floor with squashed pieces of paper, countless trials and failures at formulating just that right sentence that would make The Sun Also Rises the chef-d’œuvre it is. How many writer’s blocks did Jane Austen have to encounter before spawning Pride & Prejudice? And how many times was Honoré De Balzac’s patience put at test before La Comédie Humaine was complete? I do not pride myself on being a good writer, though I rather soothe it on not being an awful one either.
William Stafford once said: "There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough." And it is strangely enough what manages to ignite the spark of my creativity again. As I sit here and type away the whirlwind of words surging overwhelmingly through my mind, I realise I am not Theseus. Nor will I ever be. I am Daedalus. The maze is a cluster of chaotic, distorted and eccentric words devoid of sense. The Minautor is my writer’s block. And I am the skillful craftsman who shaped my insecurities and fears into a seemingly insuperable obstacle. The hermetically enclosed wall was my design. I am capable of creation.