Luckily, it’s usually just for two or three minutes, but other times it lasts for days. It makes me feel drained, emotionally or energetically or even creatively. It’s a very strange sensation, especially when I know what I want to write. I’ve tried most of the ‘remedies’ on the internet but nothing usually happens. I can usually write about nonsense; I always do. Anyone who’s read my scripts or unfinished novels will agree. But even somedays I can’t get a word down. I sit in my dimly lit room for an hour, sometimes two, to try and get my thoughts together. Two cups of coffee and multiple pills later, I still can’t get my thoughts together. I read somewhere that one of the keys to being a good “(screen)writer” is to being a morning person, which made me laugh since I found bitterness to be my best driving force when it came to writing.

I try to decode myself. Find out why some things inspire me and others don’t; of course everyone is like this, right? I can be very inspired by one thing, and completely unfazed by another extremely similar thing. I try to remember when I actually started writing. When I properly started writing; I mean the whole “I am going to start writing said topic.” I tried to think about the first time I got writer’s block that lasted for a week. I got nothing. Right now, I’m working on a novel. I’ve never been so proud of one of my writings as much as this one. I’m not saying it’s a good novel, it may be terrible; the ‘Birdemic’ of literature, if you will.

The story splits into two different narratives (seemingly different narratives at the moment) throughout the novel. Set in New York in an undated period and the other in Tokyo, 1972. Two characters, Nicole and Guy. Nicole is a writer living in New York, who’s suffering from writer’s block, due her nihilistic approach to everything and Guy, a cook with no aspirations or drives in life, living in Tokyo. I was swelled with pride, writing this.

Until the English translation of Murakami’s ‘Pinball/Wind’ came out, and I saw an odd amount of resemblance in the narrative. I also caught sight of a character that was a near copy of a character in a previous script. Haruki Murakami and I have never met, he’s never read anything I have written (well of course, given I’m not published) and there is no way that he could have access to any of my writings or for me to have access to the original Japanese editions of his novels, which come out at least a year or so before the English translations. As I’m writing my novel, and as I’m reading his book, I’m becoming increasingly demotivated. I don’t know why. I’m losing my train of thought, but I am. I’ve been thinking that maybe this could be the reason for my writers block, but It hasn’t gone away even with reading another book.