The writer's block

By Julian Sudre



Stockbrokers in the city would never encounter those vacuous segments of activity in their working days, which inter alia, would be some absurd oxymoron in the logic of their dynamics.

On the other hand, writers do apprenhensively stumble upon the fearful blank screen.
The cringe-worthy hunt for the next piece that indelibly inprints itself on the journalist’s mind can only foment the incessant trepidations of the clock ticking by and a computer screen staring at you without a bit of inspiration.

But by all odds, these latter professions partake in the same streak of impetus; the verisimilitude of crunching figures – or words per se – in a minimal time frame enhances production and precipitates the adrenaline into an existentialism level.

We, writers, gasp for the imaginative fairy hand that taps into the lucrative fountainhead that spurts out fresh ozone to our readers.
While stockbrokers get an instant rush of satisfaction on the equity roller coaster, the degree of impetus is only distinguishable in terms of the rhythm of their enterprise.

Journalists have retracted the word -- weekend – from their lexicon and added incontestably an army of combative words that perhaps know how to stoutly stand in the right place. Those words will become through osmosis the brushes of the artists that elaborate on and bring history to the academician under his magnifying glass.

Stockbrokers juggle with figures the way journalists do with words – trenchantly to the point with respectable leverage. Only they have added the word – weekend – to their lifestyle when the market is put to rest. This is why their rhythm is slightly more structured despite the inevitable capricious nature of the financial world.

Nevertheless, the main trait, they share, as I mention above, is the impetus that their profession involves and also the adroitness at regulating with unflappable concentration, the flow of data that enter their mind to be processed with strict accuracy. A sine qua non of both jobs which is pertinent to their eligibility to handle such positions.

But the main point of this column is to show that words used by journalists and writers can have a definite impact upon the reflective part of the reader. Words are fodder for the mind that steal over you with the puissance of a tsunami. They penetrate your mind and get ensconced for a lifetime in the mechanics of expression and elocution.

Whereas, numbers are computed, quantified and totalised, into unprecedented mathematical analysis. The main difference between numbers and words is the former is used to generate life; the latter will honour it and keep it alive.


I think now, I have come over the cringe-worthy picture of a blank screen thanks to these little words that have embellished my page and I hope the [numbers] of readers will bring life to my column.