CREATIVE people need stimuli. There has to be something that stokes creativity, something that fosters the creative instincts of the artist. Usually, this thing has to do with experiences, whether experiences with other people or experiences with nature.

What happens when we are devoid of these sorts of experiences? What happens when we shut ourselves away from the world, when we change jobs, when we move out, when we choose to live alone, away from family and friends? What happens when we maintain a cycle built on limited experiences – whether it means doing shopping late at night or having food delivered daily rather than going out into world? Does the creative process still work? Does it even still exist when we blind ourselves to people and the world and experiences?

For almost a six months, I have been shut away in this manner, my actions of self-inducing-solitude, brought on by a series of elements, including depression, needing to be away from my life, and my sordid attempt at independence. In all of this time, my creative writing has suffered rather than improved. I’ve wallowed in my own self-pity and I’ve spent too much time in the darkness – both literal, as well as in the darkness of my own gloom.

There is not for creativity with such a mindset. Whoever came up with the notion that the idealized writer is the one who sits in darkness, in his home, typing away at a computer? There is simply no truth to it. It is ironic that writers are viewed as solitary creatures, when, in fact, solitude itself seems to be counter-productive to the creative process. I once knew someone who said “I can only do my [artistic] work when I’m happy” or something to that effect, and I’ve realized in my six months of hibernation there is a truth to this. Writers do not need misery to write. Writers do no thrive on sadness. In fact, the truth seems to be the exact opposite.

I think worse than this sort of self-imposed solitude, is the kind that people have no control over. Sometimes, being sad is a luxury – at least when compared to writers and other creatives who are so busy with children and work and trying to provide for their families that their artistic selves are left to punish in a solitude that is not always visible to the world, a solitude that in some ways can be more damaging than the self-imposed kind, a solitude that stifles the muse forever and brings an end to creativity.

It is with these thoughts in my mind, along with my self-resentment and fear over the lack of writing output in the past year or so that I made a conscious decision to step out of the house and spend some time walking around central Georgetown, the way I used to when I was in my early twenties, at university, with more time, that seemed like not a lot of time back then, than I do now. I was less sad, less aware of pressures and expectations.

Exploring the city by foot was therapeutic and, in fact, was crucial to the writing of all the stories that appeared in my Guyana Prize-winning manuscript, “Rebelle and Other Stories.” In that manuscript, there are stories set on Church Road, at the seawall, at the bus park by Demico, etc. The places that I saw, that are enshrined in the consciousness of the Guyanese people as a collective, the places that formed our world, that make contemporary Guyana what it is, is what I wanted to showcase in my stories.

With all of this in mind, with the memory of how the streets and the sky and the waves of the sea inspired me and my writing – not my small, untidy apartment – I set out into the streets once more, to see how it would feel, to see if I could find any more of those fragments of inspiration that were strewn across my paths when I was younger.
It was like walking into a whole new world. I had forgotten what sunlight felt like on my skin. I had forgotten the smells of old books in the National Library and the smells of new books in Austin’s Book Store.

I saw a larger heron striding through the drain that ran on Camp Street and I remembered the time a crow flew into my head when I was a teenager (a moment still to be used in a piece of writing). I recalled the tight, busy traffic of Georgetown streets and the difficulty of crossing, sometimes. I remembered my fascination with finding the buildings around town that retained their Dutch architecture and touch of breeze against my face and the twinge of sweet pain in my legs that came from too much walking.

Most importantly, I noticed the Guyanese people: the school girls still in uniform who were clearly skipping school, the fat vendors sitting at street corners with their baskets of pickled fruits, the vagrants who still slept on pavements, the ladies in aprons who sold me my lunch, the coconut water man with his cart laden with coconuts, the policeman strolling along briskly, the taxi driver who tried to engage me in conversation – a range of people who, doing nothing besides being themselves, are enough to wipe away my gloom from the past months, at least temporarily.