I Don’t Want to Find My Voice
I just want to write my heart out
Most of my blogs end up in a trash can. It’s gut wrenching to see my hard work going down the drain. I mean, who doesn’t want to be the next Shakespeare or Stephen King? Carve out another Macbeth or Misery. A million reads. A billion likes. Crème de la crème!
Everyone likes their work to be appreciated. It’s a natural human instinct to crave fame. My daydream was to make it to the New York Times bestseller list or may be win a Pulitzer prize. But, I can barely write a 500-word blog. I guess I haven’t found my voice in writing. But that’s not how it works, and it really doesn’t have to.
A few days ago, I stumbled upon a beautiful piece of article by Felicia C. Sullivan. She has emphasized the value of writing, not for fame but because you love it. Reading it was like a triple shot of espresso. It helped my anxious brain to wake up and realize why I had begun writing.
I started penning down my thoughts because writing is where my heart lies. Writing is my first love. I bleed out my daily struggles on a piece of paper because it keeps me alive. It helps me transcend my pain and attend Nirvana. But, eventually I ended up in a rat race. A race to become a literary demigod. I started craving people’s attention for my writing. I wanted to show the world how good a writer I am. But Felicia’s blog came about just in time and gave me a tight slap on the face. It was something I really needed to read instead of becoming delusional about social media’s “How to Become Famous Overnight” mirage.
Now I realize I can never be like Stephen King because it took him decades to reach where he is now. In fact, in a race to become like him, I might end up losing my sanity. I might become a psycho, like most of the protagonists of his psychological thriller. That’s the exact opposite of why I started to scribble my thoughts on a piece of paper in the first place.
Now I understand that it might take decades or an entire lifetime for me to find my voice. Hell, I might never find my voice. But it really doesn’t matter to me now. I might never become a Nobel laureate in literature, but I will always be that unique Parag Ingale. I know my writing, no matter how shitty it is, is still unique to me. I have my own style of writing, and no one in the world can come close to imitating it.
My beating heart is the real voice behind my writing. I will keep writing my heart out till I die!
