Well, I am a writer!

There have been a few instances when people have asked me what my hobbies are.

“What are your interests, Nilesh?”

Well to be honest, all my interests lie 15 miles away from you who’s asking me this question. I am what some people call a drifter, a day dreamer, a bore or if you’re trying to sound all corporate, a ‘Generalist’. Almost every time that I have answered this question, I have felt like a sham.

“Oh, you like to run, eh? Did you run the blah..blah run last week? When’s your next run? Oh wait, you’re running away now? Is this….YOUR NEXT RU….”

“Oh, you like to read! What’s your favorite book? What book are you currently reading? You know if you like to read, you should totally read….”

“Ahhmm, you know what I just remembered that I left my car unlocked in the parking, can I just check on it real quick? Or would you prefer that I stay here and pretend to care about your excitement?”

The truth is, I like to do things. But then I don’t like to do things. Its not that I don’t like to run. I do. I truly do inspire to run a marathon someday. And I am not a total fake. I have run four 5K’s and two 10K’s. I do like to read. 1984 is my favorite book and George Orwell is my favorite writer.

I think.

I do like to cook but I have no signature dish. I can make almost everything at a passable/edible level. I do make the best Chai though. Its the best!

I also happen to like writing. I write.

Well, sometimes.

I write.

Not into a Hangouts chat window, not into a software IDE, not even into a YouTube comments section. I like to write what one would call articles or blog posts. But if you were to ask me today what my hobbies were, I could say almost anything without going into a shame spiral. Hell, I’ll even say that I like Football, which I truly don’t care for.

“Oh Liverpool won the EPL, eh?

Well, sign me up for someone who cares.”

“Rooney's retiring? WHAT??

He’s the greatest living center forward or whatever-spot-he-plays-on player.”

But I wouldn’t dare claim writing as an interest. I genuinely do like to write. But I genuinely…haven’t WRITTEN ENOUGH! Plus, claiming to enjoy writing is often followed by,

“Oh, you’re a writer!”

And that’s just one GIANT cross to bear. Sorry, Jesus!

So the question then is, what does it take to call oneself a writer?

If, I am writing this right now, am I writer? If I have written a thousand articles that no living soul has laid his eyes upon, then am I a writer? I am reminded of this very philosophical yet very douche-y sounding question, ‘If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one around to hear it, then does it make a sound?’ I have often qualified this with,

“Of course it makes a sound, dumb ass!”

But now I don’t know.

Have I made a sound yet?

The problem with writing is that one is a constant spectator to the cage match of one’s own thoughts. On almost a daily basis, I am visited by ideas of possible articles. I am also almost immediately hounded by the armchair critics that are my own thoughts.

“That’s too obvious.”

“Everybody knows that.”

“No one would read that.”

So many ideas have fallen prey to these thoughts.

Let’s add to this the disease that no writer has ever been immunized against. My fingers shiver as I spell this out. My right pinkie stretched out to delete these words as I type them in. If you say his name, he’ll surely come. The boogieman. The writer’s block.

Anyone who has ever written anything with any level of passion knows the pain that one goes through in putting his labor of love out. Nature has been kind to me in the fact that I will never be a mother to a child. Primarily because I am a man. But when I am tearing my hair to give coherence to what I am writing or for the love of God, just find a good way to end an article, I know what any mother goes through at child birth. Except that in this case, as soon as my baby’s out, I am the first one to yell out,

“THIS BABY’s FREAKING UGLY!!!”

It’s people around me that often kinder.

“Shut up! He’s cute!”

Let’s factor in another variable to this equation. The Internet explosion. Writers love irony. The irony in this case is that the very Internet that let’s us reach the widest possible audience ever known to man without getting off our chairs, is the same thing that ties us down. One of my most common idea-killing thoughts are:

“There are already 1000's of opinions on this subject out there.”

“Everyone on Facebook/Twitter has an opinion on this. A lot of them have a greater gift of the garb then you. Why even bother with this?”

If dreadful Diabetes had an equivalent for writers, this is it. And I have Type 1. Seriously, on most days why even bother put fingertips on keyboard? Or if you were born in the 40's, the more familiar, put pen to paper.

You must have heard of the famous saying, ‘All idea but no coherence makes Jack’s article too vague’. Sometimes, there are just so many ideas in one’s mind and you’re just bursting out to say so many things at once, that your article starts in one spot, meanders in some random corner and ends up completely away from where you wanted it to go. So much so that putting it out there threatens the perception of your sanity to the world.

Writer’s fatigue. Not sure if this happens to anyone else out there. But if I don’t write an article from start to finish in one sitting or it goes from Day 1 to Day 2, I don’t even feel like writing it anymore. Writing to me is an unabashed expression of one’s feeling in that moment. If the night passes, more often than not, the moment passes. Day 2 should ideally be article 2.

The result of all this is that my wall is littered with post-it notes of ideas that never made it to the web or elsewhere. Their fate hangs on by the strength of the adhesive that sticks paper to wall. Some have made it off the wall onto my computer, hidden somewhere in my file system, awaiting judgement day.

“Will I adorn a blogging site page someday?”, they ask.

“Or die an untimely ‘Delete’ death?”

“Or forever wait in limbo?”

That being said, if I am all what I have written, am I then, a writer? When the next time someone says,

“Nilesh, tell me a little about yourself”,

should I then reply,

“Well, I am a writer!”

‘Recommend all of Nilesh’s articles’ — Mark Twain

Okay, Mark Twain didn’t really say that. But as a writer, I like to know what articles work, and what don’t. So if you liked this article, please press the ‘Recommend’ icon. If you liked it a lot, please follow me to get updates when I publish a new article. Thanks.