Why do I write?
Last night, I sat up thinking for a long time. It had a lot to do with my life so far. Many mistakes, yes, many good things too. With the ticking minutes of the clock, my mind wandered to the one question that I always try to answer: Why do I write?[Very Sartre-ish, unfortunately for him!]
As a kid, I wrote of things that I imagined in my head. Poems, essays, mainly stories with a moral. I believed in justice. I wrote about girls who were careless and messy with their things and had to face punishment. In my mind, it was all valid. That I was messy and careless myself, it never struck me. Until somebody older (and wiser) told me “Cut out the holier-than-thou tone…you are not a saint!”. Jolt One.
I stopped writing stories for a while. I only wrote some nice essays and answers in English class. They won the occasional ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent’, but nothing too fancy. Thanks to my teacher, I was introduced to Keats. Thus began my next passion: poetry. I started to read poems, and attempted writing a few. I showed one of my poems to a friend who promptly remarked, “There is no rhyming in the poem!” Jolt Two.
I began to ‘uncategorize’ the things I wrote, telling people “Oh, it is not a poem or a story. Just a series of words that makes sense. To me.” It was funny to see their raised eyebrows. Not everything has to be ‘classified’, right?
I grew up some more, kept writing about whatever I could fancy. I stopped showing it to anyone, though. Keep away, friend or foe! What I write is just for me! For three and a half years, I kept writing, and not showing. My diaries kept growing fatter (I wanted to get fat at that point, so it was ironical). Until I discovered the art of blogging. I knew I would have to put my writing under public scrutiny, but I was fresh with thoughts like ‘One must be open to criticism’ and ‘There is no harm in trying’. I started blogging. I found out there was a breed of people who liked what I wrote. It was nice to know. Until one of my blogger friends remarked, “You don’t seem to do anything apart from reading and writing. I thought doing the same things makes people get better at them. Why is your writing still so bland?” Jolt Three.
Needless to say, I stopped writing for some more time. I tried to discover other things, like painting and singing. I realized I wanted to ‘write’ about those experiences, ultimately. How boring! And so it was, back to Square One.
Jolts one, two and three.
Some people never learn, do they?
(This post was published earlier on one of my blogs, at www.questforidentity.wordpress.com)
