The non-writing non-writer

My quest to write and the failure to do so.

Who am I kidding- I don't write because I can't.

That is what came to my mind when my thoughtful wife forwarded me this quote: “All non-writing writers are monsters courting insanity”. She had captioned it ‘in all sincerity’ -which i knew. I thought I am just a boasting minnow who likes to talk big with people because he has read a few more books than them. Because he pretends this in cheesy one liners on social media which anyway people think have been edited versions of Google-ed shit.

It all began when my wife or probably me or may be both blabbered during a small house party that I wanted to be a writer-my wife for sure told it with all earnest unlike me, as I was pretty drunk.

This had been going on for sometime. I would get drunk, tell her that I always wanted to write.

And I really did. But it felt like I never got time and then life took over .

I would make a start and end up writing convoluted pieces of poetry. On other instances what I wrote was so little and so bad that I would make myself forget that I even tried. Then someday in pensive mood I would again fancy myself writing something like Maugham or Chekhov having forgotten or made myself into believing that I never got the right opportunity to test the artist in me. May be I could really write good and that I had never really tried hard enough.

I had played this game for a long time now, it was pretty convenient. I never lost the respect for myself and just the thought of aspiring to be a writer made me inflate in some kind of joy about my existence. It felt glamorous and self satiating and I never had to work hard -this I had declared as the guiding ideology for living a happy life. To make people think that we should always have fun no matter what. We should enjoy everything .Never take anything too seriously. I don't know when it transformed into never having to work hard.

So that's all I did. Being a critic to everything mainstream which for me was everything I already knew, before the other person mentioned it.

This I did with the knowledge that they had been made aware that I was good at intellectual crap as I wanted to be a writer. It served me well. Until I was asked in the aforementioned party what I had written.If I could show them something inspiring that I had written. Probably seeing through my already weak story-line of being an aspiring writer.

I was a non-writing non-writer. I could not write one decent piece. I had never.

So I thought The only way to know is by trying . In any case it would not hurt. It would only make my case stronger or I would be able to get the notion of churning out fine print of prose and poetry out of my head and get done with it.

One thing nobody can take away from me is that I think I did have that in me. And that it was lost somewhere when I stopped trying thinking that I was not prepared.

I think I could have been one hell of a story teller if not for my lack of willpower .This I won't forget till the end of my days. So I set out writing this as an attempt. As I splash into these waters I hear no applause . I never expected one .Probably that is what happens. You just have to make that plunge and things will pan out.

Never forget, don't take anything too seriously but never shirk away from working hard-- if at first you do not succeed.