Write & The World Writes With You

                I flinch when people ask me about my writing. Mostly because of the strange notions they have about  what goes into making that little softbound copy of Jeffery Archer’s latest that’s lying on their table. Having only read the success stories of Dan Brown or Stephanie Meyer, everyone’s always expecting you to pop out the next bestseller. So where do they get these ideas from? It’s because it’s so darned simple to write.

                Now before all my fellow writers start booing me, hear me out. I said it’s easy to write. Creating characters with depth, a plausible story line, pages that force the reader to turn them, reaching that word limit that seems either too large or too small, all of that might just kill you.

I find a lot of similarities between writing and having children. Just because you can reproduce doesn’t mean you have parenting skills, and similarly, because you can churn a few pages on your computer doesn’t make you writer. But because people think that anyone who wants can write, they expect too much of an aspiring writer. They expect to see your name in the NY bestsellers list when you’re still tackling the problem of that one loophole in your story through which your entire plot dissolves.

So What Are Writers Like?

                In my experience, writers, real writers are easy to distinguish by their attitude towards writing. I was talking to some friends yesterday and one complained about how she was ready to shred her manuscript and feed it to her shitzu. At this, my second friend began to talk about how writing was the most relaxing thing she knew. She loved every story she wrote about her breathtaking protagonists, and the rainbow that shot through the words and hung over her bed as she dreamt about bunnies sprinkled in pixie dust. There’s nothing wrong with feeling happy about writing, I just think there’s a difference between the kind of happiness you get.

"A work of art is the unique
result of a unique temperament."
-Oscar Wilde

                Real writers seem to have more intense feelings towards their work. I know that in a few months, my friend’s going to pull out her work from under her bed or out of the trashcan and start working on it again like a bad relationship that just too precious to lose. (I say “bad” because in this writer’s humble opinion, if you’ve been visited by Erato or Calliope you’re in for some sleepless nights). Back to my child rearing example, you never go to your children to unwind. If anything, children represent nothing more than worries, messes to clean up, and awkward sex talks. But the point is that the reason you put up with all that is because there’s something deeper than just liking your children that motivates you and it’s same with your work.

                It’s almost an elemental need that forcing yours fingers to pen down those last few words before you fall flat on your writing desk snoring while the rest of world is just waking up to the sunrise.

Two Sides

There are those who indulge in the arts, who view it from their balcony seats and feel infused with beauty, truth, and what not. And then there are those, who view it from behind the curtains. Who see the dirt, who cover their cuts with grimy band aids and keep the show going, and they discover a rather different form of beauty.

                It’s the beauty that comes when you decide to abandon that blasted book that has given you nothing but pain, only to realize that the one thing worse than writing it and that is not writing it. And that is what makes a real writer.