Writing! There was a time when it was my least favorite thing to do. But now writing is what determines who I really am. I cannot spend a day without writing. Personally, I think writing comes from feeling. No matter how good or how bad you are at it but if you can observe, analyse and feel what’s going on around you; then you are definitely a good writer. At first I was pretty scared about sharing what I write and letting people see what I was really feeling. Then my buddies told me, “It’s never too late to follow your dreams. If you want to be a writer, then go for it”. So, that’s what I have been doing since then. You’ve got to find what you love… the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle for anything less. My passion for writing has followed me throughout decades and across oceans – it is there when I wake up, lingering at the edges of my consciousness during the day, and teases me at night as I go to sleep. Writing is as important to me as breathing. I love the pure escapism of fiction writing. You can make any story that you dream of come to life. The magic of Harry Potter, the quirkiness of the Hobbits, and any fantastical alien world can become as real as having to pay your taxes. When you write, your character can be as good, as bad, as smart, or as in love as you want. You can pen yourself as a lion tamer, an international super spy or the iron-fisted ruler of some mythical land where the two moons that hang within the sepulchral skies dance like warriors with weapons drawn. When you write, you make the story what you want it to be.
But writing can also be about catharsis – dealing with difficult things and hopefully putting them behind you. If not forgetting them, writing can help you explore your emotions and help you to understand them, to understand why you have experienced a particularly difficult thing. Writing has helped me to understand many things that I simply couldn’t get my head around. Problems that had gone around and around in my head, driving me crazy for weeks or months, were eventually understood after writing it all down and muddling through it on paper.
Writing can also help you to change your own ending as a way of dealing with your troubles. The story of a love turned sour may be reversed when you write it – you left your lover, not the other way around; the bully becomes contrite; the cancer was beaten; the paraplegic can still run around with their children. When you write, you can become the master of your own destiny, at least on the page.
Writing can also be about bringing confronting topics to light, bringing them into focus and starting a community conversation about it.
While there are so many wonderful things about writing, the best thing for me is that it is always there. Through teen tribulations, illness, abuse, divorce, love, loathing, joy, life or death, writing will always be there for you. Just like a marriage where divorce is not possible – through good times and through bad, through happiness and sadness, in sickness and in health, writing will always be there for you. Whether you write every single day, once a month, once a year, or only when you have a problem you need to internalise and work through, writing can be anything that you want it to be.
So sit down, grab your notepad or your laptop and start writing now!
sweta25 