I realise I haven’t written on the blog for a good two months. Time really slips by so very fast.
The saving grace, though, is that I have been reading and writing and creating on my other blog and on Instagram, so that counts for something. Creating reels has been fun, but it has brought home the fact, with even more clarity, that writing will always be my happy thing.
It all began when I decided to submit a story for an upcoming anthology. While I have been writing for a while, knitting together a coherent piece of fiction was a whole new game. But life is about trying new things, right?
No matter how old I get, trying something new is always frightening, yet exhilarating in a strange way.
Being an avid reader makes it tougher being a writer because once you’ve read world-class fiction, you know that you can never hope to get that good. And then you begin to think where was the point in doing anything when you’re not going to be good at it. And that, dear friends, is the worst kind of rabbit hole to go down.
If there’s anything I’ve learnt it’s this: the hardest thing to do is to put yourself, or your work, out there for public consumption knowing that you aren’t the best, knowing that you may not even be good and yet to do it anyway, because that’s the only way you can get better.
I needed to step out of my blog, which has been my safe space for ever so long.
This blog has been an honest account of my life, a memoir of sorts. However, writing fiction made me realise how much of myself I have been unconsciously censoring; curating some bits for the blog, keeping others safely tucked away.
Ironically, it is fiction that brings out those real bits. Which is why there’s a strange kind of vulnerability in it. Even though you’re creating made-up characters, they tend to reveal so much about your real self, your thoughts, your aspirations, your failures too.
And that is uncomfortable, at the very least.
I have always respected authors who can write entire books. Which is why I have never found it in my heart to make fun of Chetan Bhagat or the scores of others who have followed in his footsteps. (Not doing something well is fine, not caring that you aren’t doing it well, that’s what I continue to have a problem with).
There’s something humbling about returning to the beginner’s path. No matter how many years you’ve written blogposts or essays or book reviews, no matter how many bylines in newspapers you have, fiction demands a different kind of discipline.
This in no way means that I’m writing a book or anything as wonderful – these are just musings on why I find it hard to put down a 3000-word story. And that I’m trying, anyway.
Have you ever felt those butterflies of putting yourself out there? That time you first moved out of your journal onto a blog? Or the first story you ever wrote? Or the first one you sent out to a publication? Even the first time you spoke out an idea in a group.
Share?