A Love Letter to Writing

Why I write

Ambitious of me to use this title after Orwell and Joan Didion. What could I even have to add after all the greats wrote about their reasons? As I complete eight years of writing on this blog this month (which I always forget because I somehow remember August as blog birthday month), I've decided to look deeper at my why. Writing has come so naturally to me, an extension of me, that I never examined why. I thought of it briefly, knew that it helps me make sense of my life and moved on. Sometimes a trickle, sometimes a gushing flow - the words have never stopped. The subject of this volumninous blog? My life: the only subject I am an expert at. So, central question today - why do I write?

My earliest memory of writing is of when I was a kid. I had a deep green second hand dairy with a lot of ruled blank pages. There in a kid's horrible big-sized loopy cursive I remember complaining how angry I was with my family and some other details. I tried to maintain full privacy too. The words were encrypted in symbols which... I eventually lost the key to. Moreover, when even I did have the 'legend' key (idea courtesy: India map lessons of class 5), I was constantly scared somebody would find it. That's when I started writing without keys on some days. Must appreciate a kid's confidence in remembering awkward distinct symbols. Writing was my secret. It was a place to be angry, sad, anxious, ashamed and jealous with no repercussions. It was a place where no lessons on the rightness of emotions followed me. I could be who I was and express it unabashedly.

I've since then moved on to ugly diaries with locks and then beautiful ones without, in addition to this blog. I'd like to think this is a reflection of opening up as a person, but maybe it's more about becoming comfortable in my own self. They are filled with things I want to remember, things with such urgency that they could not spend another second inside of me. As must be obvious to someone who reads this blog, I suffer from a thousand thoughts shooting through my head every instant and the ones that stick are the ones I rather didn't. So, I wrote to peel them off, to discover beneath the One Overwheling Agenda the millions of intricate micro-reasons to things. Looking at it objectively, it's strange how writing has always pushed me to be honest with myself. As I write, I reflect. Every time I write 'Because..' or 'That's why..' I ask myself yes, really why? I've sobbed and wet the pages, I've angrily stabbed words and ended sentences in hearts and flowers but always, forever with all honesty.

There is no doubt that writing is my crutch and has had a profound impact on who I am today. It has made me slow down, like meditating. Knowing yourself involves a bit of detective work. You have to find clues and join the dots. Writing allows for patient contemplation in solitude, you can only write seriously by spending time with yourself. With that act, the unncessary flows away and patterns become clear like constellations. I can't magically solve problems now but I have had practice getting to the root of things. I know (better than before) when to take responsibility and when to ask for help. 

Writing is like coming home. It's always been there to comfort me.  It was enough to exhale and vent on paper, not needing a reaction. My support and consolation. It's my hug to myself, my ear when I felt I wasn't heard and the soft shoulder that offered no criticism. Thinking of the time I was obsessed with the actor Siddharth or grieving dad or having major fights or crying endlessly or even feeling too much love that I didn't know what to do with. Where else was all of that to go? Penning down things allows the mind to catch up with what you're feeling. Emotions are instinctual and this is using my consciousness to process them. 

Sometimes asking with words what you want from yourself can give you what you need. If I wrote 'I can, I can, I can..' enough times, those words would fire me up and create vigor. When I confessed to myself that no, I really could not go on, they've given me the permission to rest. These words have been my confessionals, but also my history. They exist as evidence to my stupidities and idiosyncrasies. Witnesses to my humanity. It's only by writing again and again did I know that my life was allowed to be small and insignificant in the grander scheme of things yet also special and happy. I knew it everytime I wrote how my loved ones made me happy or the sky did. Those pages I've filled serve as a reminder to me that problems and worries don't stop. Hence, I can be calmer (of course relatively speaking) when the next wave rocks my boat. That's what living is. 

The borders of a page are open roads for me. I might have been struggling with the right thing to do or nursing a hurt with no recourse and all I needed to do was take my pen out on a drive until my mind felt utterly spent and exhausted. There is freedom in trying out the kind of person you want to be in those sheets before you actually be them. This blog and my diaries are things I possessively call my own.

I'm also going to argue about how in this process, I've understood the world better too. In understanding my motivations, I've been able to imagine where other people were coming from. I think we see the world and subsconsciously form our own impressions of it - writing just makes it known to you.

My life is colourful inside, maybe really only inside, but words have let me vividly express that. Here, I am engaging and free, without having to impress an audience. My black and white text dance and bring the world to life as it exists in my brain. Tell me, what could be more wonderful than that?

What I Want From My Writing

First, a confession. I've used writing as a shield too. I've fallen back on it when I was not brave enough to own up to real life. I want to slowly transition into being as honest in real life too. It's a journey but I figure have to start somewhere. I have been hoping to use writing to make myself known but perhaps that doesn't work everywhere. It isn't meant to.

I find myself living life in a writer's voice in some situations. In a bid to describe a moment accurately and to remember it as it is, I go through it passively. I've therefore been working on adding living-more-experiences to this list. Who knows? I'll entertain myself even more and write wider.    

For the longest time, I didn't know that writing was a gift. An odd compliment from a teacher there, a friend here. It was finally at work that I accepted that this is something I could work with. So, my second wish is to develop this skill more intentionally. I mean not work on it only because it's a gift but also because I enjoy it. This is a thin line because I want to promise myself I still do this for fun and for myself and working on anything takes away a little bit of that. I don't know how to figure this one out. Using it more for varied things could be it! I did have a lot of fun doing the 2-3 comics  I've put on here + the occasasional Substack.

I've been listening to my words talk back to me for some time now and they want me to reduce the frequency of self-doubt in my voice, so adding one for them. I thought being more careful about spelling and grammar checks would be on this list, but that is too boring and I'm not there yet. Cancel, cancel.

Mostly though, my wish for myself is to be able to call myself a writer: without shame, irony and the immediate impulse to take it back. I'm nowhere near the kind of lovely writing I love, not even brimming with Great Ideas that make for essays you can't take your eyes away from. I merely write because that's how I live but as a reward for giving eight years to a project: how does calling myself a writer feel?