Why I (don't) Write

In college, during the first-year ragging rituals at the start of the academic year, it was common for seniors to ask you to showcase any talents you had. The default option would be to make you sing because, as one particular senior put it, “गाना और रोना तो सबको आता है” (everyone knows how to sing and how to cry) ¹

After many rounds of singing, re-enacting scenes from movies and other such activities, I got to know seniors with interests that matched mine. I found people who also enjoyed interesting music, books or movies. A discussion on reading would sometimes lead to writing.

While I had written essays in school, I had never written to tell a story, explain a complicated idea, argue a point, or even just for fun. Later, I started journalling to note down things I was thinking. In fact, calling what I did journalling would be overselling it. It began as a blog on Blogger with all of my bad poems, ones I did not want anyone to read because I knew they were crap. So the blog was set to be private, and I would dump these poems and some stray, unconnected notes (aptly titled something cringy like ‘Random Thoughts #5’, painstakingly collated from old notebooks that I later discarded)

Through those years, writing never seemed to be an essential communication tool to me. Still, it was an excellent side-kick accompanying the main act: conversations. I would sometimes write to my then girlfriend and a few friends. However, with time, writing was restricted only to the private blog mentioned before, but the nature of the notes evolved.

(Meta note: Right around this point, I realised you might feel like you’re reading a long, rambling narration of my tryst with writing, so here’s a 🍪)

So yeah, my notes evolved to be more like rants initially. I would use them to vent, detach, feel and maybe reflect. However, I think even now, I have not really understood how self-reflection via writing actually works.

Through the years, as my notes evolved, I tried to be more reflective in my notes, focusing on the why and how rather than just the what. I started with the mundane things, like writing about the day’s events. Then, added a layer where I wrote about why I felt a certain way. Sometimes, I would talk about what I could have done when something did not go as planned. Maybe also note the good parts, the lovely bits and memories of the day. I thought I had nailed down writing as a means of self-reflection, but I soon realised that there is a problem with this approach - there is no feedback mechanism.

There are two possible solutions: first, get the journal reviewed in some form - maybe by discussing the entries with a friend or just revisiting old entries occasionally. But here, the writing and the discussion are still private.

The second solution is to reflect publicly - picking out patterns from the entries, finding patterns and writing about them, like thinking with the garage door open²or thinking out loud.

But even after this process, I have realised that self-reflection is not working out for me as I wanted. What I had in mind was that self-reflection via writing would act as a safety net and catch me as I fell into, you know, life things. But maybe this is expecting too much from writing or even from self-reflection. In any case, does writing this even make you a writer? (Of course, technically, yes, but does it really?)

I think the rite of passage to calling yourself a writer is to not just have a body of work of published books, articles, essays or these days, even a newsletter or a humble blog; it must include a post on writing. Noobs seek advice, and legends? Legends dole out advice - bonus points if unsolicited, increasing with every unpublished draft.

Just like that bit on singing and crying, while writing advice requires some experience with the craft, a low-hanging fruit could be writing about the ‘why’.

In an interview, Amitava Kumar talks about how he felt the urge to find a way to describe or narrate a picture of a scene that seemed interesting.

So he was taken to a restaurant, and I was taken with him, and when I looked at the ceiling, there were these shiny bangles pieces of bangles embedded in it and [I] very clearly remember thinking about this and I also very clearly remember the shot of envy and admiration I felt when just a little while later in the school magazine some boy had already described it … for me, it was more about finding a language that was adequate to the surroundings

(From Ep. 265 of The Seen and The Unseen Podcast)

Amitava also talks about George Orwell’s essay in which Orwell writes that there was a voice running in his head always providing a narrative.

Whenever I have read something that made me sit up and pause and appreciate the emotion or the imagery, I have cherished that moment.

That magical transfer of a new thought or perspective from the author to you via words could bring the world around you to a standstill for that one-thousandth of a second (or years). That moment - it makes me feel, if not divine, human.

But then, writing is hard. Or as Hemingway notes: ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’

There is this friction before letting out that thought in the wild, releasing it onto the paper (or, realistically, the keyboard). It is easier to push that urge away - that one clip on YouTube or podcast episode, returning that phone call or whatever else the mind thinks of before sitting down to write.

And then someday, you have a great conversation with a friend after a long time or listen to a beautiful story that reminds you of something. Or maybe you read that lovely line in that book you had wanted to read for so long and just got to recently, and then, that friction is overcome. You then get to that itch you can’t scratch.³

From Manto’s Why I Write:

The most important reason is that I’m addicted to writing, just as I am to drinking. When I don’t write, it feels like I’m unclothed, like I haven’t had a bath.

(Saadat Hasan Manto in Why I Write - translated by Aakaar Patel)

The pull was never this strong for me, but I always felt that no matter how I felt before writing things out, I always felt better at the end of those few paragraphs. It just so happens that I don’t find myself at the start of these paragraphs too often. The friction is too high. That thought I was about to flesh out in text gets lost somewhere in transition, which is why only the stickiest of thoughts, those that brought back some intense memories, which meant a lot in that moment or something I found very funny or interesting, only those make the cut. The rest get dissolved never to nucleate again, until the right time.

Footnotes