Writing

We're halfway through April of 2020 and these last few months have been a long unboxing video of Pandora's box. While there's much to talk and distress over together, my friend, I'd like to give this space a better start. 

Not out of ignorance, but out of hope...that we remember the better things in life, and we continue to live and explore and love. 

This auspicious first post is the digital equivalent of a very low-budget ribbon cutting ceremony of my writing days. And keeping with the spirit, the only thing that deserves to be held up to inspection and have passed judgement on it, is the very act of writing itself.

Quite meta, isn't it? That I'm writing about writing.

Of course, the reason I needed to clarify what was meta in the above lines, points to the fact that I still don't know very well how the concept works in writing. Maybe I should've used a better word, something I'd feel more confident and familiar with. 

You see how that starts? With a single word. A conflict for a choice of a better word evolves into the desire for better sentences and develops into lust for a writing so epic, so phenomenal, that it breaks the internet.

The only problem is how it never happens with your first post (no matter how auspicious) or your first draft (no matter how epic your premise), or even later posts and drafts. 

A bigger problem is how many of us take that as a sure shot STOP sign and close the writing tabs, put down our pens, and go back to the background mental curdling that we have grown so used to.

Let's not be those parents that have prototypes for kids whom they crush under the weight of endless and unrealistic expectations. Let's take a break away from perfection when it comes to our littlest of efforts, our hesitant attempts at doing something for the first time. 

(Yes, a break THAT long from writing pretty much resets your score to zero, and you need to start again, maybe not from square one, but somewhere lower on the learning curve.) 

I speak this from the knowledge that some of my friends, who carry the most sensitive and profound ideas in their heads, who struggle against the overwhelming nature of some of these thoughts, who find themselves sinking into this terrible mental curdling, need this release desperately. I'd rather they pick up a pen and have some things spill over and out of their minds onto paper. 

But they go back to thinking of better words, better times, better moods to come back to their blank pages. 

A better word is any word you would choose automatically in your stream of thoughts (you can always come back and edit it later, remember?). A better time is now and a better mood is whatever you fancy listening to in the background. I hope you would wield the power of good music as a weapon against those unsuspecting blues that always lurk in the corner.

You write for yourself. You are your first and perhaps, the most important audience. Your words are your tools to comb through your head, and understand what's going on there. If done honestly and often enough, it borders on introspection and healing which we all need in these trying times.

The more you write, the more you discover what style/language speaks to you the most. And then we gradually build upon that, this one and more such discoveries.

What is important that you begin. With that one new word, one broken sentence, one distracted mood. 

I begin today (again!). Better late than never.