Category: Thoughts uncut

The undeniable cycle of writing

I’m a marketer. Even though I have no formal degree in marketing, over the last six years, my work experience has taught me many things. One of those, which is also regarded as the most important, is knowing your audience.

I write marketing copy for the web. And that means I need to know my audience. I need to identify who exactly I’m talking to and speak to them in their language. My tone, choice of words, and even the length of my sentences depend on the capacity of my audience. Absolute precision in words and messaging is necessary. No compromises. Every piece I write begins with an audience analysis.

But then, I also write poetry. And poetry doesn’t have an audience.

Curious contrast, eh?

I attended at a poetry festival recently, and while discussing about who they write for and why, a group of panelists unanimously agreed that they write for themselves. At least at first. And that’s the underlying truth for all forms of art. No one starts creating art because they have an audience waiting for it They start because they can’t keep it in themselves any longer. 

I write short stories, poems, and random ramblings (like this one) because I have to get them out somehow. Creative writing is an outlet, a necessary drain to flush down the overflowing ideas and thoughts that’d otherwise clog my brain and leave me a walking pile of stink.

Therefore when I write, I write for myself. I write to make myself feel better, to clear my chest, and to put my mind at ease. And through that inane need to pop the bulging bubble in my head, I end up creating an audience that relates to whatever I put on paper.

Still, even though I write these poems and stories to satisfy my own needs, they also need a platform. Sometimes I’m happy to tuck my work away from the rest of the world, but more often than not, I want to share my work with others, to thrill them just as my favourite writers thrill me.

As long as I only want to write stuff and don’t care if anyone reads them at all, I don’t have to worry about marketing. But the moment I let my ambition get the better of me, the moment I crave acknowledgement and recognition even, I need to start thinking about audience and how to say what I want to say in a way that makes them want my work. Therefore comes marketing.

My point: Marketing is everywhere. And we all have to market ourselves at some point. Can’t say I like the idea, but can’t deny it either.

Adjusting to a new place

People often exaggerate when talking about the difficulties of migrating to a new country. 

Of course, you don’t have any friends, and it’s painful to understand not only the ways of life, but also the regulations, policies, and many common practices that you’ve never even heard of before.

It’s been seven months since I moved to Australia, and I still have trouble understanding what the various organisations I often come across do. I can’t figure out the confusing superannuation (the employee retirement scheme), the expensive tax deductions, fluctuating supermarket prices, or the various insurances including health, dental, and ambulance. You can even get insurance exclusively to cover the cost of transporting you from home to the hospital in an ambulance. Holy sphinx, huh?

Yes—moving to a new place comes with the burden of understanding its culture and lifestyle. And it can take much longer than you anticipate.

However, aside from these significant issues that gnaw at your brain now and then, everyday life is pretty easy to adopt. For instance, I live on a day-by-day basis—I wake up, work, cook, eat, shop, walk, and sleep. That’s my standard day, with moderate modifications like meeting a friend, attending an event, or just wandering the parks because it’s a beautiful day. That’s how I’ve been living and haven’t had much difficulty adjusting to life in Australia.

It didn’t take long for everything around me to seem natural, and there’re only a few surprises that stun or destabilise me. I was in the bus a couple of days ago, and as the vehicle turned left in an intersection, I suddenly noticed how broad the streets are, compared to where I grew up. Then it hit me—I’m now so accustomed to these streets, the style of shops, and people’s mannerisms, that they’re no longer shocking as they were in my first week. At that moment, in the bus, I couldn’t believe I was living in Australia. It felt like a dream. And yet I’d lived through all these months comfortably adjusting and fitting into this lifestyle. 

It doesn’t take long for a new person to incorporate themselves into a society. We think it does because not everyone feels at home in a new place. And that’s a whole other thing.

I swear

Until March of this year, my vocabulary had limited swear words, uttered sparingly and with extreme caution. Using the F word in any gathering that’s not your bosom buddies was a thing to frown upon, and you might even get a talking to from strangers and colleagues alike. It’s not uncommon for people to mutter it under their breath, but it was certainly unsuitable to say out loud.

Seven months on, and I now live in Australia. Though my swear vocabulary is still rather limited, I hear them in conversations around me countless times a day, in varying pitches. For instance, my non-Australian housemate, who’s lived here for four years, walked into the kitchen one morning.  I was peeling papaya. He hey-ed at me, and I, him. He then opened the fridge and went, “Oh, fuck.”

That’s how we roll here. Most words deemed uncivilised and unfit, even for domestic use are casual and overused in Australia.

You hear these words in places and in situations that have no reason to have them. The reason my housemate said what he said when he looked into the fridge that morning is because there was some food leftover that he’d forgotten about. It was still good enough to eat, though. Besides, it’s not as if he worried about wasting either. Regardless, that situation warranted swearing.

My point is, swear words are so common that they’ve melded into everyday colloquialism. I knew it even before I got here, though. Refer to any website offering travel advice, and you’ll always have a note about says how heavy swearers Australians are.

It’s not just the F word. The  C word gets around quite a lot, too. Chances are, you can’t and won’t have a regular conversation with any (or most) Australians without hearing the swear words a fair few times.

I’ve been here a while now, and it doesn’t bother me as much. I’ve come to realise that in Australian speech, these—and the many other swear words I don’t recall—are meant as emphasis words. Like literally in place of figuratively. Like actually, honestly, really, very, and all other adverbs that all writing guides cast away as unnecessary.

It doesn’t bother me since I’ve been here a while now. But I can imagine how gutting it would be for someone new—like my mother, for instance. Once, ages ago, burnt out after work, I swore in front of my mother. Recalling that incident, she asked me a couple of days ago if I’ve stopped swearing now that I’m no longer under the same stress.

“Of course, ma. I don’t swear at all nowadays.”

Well, at least that puts her mind at ease.

Is it real?

Reflection of trees on a puddle of water - Markus Spiske on Unsplash

I write quite a lot of non-fiction. Stuff that’s based on people I meet, places I visit, personal experiences and opinions, and such. So often, I also use my own life incidents to fuel my fiction pieces. 

After all, it’s easy to write a story calling upon your own emotions. There’s even a word for it in literature: ethos. 

Not only do such pieces flow easily, but they’re also genuine and factual. They need minimal research—just a Wikipedia entry to cross-verify dates or an opinion blog to confirm that you’re indeed talking about what you think you’re talking about.

Except, there’s a problem with using too much ethos. 

It’s a strange thought, but it hit me when I was in the bus one day. I found myself thinking about a topic to write about and realised I’ve written about almost everything that I ever thought mattered in my life. About moving to Australia, being an insecure teenager, exams and stress, growing up in India, and even about my absolute disregard for the useless education system I had the misfortune to follow.

I’ve written about my family’s challenges as well—about all the stories I grew up listening to when my mother didn’t know how else shut me up.

Now, it’s as if extracted so much from myself and incorporated into my writing that I’m short of life experiences to write about. It’s ironic too, because I still have a lot of time (hopefully!) to accumulate memories, thoughts, and opinions. There’s still so much of the world that I haven’t seen, and I want to. There’s so much left for me to do, and yet I can’t write about any of those until after I’ve done them all.

That’s the problem with using reality as a reference. You can also run out of reality.

Good challenge for imagination, though.

Image credit: Markus Spike on Unsplash.

Groups matter

One of the first things I did when I moved to Canberra was joining a writing group. I’d been writing for almost ten years, and I’d never had a peer group to read my work aloud to and hear feedback from. I didn’t even think I needed a support group until I had one.

Not only did they coerce me to share some of my work, but they were also accommodating and friendly in their suggestions. For the first time, I felt as if people read my work, not just to tell me they’ve read it, but to actually help me improve it.

It felt amazing. We bonded, sent over our short stories and poems to see what others thought of them, and even met up outside our allocated meeting times to write together.

Within myself, triumph blossomed. From being the written counterpart of a bathroom singer, I went on to become a voice they thought was worthy of their time.

Not long after I joined the group, we all went on a retreat. Thirteen in all, to an ancient manor set in the heart of small Victorian town Goulburn. It was a two-day getaway in the dead of winter. Beautiful Goulburn is perched a little north of Canberra and a little more south of Sydney.

Victorian mansion in Goulburn

With my minimalist backpack and a well-equipped laptop in my friend’s car, we drove up to this strange town I’d never heard of, to spend the weekend in a stranger’s house with a few people who were strangers until a couple of months ago.

I couldn’t have been more excited. I was looking forward for two days of writing, sharing, and revising. 

What I didn’t anticipate, however, was that a roaring fireplace, wine and whiskey, and impeccable homemade food on a Friday night don’t always add up to a night of relentless writing. The frost hugging our windows didn’t help much either. 

None of us wrote anything that night.

We drank and talked. Someone told about his experiences with ghosts. Many of us laughed. 

Except—unlike drunk college students, waking up with guilt stretching over their faces, the next day we woke up full of fervour for the art of writing—and a little light headed, of course. 

We spent the day in silent rumination, writing. Some continued perfecting works-in-progress, while some others picked their brains, chipping away at creating new ones.

That night, we shared, laughed, drank, and danced again. As the weekend wound, and the sun shone on our faces on Sunday morning, we packed up our recyclable bottles and editable writing and drove back home to Canberra.

Looking back now—a month away from our next retreat—I realise that weekend wasn’t about drinking. It wasn’t about escaping from family and responsibilities. It wasn’t even all about writing. 

That retreat was about presence. It was about sharing our personal selves with others like us, telling family stories, ranting, and reassuring each other. It was about sitting by someone as they struggled to get words onto their screen, silently motivating, never judging, and being there when they needed to talk to about the best way to end a murder mystery.

Everyone needs a group like that they can run away with.