Category: Thoughts uncut

Go

You know you don’t belong when you have nothing to say. You know you don’t belong when you have no reason to stay.

Go

I have nothing to say.

People around me talk about what that one person told the other person, who that dark haired girl slapped, who followed her home, and about who’s in whose friend zone.

While I stare at my phone, scrolling through fancy footwear without the slightest intention of buying.

But I have a reason to stay. I’m a part of society that won’t let you live unless you endure. So I endure. Though I censure.

I hear a friend talk about her trip around the world, and my insides burn with a yearning I can’t bear. I am happy for her, yet jealousy creeps through my veins, for me. It’s torture to listen to someone else’s stories when all you want is to go yourself.

That’s when I realised: I don’t belong. And I have no reason to stay.

Except, a poor bank balance.

It’s a vicious circle of self-hatred. Which results in posts like these.

So, It’s June

It took me over a week to note that in writing, but I think June is the best month of the year. I know some bloggers do a month-to-month post about the month itself, but I’m not one of them. I just happen to like June better than any other month.

June

It’s no surprise why: just look out the window. It’s been an awful summer, and it’s so good to plunge into the smooth breeze after the scorching heat. June is the only month when people are happy to leave the house in the morning or ride a bike in the park after sun down. It’s the month in between the mangoes and the monsoons. It’s neither this nor that, but it’s got the best of both seasons.

It feels great to wake every morning without your t-shirt clinging to your perspiring back. Or to not want to sit inside the refrigerator all day. It’s liberating, in a whole new sense, to step out of the house without drenching yourself in an “ice-cool” talcum powder that never works as well as they do in commercials.

What’s better than June weather? It’s cool in the morning, it’s cool in the evening, and it’s cool at night. The sun comes up when he wants to and smiles all day long. And all of a sudden, is something goes amiss, it rains. With no warning at all, just like in life. And then we’re smiling again, and staying up a little late.

Even the sun resonates with us this month. So much so that the sun has his heads in the clouds, while we have ours in the iCloud. Ain’t it wonderful to walk all day with the clouds looking over us?

I like July too, but that’s another month altogether.

You Won’t Be Read, and It’s Ok

Writing for a living is tough. Not everything you write will see the real world, and you have to be ok with it.

Becuase when it comes to writing for someone other than yourself, you have to say what they want to read or need to know.

There’s no darlings in professional writing. You don’t have to like what you write. If it works, it works.

And it’s hard. For someone who wants to write drunk and publish as is. For someone who wants to write just because she wants to write. It’s hard when a personal blogger starts writing for her company’s “business-class audience.” You’ll have to make sacrifices you don’t want to. Talk to people you’d rather avoid. You have to smile as you accept their pin pointing as sense — though, most of the time, it is.

Rework becomes your watch word. Deliberate word choices, phrases, and jargon become your world while a clever pun takes the backseat. Because, remember, remember, your audience isn’t pun(n)y.

An official “content writer,” has no balance. You don’t know where the “need for content” ends and where the love for words begins. It’s constant juggling between contrasting worlds, and it puts you off, it blocks the writer within, and scoffs at the crouching figure at work staring deep into her laptop screen.

But somewhere along the way, you realise it’s ok. Sometimes, someone who knows better will cut off most your content. It takes time to see the big picture, or think for the greater good, but you’ll see it. You’ll see that nothing matters more than seeing your audience satisfied. And, somehow, those sleepless nights of tapping away at the keyboard fades into thin air.

Then it’s yet another day at work.

Let It Go

November 24th 2013. The day I felt most proud of myself. It’s still unmatched.

let it go

That was the day I finished my first draft of my first full-length novel. I had taken on the National Novel Writing Month challenge and succeeded. We went to the beach that day, and I soaked my feet in the salty depths of the ocean, while my heart soared beyond the setting rays of gold.

I had completed the longest writing project I had undertaken. And every one else my age was shuffling about, preparing for the semester exams. Fifty thousand words in less than thirty days — I still look at it as my biggest achievement.

And like every NaNoWriMo participant, I pledged to myself not let go of my work. I promised I would edit my draft, and then edit it some more, until it’s good enough for the eyes of a professional editor. I made a plan, I sketched out how I’d work and planned to get my novel published within a year.

In the days that followed, I tried editing, but I kept dozing off on my laptop. I kept telling myself I deserve some rest. Three years later, I’m still editing my draft. But I rested way too much. Now every time I open up my draft, I stifle a yawn.

I’ve come to a bitter realisation. My novel is boring. If I can’t get through it myself, how’re others supposed to?

So I forced myself to make it more interesting. I tried reworking one sentence in one chapter at a time. But it was hard. I had put it to rest for far too long that I had changed so much from the person I was when I wrote it.

I had been in a writing job, and when I look at my draft now, I can see all the blunders I couldn’t see before. I had grown as a writer and an internal editor, and as the person I am now, I can’t revive that piece I wrote three years ago.

I am now a mature writer, I know the perils of using too many passive sentences, the rules of a semicolon, and the effect of an adverb-stuffed piece of writing. And then I see my own work, and feel dejected. I see all the mistakes I now try to avoid. And when I set out to correct them, I feel like I should rather scrap the whole thing and rewrite it. Even the plot seems too weak for a reader to get through third chapter.

So now, it lays there. Taking up most of the my storage space on Evernote. I don’t think reworking the story would do any good. Perhaps I should just let it be. As a reminder of my dedication. As a testament to my ability to show up everyday and write. It’s one of those things you don’t brag about but swell as you think of it.

So, I’m ready to let it go. I tried publishing it on my blog for National Blog Posting Month. I got a few regular readers, a handful of likes, and a couple of comments. But that’s all. Maybe it’s time to put it to sleep, and try again. I’ll try another NaNoWriMo, another story, another fifty thousand words. And maybe this time, I’ll write it proper and edit it sober.

Let’s Talk Education

Or to be more exact, let’s talk studies and literature.

Some say those two words should never be in the same sentence. And if that’s the case, my whole life is a question mark. Because I study literature. But I don’t have a degree in English literature. I don’t see the point of it.

Too much of conflict in one paragraph?

I’m a literature enthusiast, but I don’t have a paper from a university to certify my interest. I study literature by studying the literature itself. Not the textbooks that other people (who think they have conquered the subject) wrote. Because when it comes to the written word, there’s no one way to understand it. There’s no right or wrong in interpretation.

Our system of education, however, forces students to read, understand, and memorise other people’s ideas. This may seem sensible for science or mathematics. Because those subjects rely on facts, and facts are facts no matter who writes them where.

But literature has more do with individuals. I don’t see the world the same way my mother sees it — even though she showed me the world. When no two people comprehend the same scene in the same way, how sensible is it to thrust one person’s perspective on a larger crowd?

But I love studying literature.

The best think about literature is that the student makes the decision. If you think it’s right, it is. If you think Shakespeare predicted British colonisation in his Tempest, then so be it. You are entitled to your opinion. The literature never tells you what to think. But a degree in literature not only tells you what to think, it also forces you to agree with textbook writers.

And that’s why I see no point in a degree in literature.

Cross-posting from my Medium blog.