What To Write When You Don’t Know What To Write

Tailor-made fiction or writing what you know? That’s one debate I had been having with myself for last ten months.

And I’m sorry to say but there is still no consensus view on which my mind agrees.

Maybe the critic in me is just a dick with very high standards, you never know. I write well when I don’t think, the moment I think I become too critical to write.

I Know, I know, it sounds strange.

Now from what I’ve read, it seems like I might have been wrong. Analysis by paralysis is just too common.

The Oldest Writing Advice

I have a rather complicated relationship with writing.

I know it sounds strange. What kind of idiot says he has a relationship with writing, Right?

Maybe some other day. One day, when I would have exhausted all that I could and finally become filthy rich, I might write a little memoir about writing.

But let’s write a little synopsis right now, shall we?

Why?

We are born and we die. There isn’t any Voodoo shit about that. On the grand scale of time, our existence isn’t even a blip.

And yet we exist. 

Why?

My Ritual Before I Start Writing

I always have to give myself a pep talk before I start writing. Every time. 

Every God damn time.

So, you’re wondering what’s the pep talk, right? Well, here it is.

It’s OK to write the way you are writing. After all, you are writing for yourself.

It seems to be the holy grail of pep talk aimed at writers, right?

Writers write for themselves.

But come on, let’s not lie. What fun would it be to craft stories if no one read them?

Today, I was reading Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian.

Side note, give it a read. You’ll thank me later.

The point of referencing the book is this, in the story, the narrator is a fourteen-year-old boy, and that’s why this book is brilliant. The writing style was true to its narrator, not the writer. I know, I know, it sounds confusing, but hear me out.

What’s the first advice any creative writing teachers gives? Show. Don’t tell. Right?

Now, tell me this, when you were fourteen, and you used to write, did you use to write elegant description of trees, roads, houses?

If you replied yes, then stop, don’t read any further. This post isn’t for you. Sorry.

But if you said no, well, I made my point.

A straight dive into the chaos. Once again.

Sherman actually wrote from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old. Man, that’s some crazy shit.

If you ever read the entire bibliography of an author, you’ll see there worrying style evolves with time.

It’s natural. Change is the only constant. Like death’s the only absolute truth.

The point being, we, as budding writers, are so fixated over some textbook definition of creative writing. We are so worried that we miss the whole point of writing. To live life twice. Once with our senses, and again with our words.

Do you really need me to spell it out for you?

Ah, idiot.

Write whatever comes natural to you. The rest is for the editors.

via Daily Prompt: Finally

Shit Happens

It’s the time of year when we forget about the bad and hope for the good in the upcoming year. Isn’t that why we make New Year resolutions?

Hmm, how about I do that too?

See, before I started writing this post, I’d decided I’ll write about my new year resolutions. I am not joking.

But, as usual, shit happens.

Well, in my case, Metallica and The Cranberries happened.

The Price You Pay Everytime You Listen To A Horrible Tale

One quality I pride myself on is I’m a good listener. At least I believe myself to be.

Strangely, people love to talk. I don’t know why I always struggle but everyone wants their story to be heard. So, for me, it’s favorable. People love to talk and I love to listen.

The art of effective speaking isn’t in what you say but what you don’t.

It seems all happy and cute, right?

After all, cute is the cutest word available in the dictionary. A little side note, there isn’t any other word in the English dictionary I despise more than cute. I hate when people say cute.

Let’s come back to the matter at hand, did you know listening comes at a price? Did you know you have to pay a part of you everytime you listen to someone’s sad little tale?

You feel bad for the teller, and then it numbs. After all, you’ve heard countless stories like that. 

At least I have.

You think, “Hey! I’ve heard worse than that, hell, I’ve experienced worse than that. I’m not whining like you.”

But you can’t say any of that. Because if you do, you’ll feel horrible. So, you listen some more. You try to understand. And then you sympathize, even if you don’t want to.

It takes a while, but that is the price you pay for being a listener. There is a reason why people are horrible listener.

But there are stories which are downright degrading to humanity. Stories in which you wish to kill the inflictor, or the villian of the story. Every story has one, don’t give me the look.

You hear a painful story and it starts to eat you alive. You reason that you shouldn’t feel like that. After all, the person who just told you their life story had it worse. 

You just listened to it. Right?

But you start losing your mind. It seems strange, doesn’t it? Somehow listening instigates pain? That it fuels agony?

I know seven stories. I know they don’t sound much. But I live within me the agony of seven horrible tales. Seven occasion when I wished to rip apart my heart because I couldn’t bear the suffocation anymore.

But guess what, it took a while and I listened to every single one of them. I tried my best to understand. 

Maybe I failed, maybe I didn’t. But every single one of the tellers became a good friend, so I guess I wasn’t horrible. In me, they found an outlet.

And that’s all I could have asked for.

In each of us lies the basic need to influence the world around us. Maybe my ability to listen isn’t anything more than that. A need to influence.

Our philosophies evolve. They change according to the need of the hour.

There is so much to being a good listener, other than the fact that you’re a horrible at sharing your own burden.

Either way, that’s the cost of being a listener. Good or bad, I don’t know, you decide.

I Suffer From SMEFE

The moment I saw the prompt for today, I felt a jolt of electricity run through me. I am not joking.

Confess.

Isn’t that what I’ve been doing since the day I started blogging? And why blogging? Let’s be more accurate, since the day I started writing.

My thoughts and my conscience poured onto a white screen one keystroke at a time.

Again, I’m stuck. What can I say more about confessions and writing that I haven’t already said before? To be slightly technical, what new way can I twist my words so that I feel I am saying something new.

I realized something a few days back. I’ll never be a good genre fiction writer.

Wait.

It’s Called Fiction Block

A little while back (I’m too lazy to actually check the post) I wrote a post whose theme was somewhere along these lines.

The only person for whom I write is me. I write to discover myself. Every word unravels a new layer. Layers, my dearest. Everything consists of layers. I’m not a social writer, instead, I prefer writing in confinement of a dark room. Within the confinement of four walls, in perfect silence, my words create their chaos. My words, they call for themselves.

If only life was that simple. If only I could stay on that particular track for eternity. Instead, I’m contradicting myself.

Again.

If only life was that simple. A simple block of white and black.

I Helped A Blind Person And I’m Still Alive

Not everyone does it.

Well, before you read any further, statutory warning, here comes another horribly written post. A post from which you won’t gain anything.

OK. Maybe some common sense, but who needs that, right? Common sense is for idiots.

Not everyone does it. Four simple words.

He was standing there, asking for help. A man who would have roughly weighed 50 kg, a man with a height of, I guess, five feet. A man with a white stick in his left hand and thick black glasses on his eyes.

There were ten people around him and no one once asked where he wanted to go. If he needed any kind of help.

Details like stick to the left, there is a stair, we are going up the stairs, we are going down the stairs, they aren’t important. These are irrelevant details that I can write in any fictional story. But the point isn’t that.

Something Great