I love writing but for blogging, I needed to write something specific which is complete with a head, body, and tail. So, the first thought that came to my mind was to write about my own writing journey till now. Don’t get excited by “writing journey” because my journey till now had only me. I am not afraid of criticism nor am I shy, it’s just that I wasn’t ready till now to share my work. I am trying hard to recall exactly when it all started ie my love for writing.
As far as I memory goes, sometime in 2005 when I was in 6th standard at school I won a writing competition where I was supposed to write about CV Raman. I won the competition and this win gave me a sense of enlightenment. I started to write more. Again, the following year, my English teacher gave Charles Dicken’s “Tale of two cities “book to write a review. Now, I found the company of books. Reading and writing go hand in hand. I started reading books of Ruskin Bond. I wrote poems now and then in English and in my mother tongue but lost them through years. So, I have always been little skeptical about writing in books or diaries because of the fear of losing. Hence, I hope this digital platform turns out to be my best choice.
In 2016, I took a temporary hiatus from the rat race to search for my passion. And by God’s grace, I found not one but two. Writing without a doubt was my primary passion but I also like solving real life problems. Being an engineer, I felt why shouldn’t I take up master’s course to enhance my knowledge. The whole of 2016 I read a lot of books both technical and others. I made the best purchase of my life: Kindle Paperwhite. While reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” book, I came across “10,000-hour rule” which said that to gain expertise in any field one must work relentlessly for approximately 10,000 hours. Maybe this is just an improvised version of the adage “Practice makes a man perfect”. So immediately after reading this, I resolved to write every day for the specific amount of time. And in a childlike way, I even calculated the total number of days I need to write to reach the magic number. Now I needed some motivation to write every day, so while searching on the internet, I found this beautiful website “750words.com”. This site was perfect for me as it used to give daily reminders and badges for motivation. But I wrote in the site religiously for exactly a month and later stopped it.
In between all these years, I wrote a bunch of poems and short stories of little worth. My father and my uncle always encouraged us to write a diary every day but we never took it seriously. By “we” I refer to my siblings with whom I had a wonderful childhood, and we call ourselves “Fantastic Four”. I did write irregularly but always had a fear of invasion of privacy, so I never really continued the habit of writing a diary. Fast forward to 2017, I am writing a diary every day without fail on my computer.
So, leaving out other details, since 2005 I wanted to write and wrote but never shared with anyone. This is my first instance of public display of my writing. Hope I continue to write and make my writing better day by day.
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
Deep In Reverie 