Why Write?

Something for all Writers to relate to

Countless times, I have tried to write stories. I have always found it fascinating. The ability that a person could have to create a new world for people has been something I always wanted to have. But after 3 unfinished novels that never got past Chapter 12 and 2 incomplete collections of short stories, I realized that it isn’t a thing for me. Writing for me has been personal. Whether it was my diary entries back in 6^th grade or the random bursts of work that comes out of me when I’m sitting near the sea, it has been my refuge. A way to say things I would never say out loud. A way to feel things I would never dare feel outside of my pages. That’s when I started writing poetry. I have never really been someone that read poetry. I appreciated them but only when it came in textbooks. But then one fine day, after a big fight with my best friend, it happened. Words flew out of me like it was destined to come out. And there was no stopping me after that. I wrote and wrote endlessly every time any random inspiration hit me. Once it was a pink umbrella I saw outside my window. Another time a song I heard while I was passing through in a bus. But each time, the urge was strong. The need to write, the itch in the palm of my hands to grab a pen and write in my notebook pushed me into a mental state of urgency. It was like how an addict would behave if he were deprived of his drug. Writing had become my drug. People asked me how it happened. How I got inspiration and how I found the words and I would explanation except that it just happens. It’s like the rain. Just when my odd muses come to me, a dark cloud of words, ideas and rhymes come in my head and then it is just an outpour of those ideas into my pages. And as it leaves, as the last drops of my words fall into place, a relief comes across. A cold breeze tickles my senses telling me to be proud of this because this is “mine.” Yes, I have forever admired J K Rowling and Enid Blyton for having that imagination to create a world and the proud feeling they must have about having created something that would last generations. That feeling of knowing that they have created a mark for themselves in the world for eternity was something I wished I had the power to do. But it’s different now. I have found my mark. I have realized I don’t want to create something everlasting. I don’t want to be someone that the world remembers. I don’t want to create a world where people can take refuge. Instead I want to create moments. I want to create moments where people can feel that they aren’t alone in this world. I want to create the feeling of empowerment. I want people who read my work to feel like they can do anything the way I feel when I write. I want them to know that they can create such moments with a pen and paper looking at pink umbrellas and passing through songs on a bus. I don’t want to be in people’s memories at all times like great writers. I want my work to be that fleeting memory that you get when you encounter situations that I express. I want to be a fleeting memory for people, giving them a jet of warmth in people’s minds when they realize that in their toughest moments there was this another girl who experienced it and told if not the whole world but most definitely herself about it.

Reviews

[Preethi Sunil]

Soulful Lakshmi.
It makes me write a few lines from Dom Moras
.....after so many deaths I live and I write
It cannot be that
I am he
on whom
thy tempests fell last night.....

forgot the rest. keep writing