Of Stupid Limitations & Personal Demons…

I remember having quite an imaginative mind as a child. I used to day-dream a lot, often about having powers, super powers, about flying, about aliens. (Sometimes, I still do.)

And I used to write about my fantasies. So my characters were inspired from books I used to read, movies I watched or the crazy collection of comic books which my pocket money went into buying.

I remember a story I wrote in middle school. It was about an Indian archaeologist excavating a dinosaur fossil in Costa Rica and dreaming about the extinction of dinosaurs. It was called “The Jurassic Dreams“. (I will try to post it here sometime.)

I chose my uncle to be the first reader for my story. After all, he was the one who had inspired me to read books. Alas! It was a stupid decision. This is what he said:

” Its a nicely written story, but Ian, you must start writing about things you have experienced, places you have been to, otherwise your stories will never be authentic.” No offense to my uncle, may God bless his soul, but this was the worst suggestion he gave me in his life. I idolized him and hence I tried to stick to his suggestion, and that limited me for life.

You see I live in India. We don’t really travel here. We have gun control. We are a timid people. So my uncle’s rule took away from me, everything I wanted to write about: Gangtsers, Aliens, Superheroes, Big Cities, Spies, etc as I didn’t know any of these “first-hand”.

So for a long time after that, all I could write about was relationships, family and girlfriend. And the fact that I dated one girl all through middle school and high school just made things worse for me on the literary front. Do you know how boring your writing gets when all your female characters start looking and talking like your girlfriend and all your heroes, you?

Getting over this demon took me quite a while. I have lived in more than 3 cities now. I have spent years in a place like Goa. I have seen shit like drug addiction around me. And I am a decade older now. Finally, after having seen the rise of writers like J. K. Rowling, Stephanie Meyers, etc, I understand that writing has no limitations.

Hell, I came across this book at a cafe in Panjim, which was a 500 pages sci-fi novel by a 14 year old Goan kid. I could have published books at 14 had my uncle not fed me that crap. (Again, no offense.)

Being published has been a dream of mine for ages, hope it comes true some day.