Devoid of Words

Children always have a lot to say. So did I. And it is because they feel like whatever is new and exciting for them is also new and exciting for everyone else. I feel like adulthood sets in for a person the moment he realizes that most things he wants to say have already been said, most ideas already discovered and most conversations already had. My uncle used to describe this moment as the death of the child within oneself - when you stop enjoying cartoons and an irreversible cynicism sets in. For me, the cynicism and the realization that I have nothing new to contribute set in pretty early on. When I moved to college, I had had years of knowing that the more I talked, the less seriously people took me - so I became quieter. The quieter I became, the more cynical I got. And very soon, I was known as a jerk by almost everyone who wasn't close enough to me to realize who I really was.

Before that, I remember always having stories in my mind, and even poems. I often wrote them and people who had the patience to read thought I was super creative. I would take inspiration from the book I read and let my imagination run wild - I wrote about spies and foreign lands while never having stepped out of the country. It was all going well till my uncle pointed out to me that great writers draw inspiration from their experience and that is why they are so believable - O'Henry did time in prison and that is why he described the mafia so well, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a physician and that's why Sherlock Holmes has such great knowledge of anatomy and other prolific writers also research the topic they write about. I was in a fix - I was twelve, the only real-life experience I had at that point was an abusive childhood. How much sob story can anyone write? So I started thinking about what life experience I could gather at that point - that's how my first romantic relationship started. I charmed the first girl I liked and we started going strong. I wrote poems to impress her because she also read like I did and for a while, the ups and downs of that relationship proved to be great fodder for my fiction writing.

The dream of becoming a novelist had already burrowed itself in my mind and by the time I reached college, I was beginning to wonder about how to expand my horizons. I started observing the people around me - and all I could see was mediocrity and mundane things. My cynicism grew and putting words on paper became more and more difficult. I had my first big heartbreak right around that time and for several years after that, that was all I wrote about. Well, that was all I spoke about as well - so it led to the successive women in my life, who were my only sounding boards, getting fed up with my rants about that one ex that got away and thus judging my writing as nothing more but an extension of the same. "Is this all you write about?", a disgruntled girlfriend once exclaimed, "That makes you a journal writer, not a fiction writer." Words sting. It was a difficult phase of life, my college years and I took that criticism to heart and stopped writing. 

Up until that point, without my realizing it, my writing had been acting as a stress reliever for me and as soon as I stopped writing, the stress and anxiety started building up within me. I was gainfully employed at this point and as my grandfather used to say, "Earning money is hard." I did not write much for the next few years. In 2014, I started this blog page to express my feelings and to get back to the habit of writing. I had recently been promoted at work to a field position that included traveling and I thought I would write about my new experiences. The only problem with that was that there weren't many readers. Social media was already big at this point and while the whole world was running after views and likes, not having either on my blog just felt disappointing. But I kept on writing - however sporadically. I wanted to quit my job often - it was stressful and I wanted to take up writing full time but the lack of views hampered my confidence and so did the soul-sucking job I was in back then. The 'writer' dream started taking a back seat, especially once I moved to a job where I was slightly happier. But happiness has always been elusive for me and soon I was in the middle of several personal tragedies that took several years to recover from. 

Somewhere in the last few years, I stopped enjoying cartoons as well. The child inside me actually died, without a chance of ressucitation. I kept writing articles in my blog. Tried to write stories too, but they started reading more and more like a personal journal than pieces of fiction. I all but gave up on my dream of becoming a published novelist. Then all of a sudden, I found myself unemployed for a short span of time and trying to write a book as a part of an online challenge withing a stipulated timeline. Words eluded me. All the insecurities gathered over several years rushed to the front and I started asking myself what qualified me to become a writer. I spent the last decade working in retail but I didn't want to write about retail. I could write about my broken relationships but the world had enough paperback writers doing that already. The mind drew a colloal blank and I was truly devoid of word for a hot second.

Then one day I was watching Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime and I decided to read about Tom Clancy on Wikipedia and it said that he was a saleman before he started writing about secret agencies and cold wars. The trick was extensive research and a good imagination. And just like that, the shackles I had put around myself came off. "If he could do it, so can I," I aid to myself and tarted penning down what became a short novel called "The Corona Catfish Experiement". I am not sure if it would ever be published because the independent publishing house I wrote it for, might as well have run away with my money. But at least I have the satisfaction of writing a complete book. That confidence launched me to begin another project which I had been obsessing over for sometime. But soon, that enthusiasm was replaced by anxiety and worries about several things including, but not limited to, life and livelihood. 

And if you scroll down this page, you will realize that this is my first blog article after several months. That is how constipated I have been as far as words are concerned. But I have not given up. They say that everything is hard till you do it. And here I am, writing. Gives me hope for the rest of it too. I know this article isn't a piece of literature, but I still managed to put my thoughts into words, something I had been struggling with lately. So I am happy. Besides, I have grown beyond caring about likes and pageviews and I would like to believe that I am also less cynical now. I am beginning to acknowledge my small wins and hopefully that would be the stepping stone to bigger things.