That’s the category I fall in.
What I write, I’m talking about my stories in particular, is for my indulgence. Blogs are an exception, because that’s what a blog is for.
It is widely believed that every author, while designing a plot through premonition or under duress, and creating characters, always tends to draw parallels between the story-line and his own life. It includes the character sharing the author’s birthday, or echoing the author’s feelings through a piece of fiction. Most of the time it works in confounding people who care not enough to think. This I say through experience.
I am an amateur writer.
I write in my diary and journal in a less than faithful way because time never permits me to spend precious minutes with the diary and journal, as the exigency to study mounts.
I write poetry because I find beauty in the verses I have read, having learnt from a very dedicated teacher how to appreciate a language.
And I plot a story because I want to be able to watch something, or someone, who is made up of all the flaws man was created with, grow and face life in the most daring situations. Apart from the agony one needs to face for simply being a human, it is also highly opinionated.
What situations there are, I have either seen or been in. And the things that are said, I have felt or done.
But, so far, I have never found one person who actually believes that the characters might, even remotely, represent the inner-most person in me.
There was an SMS joke I received from a very close friend, who is one of the three people who have read my story: “To know exactly how another person faces life, take a walk in that person’s shoes….After a mile or so… WHO CARES??? You have his shoes!!”
I will take it in a very psychological sense here.
Walking in a person’s shoes means knowing that person inside out. Knowing every move he makes, every word he speaks and every breath he takes.
Exactly how frightening would that be??
To me, it would be astoundingly fearful. I cannot imagine any person, other than myself, knowing me better than myself. If there does exist such a person who will be able to judge my every move I would collapse with sheer terror.
I like to be in control. I do not like to dominate or be dominated. I would like to be given full privileges over my life and decisions that will be factors affecting the way I ought to live. Being given advice is okay. Whether I take it or not is wholly my choice. But that’s where it ends.
Coming back to the writing part.
I wanted to kill off a main character at one time. Everybody advised me not to. But I did it.
Recently, I had to, most unintentionally, have my character face the guilt of having an unborn child. A close friend of mine actually got offended by it. She turned away saying, “No one has the right to take away life.”
I agree.
But she had no reason to tell me that.
I am aware of the things I can do and not do.
I was just coming out of another severe bout of writer’s block and I was actually making tremendous progress in the positive direction with my proposed novel. I needed the character to regret certain decisions and thus I decided to let the character face the guilt in the cruelest possible way. No one has the right to tell someone else what to do. Especially a person associated with another person who takes writing as a means of expression. Not commercial. I love the English language and have made no false impressions for my affection to it. That’s the reason I write. That’s the reason I plot. I don’t even care if my story is never printed and published. I don’t want it to be, in fact. I do not want to have a commercial affiliation to my words. I just want what’s on my mind to be on paper so that I know what I am facing.
Taking opinions while writing is a very good thing for someone who wants to see their name in print. But considering the fact that this friend of mine knows the complete reasoning for my writing…it hurt. Of course, it didn’t change my mind, because I am foolishly arrogant at times and I have had to find it all out at the cost of my own sanity.
(For the record, my friend later realized that what she’d said hurt me and apologized for it and everything’s fine, ’cause no matter everyone is entitled to their views and ought to stand by them no matter what.)
Prices must be paid by everyone and I have reason, most selfishly, to believe that writers take one of the heaviest tolls. It’s not much, coming from me, just another kid with a dream that she’s not sure she wants to have promoted.
But then these are, but, the woes of a person who writes.
Good riddance !!
Filed under: Inner Explosions, Reflecting Thoughts, writing | Tagged: amateur writer, expression, liberty, writing
