Meow boy has been asking me to write something for quite some time now. I initially blamed the writer's block due to stress and academics and the like but as time passed I have realised that it goes a little beyond that. I have never been so pressurised as to ever stop writing. I have always loved the whole ritual of writing right from the silly detective stories I wrote as a child to amuse myself to my modest beginnings at a novel which was entirely lost due to a faulty hard drive.
When I look back, I now realise that my writing reduced the more I read. As a child I had no inhibitions and could sit and write for hours without realising it. I wrote as much as I could from Dear Diary entries to poetry which I struggled hard to rhyme to obituaries for dead pets. I was always looking at a different angle to write a story from. Becoming my writer was what I wanted for the longest time. My reading which, I believed, would add value and flavour to my writing however worked in a very different way.
The more I fell in love with the writing styles of other authors the more critical I became of my own writing. I wrote and rewrote because the lines had to be just perfect and over the years, I seem to have given up on it altogether.
This blog post is not merely a forum to crib and analyse why I stopped writing but a promise to be a little kinder on my own words and ideas in the future.
Here's to more baby steps that go beyond a nostalgic blog post!
When I look back, I now realise that my writing reduced the more I read. As a child I had no inhibitions and could sit and write for hours without realising it. I wrote as much as I could from Dear Diary entries to poetry which I struggled hard to rhyme to obituaries for dead pets. I was always looking at a different angle to write a story from. Becoming my writer was what I wanted for the longest time. My reading which, I believed, would add value and flavour to my writing however worked in a very different way.
The more I fell in love with the writing styles of other authors the more critical I became of my own writing. I wrote and rewrote because the lines had to be just perfect and over the years, I seem to have given up on it altogether.
This blog post is not merely a forum to crib and analyse why I stopped writing but a promise to be a little kinder on my own words and ideas in the future.
Here's to more baby steps that go beyond a nostalgic blog post!
2 comments:
Oooh, awesome!
Trust me when I say that I've been there, BIG TIME! I almost stopped writing entirely when I joined a site called StoriesMania, because nobody on that site was a published author, and they still were so much better than me. :)
I'm glad you're getting back into it, though. I think the important thing to focus on is the enjoyment we derive from writing. As long as you have fun writing, impressing others is not really so important, is it?
You are cutting yourself short here. Acknowledge your readers and please continue writing. Self criticism is highly overrated.
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