Old Yellow Pages ✓

29. writing

4th january, friday, 2019

dear diary,

I have wanted to publish a novel ever since I was a kid. I used to think that I discovered my passion for writing only after I joined wattpad, but a few days ago I found some notebooks in which I had written a story about myself. My eleven-year-old self had tried her best to write like the typical teen novels she used to read at that time:

There was a girl who liked a boy, and they weren't even close friends, but hey, surprise! He liked her back. No one could have imagined that a hot guy like him would like her. Together, they discovered a unique kind of love and made everyone jealous. There were always some bullies, and everyone was against them being together, but the love was enough to get them through it all. They lived happily ever after.

It was every girl's dream for a hot boy to enter their lives and be Prince Charming.

This story, however, was about me. I used to like Agastya at that time, when I was 11, and Chetna knew. They both got put on some art and craft project together. I think there was some German exchange program, and there was to be an exhibition. There was going to be a food stall, and for that, we needed thermocol food. So our teacher randomly paired Chetna and Agastya together. I was probably absent that day, otherwise, I would have jumped at the opportunity.

Anyway, they came close and started liking each other. Initially, Chetna would tease me about her spending more time with Agastya than I did. She would tell me stuff like, "Today Agastya told me that I'm the only girl in class he can really trust," and I found that annoying and hurtful, especially coming from my best friend.

They started dating soon after. I grew jealous and stopped talking to both of them. I used to write in a diary at that time, but it wasn't enough. I became restless and dissatisfied, and decided that just daydreaming about him wasn't enough. I needed something more concrete.

So I picked up a notebook and penned down my fantasies on paper. It felt so good to do that. I was immersed in it for a long time, and it comforted me, even though none of it was real. It felt real, and that was important. I wrote about him asking me out, and us making Chetna jealous together. In the end, I portrayed Chetna's character as the jealous bitch that I had become, trying to ruin our relationship.

I guess I started writing because I was so full of emotions. Emotions have always been my fuel. Writing gave me something to do at that time. It was a good distraction from my pathetic life. I never bothered to finish the story, and soon forgot that I had ever wanted to publish something, but I guess the seeds of something new had been sown, even though I didn't realize it at that time.

I wrote more stuff occasionally. Dork Diaries inspired me. I wrote in epistolary about four friends who loved to play pranks, and wrote every night dedicatedly for one month, and then abandoned that too.

That was when Shona and Gulli forced me to join wattpad. To them, it was a fanfiction writing site. I loved this place instantly. I read books on it all day long, mostly the cliché girl-is-afraid-of-love-but-boy-breaks-down-her-walls kind of ones. I was heartbroken and wary of that kind of drama happening again, and I had become cold and had started shutting people out, but reading these stories allowed me to fantasize about my own Prince Charming. I started writing a story called 'Scared to Fall', cringe.

All I wanted at that time was to write a novel. I didn't want fame. I had already decided that fame was going to take away my peace and I, the author of a bestselling novel (I was overconfident), wasn't going to be able to manage that. Wattpad was just what I needed: it gave me an audience without paparazzi.

Now, imagine always having dreamt of writing a novel. Imagine thinking of it as a far away dream, something that will happen 'one day' in the future. Imagine hoping that one day people I know will read it and say, 'Hey, wow, you wrote a 400-page novel? At such a young age? Incredible!' and then imagine suddenly getting an opportunity to do that. The chance to make your dream come true, right there, right then. How liberating is that? You can now take stuff into your own hands. It's almost like after living in an austere house for ages, someone puts you into a castle, without any warning. Suddenly, you have everything you ever wanted.

Things like these can turn lives around, and at that moment, mine changed too.

And I want everyone to experience something like this.

That was a phase in my life when everything inspired me. I thought a lot about emotions. I still do.

I find it surprising that I like writing so much. As a child, I hated it, and I know why: dada really killed my interest in writing. He made it extremely boring for me. He had no clue about modern English and each time I wrote something inspired by the writing styles of RL Stine or Enid Blyton, he would call it nonsense. I grew to think that writing wasn't for me. It required too much formality, and didn't offer a lot of creative freedom. He appreciated only formal, textbook-like writing styles and shitty expressions like Jawahar Lal Nehru calling himself the 'hero of the day' on his birthday. And he had the shamelessness to scold me if I didn't appreciate stuff like that, saying I had no taste. This is the reason why all his essays are so boring: he adds facts and figures which we can find on the internet. What's new in his writing then?

Before discovering my own style, and before realizing that I could do whatever the hell I wanted to do with my writing, I was in a figurative cage, always expected to stick to one format for essays:

➤ start by explaining/defining what the topic was
➤ discuss random shit. Frequently quote newspapers, dates, and add data
➤ end on a hopeful note (efforts are being made, perhaps our environment will be better in the future)

I now know that I don't have to please anyone. Whoever doesn't like my style can simply stop reading my work. ("That's not the right attitude," dada would say. "You have to appeal to everyone!")

Then he would take the paper in his hands, and besides pointing out grammatical errors, he would criticize the "Yeah," and other slangs/realistic things written in dialogue.

This is how bad teachers kill the minds of children. They shouldn't have so much authority and power.

When I was a kid I wrote something about the rain while looking out of the window, and I was very proud of it. He thought it was stupid. He read it and said, "Is this how one should write?"

It's infuriating just to think about this.

But coming back to this very inspiring phase in my life. When I think about it, I wonder where all my motivation has gone now. Did I only have enough steam for one novel? Was my goal to be a writer, or was it to write a novel?

I don't feel the urge to write anymore. I never got to experience the joy of finishing my first novel because by the time I did that, I had already got bored of it.

You know what, I think there's a huge problem with to-do lists. I write stuff that I have to do and then feel relieved because it's out of my head. I don't keep thinking about it again and again. It's gone. And when the time comes to actually do it, I don't want to because I feel as if I've already done it. I've already got the satisfaction of removing it from my mind, and then I find it difficult to get so enthusiastic about it again.

❄