I Can Write; I Can't Write!

It is generally agreed that true writing of language (not only numbers) was invented independently in at least two places: Mesopotamia (specifically, ancient Sumer) around 3200 BCE and Mesoamerica around 600 BCE.

Since then we are writing for different purposes.

Sometimes to express ourselves, or to send a message, or to inform someone, or to educate someone, or to amuse or at times document something to save someone and various other reasons.

Many of my friends when read my write-ups often say “You wrote well (bla bla bla)” and they liked a particular scene or part of the write-up. How I pictured the emotions or described the pain of a person and all those things they liked about it.

I usually end up in saying – “Well, I must thank you for your appreciation and it’s very encouraging. It’s nothing huge but just putting few words together in attempt to present a story…”

And the reply I get at times is – “well, not everyone can write…”

That’s where it clicked me! Can everyone write? Or when we say write, we mean only writing romantic or tragic or horror stories and tales? Or Legal documentation, doctor’s medical reports, school exam sheets or could there be just no reason to write but to write?

We write because we have something to say or may be because we’ve always wanted to.

 Sometimes we write because we only just realized that we might die next week, or tomorrow, or five minutes from now, and we want to leave something behind for posterity.

People write because they have a secret fire burning inside them and the only way that you can fan the flames is by sharing their thoughts with someone else.

My mom writes because she’s bored and don’t have anything better to do and my niece write for/to herself.

Today we are in the e-age or I'd say age of computers, twitter and Facebook and we love to see how people 'Likes' everything no matter what we post and then we write because we love seeing our stats counter-surge every time we post something. Write because nothing satisfies us quite so much as seeing others share what we’ve written. Write because we like the attention; there’s nothing wrong with liking the attention.

Others write because it fills the emptiness in their heart or their soul or their pancreas or wherever their particular emptiness happens to be and by writing they want to find a way to connect with someone, anyone who might understand.

Writer and poet write serious fiction or romance novels or tragic drama.

Corporate people or people in advertising write something because they know it will be commercially-viable.

A friend of mine writes the review of the movie he saw previous night and posts it on Facebook.

My sister-in-law writes a grocery list before she leaves for the grocery shopping and always forgets it in the car dashboard before she enters the mart.

Sometime we write because one’s ex told them that their characters were dull and their dialogue stilted, as it’s a well-known fact that there’s nothing better in life than proving someone else wrong.

I write because my tenth grade English teacher told me that I had potential.I write because if I don’t tell that story, the one that’s been slowly burning inside of me for the past year, the one that sits like a lump in my throat that never goes away or plays incessantly in the back of my head like a bad song with a good hook, will never be told if I don’t tell it.

Write anything and everything, if writing is what you want to do. Don’t listen to people who want to peddle some kind of elite ideal of what it means to write; don’t buy into the idea that you can only refer to yourself as a writer if you've been published in the Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd. or you have a stack of rejection letters a foot deep or you frequently stay up all night weeping softly into a glass of scotch because you can’t arrange exactly the right words in exactly the right order to say exactly whatever it is you want to stay. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you’re only a writer if you've spent a decade or more suffering for your art, starving in a garret in New Delhi, Mumbai or maybe Paris. Try to steer clear of the folks who will want to tell you that only one particular genre or style is real writing.

In fact, I’ll even go so far as to say please write, because I promise you that there’s someone out there who’s dying to hear what you have to say, someone whose life might be changed by whatever sentiment you’re about to commit to paper or screen or cardboard-back-of-the-cereal-box. Write because you are the only person who has lived your particular life, and this has shaped your thoughts in such a way that you are the only one on this planet capable of expressing a thought in your own particular way.

I request you to write because no other person who came before you or who will come after you will ever, ever be able to do it in quite the same way that you can.

So today, for the sake of no one but yourself, pick up a paper or may be a napkin or a rag and scribble your thoughts. Write to someone you love or you long to tell that you love them, write to a friend, family or neighbor. About anything that comes to your mind. Or if that does seems difficult, write to yourself but do write.

Until tomorrow,
SaNj