Woes of a would-be writer

All travails cease when you ease on them.
Premchand.R

What it takes to do something? And if you know ‘What’ it takes to do something, you will be confronted with the ‘How’ of that thing. Like many who have tried cracking Da Vinci’s Code in their ingenuity; we too, after a relentless pursuit, conclude that thing and are left in the lurch to figure out the ‘Why’ of that thing. Seems odd and sounds bizarre, doesn’t it? And what else it can? If you are a would-be writer and you want to write something; and you don’t know what that something is; when compulsion overtakes; passion overrides logical reasoning; instincts start playing havoc with intellect; when motions downplay motives; and the fingers rush to press the keys on your system, what you have on the screen, between you and I, is a genre. Yes, it’s a genre of your writing.

Nine months is the gestation period for humans. It’s no exaggeration, for a writer it can be ninety nine months. There are volumes of books written and rewritten each day. The content seems to be very obvious. One doesn’t need to rack one’s brains to guess what the writer wants to say. On the other hand, we have some masterpieces missing the very eyes of the so called avid reader. They just drift with the tide uneasily. Thirst for information, thirst for knowledge, thirst for storage, thirst for retrieval have quenched the thirst for wisdom. What could have been and ought to be said and done in a few words is being said and done in voluminous accounts. When a precarious situation prevails and perplexity is pondered with all enthusiasm, everyone like you and me has a chance to be a writer.

After stating the reasons and qualifications why you and I can be writers, I would like to make a few ostentatious recommendations of what it takes to be a writer:

By default
A writer should be a good reader.
A writer should be an owner of a good dictionary.
A writer should have appreciated the works of other writers.
A writer should have been swayed and smothered by the works of other writers.
A writer should have the prowess to enjoy a vicarious success even at the face of utter rejection.
A writer should have read different styles of written work.
A writer should be a poet at heart and an essayist at head.
A writer should be at loss of words.
A writer should have faced the itch of the writer’s glitch.
A writer should have survived at least dozen rejections and half a dozen insults in the hands of publishers and reviewers.

Having spent enough on these Ten Commandments, let’s foray into the realms of the writers’ world.

It’s not an easy task entering the Writers’ kingdom. No one is to be blamed. We have to jump through hoops as our predecessors did, before we can actually view the debutants with an unreserved cold-eyed stare. As we make our way perilously through the hedge called basic tenets of grammar and sentence structure, we face a glass ceiling. Many a writer often resolves to resign at this juncture. Above the glass ceiling is the catchment area. One cannot barge their way through the glass ceiling, however after mastering the rudiments; one can impregnate the glass ceiling and enter the catchment area. It’s a no-brainer, if a new writer is given a cold shoulder. As time progresses, when the good oldies are lost and they crave for something new not found in them and by chance discover a glimmer of hope in the junior then the tables will turn around. The new writer achieves the much desired and sought welcome into the kingdom. Now the new writer has a privilege of ruling his own banana kingdom.

Before we start ruling our banana kingdom, we need to define the scope and purview of it; whether we want to be a ghost-writer, co-writer, speech-writer, technical writer, content writer or a copy writer or we want to dwell on fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, poetic, historic, futuristic, persuasive, compulsive or impulsive. Once we define our scope, we can relentlessly and ruthlessly pursue our passion, where the pathos and bathos of our works are justified and we receive the oohs, oops, ooh aahs and oomphs from our colleagues for keepsake.

Once we become accepted more than we should in our circles, the time sets in for us to get the writ onto the sheet. It’s indeed every writer’s inherent desire that the articles may be published on par with Thomas Friedman’s or Paul Krugman’s or Natwar Singh’s or Kushwant Singh’s.

“’What we have to do to get our articles published?’ will be posted later.”
Please send your comments and review to premchandrallapalli@gmail.com