I know I quit the blog for a while now, and I just posted a story last week (again, quoting that I’m really not coming out of hiatus). But, I can’t help it anymore. I am coming out of my break, having accomplished close to none of my hiatus-goals.
Seems depressing, doesn’t it?
Only, it’s not.
I have never loved myself or my life more than right now and I wanted to spread that very love over here on WordPress. Hell, I’d missed this!
I’d missed writing for no reason and actually resented my own book for streamlining me into boredom. I know it really is not boring, and I know that I actually have a piece of my heart etched into the plot, the characters, and the story line. But, I was sick and tired of forcing myself to write for my mind (which wanted me to focus only on my book). Now, I want to write for my heart and for the poor souls reading my ramblings.
Because, you know what? At the end of the day, all that matters is whether you spent that day following your heart or being prudent.
Can all of you swear that your entire day has been about the love you had for the activities you had carried out? I’m sure that most of you would frown and shuffle the topic away if I posed that above question.
That’s okay. I won’t be mad. I would react the same way.
As human beings, we are set in such discipline that survival, earning a livelihood, responsibilities, pride (yes, pride), and self-imposed rules all matter very much and influence even involuntary thoughts.
Have you really laughed out loud when you type ‘LOL’ into a text message? No? I didn’t think so. Then, why do you type it at all? It was force of habit and nothing else. You are hardwired into giving that reply.
Next time (when you actually have the breathing space for it; not when you are in an all-important hurry), question yourself. Live the moment as you see it happening and love the mystery of it all.
The human emotions.
The involuntary reactions.
The sudden gasp of horror at a slipping coffee mug.
Things like that.
There you will see the Heart in it. The Heart in everything you do and say and every way you choose to behave.
Love yourself.
Love,
Priya
PS : Totally random, and slightly insane. Definitely involuntary. I love it!
PPS : This is the kind of act I’m talking about! 😀
This is the sober post I was talking about in the previous post here.
(inspired by Real Life Events)
Everyone learns this proverb in middle-school English.
When Life gives you Lemons, make Lemonade!
I know of it for years now like everyone else. But something changed my perspective on this one recently. I’m not saying I disagree with it; I just take it to mean more profound things.
What is Lemonade?
From what I gather, Lemonade points to something sweet and delicious. When life is sour to you, find the sweetness in it and put the Universe to rights as you’d prefer.
What are Lemons?
Sticky spots. Split-second decisions. Anything that pricks you in the process of happening.
But, think of situations which seem dire all around. I do not need to quote examples here. Because everyone knows. That feeling of profound helplessness. That day which you never want to re-live again. That empty hollow in your heart. That throat-drying fear. That croaky voice with which you whisper rapid prayers. Those moments from which you were salvaged. The Saviour was not you. You did not find Lemonade. You merely wasted away till He came.
What if you are handed those Lemons again? Where do you find the Lemonade then?
I say this.
When Life gives you Lemons, make Pickles.
Pickles are sour and sharp. Pick up one of them every once in a while. Make things right.
You do not wish to face the same Lemons again, do you? Suck on one of the Pickled Lemons for ages. Learn the things which brought you the Lemon. Re-live the incident in your mind. And learn. Memorise the things which were your fault in the whole incident. Stew the taste in your mouth.
NEVER let it find its way to you again.
Build your sunning stand for the Pickles.
And you’ll fly far away when Lemons find you again.
Do not be alarmed by the much-too-cheerful greeting, Reader. Life’s been a see-saw since last we spoke! I’ve had my high moments and really low moments, and I’ve had enough of regrets to last a couple of months. The greeting is just a pale attempt to perk the see-saw upwards.
Why do I regret, you ask? Good question. I haven’t the answers myself, yet. It’s all messed up and in my head. So, I’ll let you know once I know. Sorry!
Let me ask you a series of questions myself.
Have you ever pinned all your hopes on accomplishing something which you’ve dreamed of?
Have you ever imagined a sequence of events which were so beautiful that you wished that your life would go through that sequence just for the sheer beauty of it?
Have you ever admired something or someone so much that you prayed you’d get it or get those admirable qualities in yourself?
Were all these followed by a stupid epiphany from your lame-ass brain which points out all the laws of common sense that these wishes defy?
Were you as flabbergasted as a mermaid who finds herself wishing to walk the earth?
Did you curse that lame-ass brain for killing the dream and smashing it to smithereens?
Welcome to my life!
The biggest question I’ve been asking myself lately is this : why does the brain always get in the way of the heart?
Sure, everyone dreams. It’s a rule of the humanity in you that you yearn for that successful showbiz career, you dream of that shiny red Porsche, and you ache for that beautiful girl you’re head over heels in love with. Lesser known is that mind voice of certain individuals which always fights to defy those unrealistic dreams. It’s sometimes mistaken for common sense, but believe me, it’s the Devil in the Brain.
Of all the times I’ve cursed myself for these thoughts, they had just laughed a croaky laugh in reply and bestowed a cruel smile. I know they speak the real world to my heart and dissuade it from being broken to pieces, but who doesn’t love being lost in the midst of dreamy clouds?
*sighs loudly*
Ah, well, I can probably cook up a different dream in my heart, which might last another few weeks till the brain gets into super-protective ninja mode.
Have any of you had this experience? Tell me about it in the comments!
I’m sure you must be jumping to conclusions about this ominous title. You can breathe easy, guys, I’m not about to talk about vices or crimes.
Let me give you some context. I have been waging my NaNoWriMo war this month, with more-than-required lulls. I have questioned my sanity, my decisions, my pride, and my pen, with no conclusive results. All of them told me, “Just stop grumbling around and go write! That’s the only thing you can do.”
(Suspiciously, all of them sounded like my bestie Ishu, and I don’t know what to do with that.)
So… you get some clues on my train of thought with this post? This is going to be about bad guys on writing. I do not mean antagonists. There’s this whole bunch of bad guys who are intermediate. I mean, for the reader, they don’t really matter. They could be someone who is mean to the protagonist, or a batty old lady who waves her off her precious lawn, or a cat who gives the hero a scratch when he disturbed her peaceful sleeping. So, you read the scene, and don’t think twice about the bad guy.
But enter the writer at this point of the story.
(I can only vouch for myself, and my conscience hurts bad with anyone hurting my precious babes, the protagonists.)
I am just lost when I put in one of these bad guys. My method is a simple one in general.
I have my plot outline.
I start at some point in the timeline which seems right to me.
I spend an evening cooking up a few scenes in my head.
I spend the next few days putting them into words.
I write and I write and I write.
It’s a pleasant scene, he’s walking down the street, watching the birds, etc etc. I think ahead to the point where the guy is going to run into the obnoxious man who hates him with no reason.
My pen stills. Or my typing fingers grow heavy. I don’t want him to run into that path. I wildly try to make the guy take a turn-off which leads him to the softly strewn beach sand. I push in an ice-cream cart, with Ron Weasley ringing the bell. I make all sorts of excuses and go into my reflection mode, and basically, stop writing.
(You might expect the same with the antagonists, but, you see, antagonists bring out the brave warrior and the headstrong challenger in the protagonists, which is all very pleasant and hence I look forward to their entry.)
These guys are the bane of my existence as a writer. This is what they do.
They stop me suddenly out of the blue before they are even cued to enter.
They freak me out and force sudden plot twists.
They daunt me more than the antagonists.
They unconsciously make the hero stumble and the heroine tremble.
And the worst thing they do, they stun my mind, and stop further imagination. They put me off writing for days and I binge eat like an idiot.
That’s why I thought some writing is better than no writing at all and I landed here to vent out my frustrations. I hope this rant will put me right back onto my novel and I feel better soon.
Does anyone else feel the same way? Let me know in the comments!
Love, and lots of frustration, (which I don’t wish on you!)
Priya
PS : I know I could just change the character of the obnoxious guy, but I’ve firmly pictured him like that.
PPS : I know I could drop him out, but repeatedly doing so is going to make a Mary Sue or a Gary Stu out of my protagonists, and I will NOT have that happen to them.
My apologies for the really, really, really long silence.
I’m sure you must be thinking, “Most of what this girl writes consists of apologies for her absence. What does she actually write? She must be insane!” I also have the tiny, selfish hope that you might be thinking, “She waits for so long between posts. There must be something worth reading in what she writes.” Right? Right?
Despite the really doubtful question tags at the end, I’ll take the latter thought much better than the former. Hey, everyone gets selfish, right? Even absentee bloggers!
Sorry again, Reader!
Despite the long wait, I have nothing in particular to write about now. Life has progressed too rapidly for me to have stopped and welcomed the flowers of the Spring as they’d arrived. Also, I have been pretty depressed about a couple of -, no, several things which had been laid out and examined for recovery a while ago.
So, since I’ve just about recovered enough to write this post, here I am!
After quite some thought, I present our topic of discussion : Love. I know. I know that this topic has been powdered to the finest granularity and turned over and around in every way possible by everything and everyone in this world. And I know that you have very mixed feelings about it and that, right now, you’re wishing your short-lived assumption that I’m crazy hadn’t been withdrawn so quickly from your mind. It’s okay. Just put it back in your mind. I don’t mind. In fact, as many of my closest friends know, my constant declaration, (as in, one that is mentioned at least a few times every week) is that, “When I call you crazy, that is the best compliment I can ever give you!”
Also, another justification I made to myself is that a writer always has his/her own unique perspective on every topic, even one with already thousands of interpretations such as Love, and it is his/her calling to have expressed this perspective thoroughly. To anyone and anything who might listen (or read). So, even if you’re a ‘bot, keep at the post and I’ll name you C3PO! (The only reference being that I loved C3PO in Episode VII; I have no idea of his significance in the Star Wars Universe. So, any gushing fans, please hold your horses!) But, I digress.
Sorry.
I have lately been exploring writing in the Romance genre. So far, I’ve realised that I’ve had these really strong convictions about how it should go about and I’ve never wondered how these convictions actually came into place.
Mind you, this is NOT going to be a rant-fest of anything from my life. Oh, and one more thing, I am NOT going to talk about the reasons behind Love. It is an absolute dead-end whenever I go down that road and I’m not trying another pointless stroll or a deliberate search down there now.
This is a quote from, well, me. I wrote this down so long ago that I forgot what it came from. But, I strongly suspect an overdose of the Twilight Saga behind it.
“Love is defined as unexplained, spontaneous, unchangeable, continuous trust and faith. It erupts when you do not know it and inspires you into Paradise. It’s unquestionable, even by its Bearer.”
It all boiled down to being able to trust another person with everything that you are and you have. And no, I do not mean physically trusting someone with yourself. It’s more like the belief that whatever you do, talk or experience with this other person is going to be spiritually, emotionally and happiness-inducing-ly good for you. You find everything gets better with them around.
This Love pulls you by your nose into this person’s life teasingly and temptingly. He/She being around you(on the phone glued to your ear or on the phone to whose screen your speed-texting fingers are nearly glued or in person at a coffee shop with a single tall glass of milkshake in front of you and the shop owner churning inside at the tens of potential customers leaving after finding no table vacant) causes you immense pleasure. In my defense, of the examples of togetherness cited above, the last one would be in a case of puppy, teenager Love only. And the exasperating part is that you don’t know why or how.
Oops! Dead end track!
You’d just feel like doing anything and everything with them, with no qualms whatsover.
Conclusion I : Love is the absolute trust you have that the other person is a perfect complement to you and your life.
There’s another level I know of Love. The wanting/needing kind. Sorry I have no statements or quotes to share here. But what I mean is that Love which makes you ache inside when you are not together(again, togetherness in all possible scenarios).
The absence does not hurt any lesser than a giant stab to your heart(this maybe a Giant who is stabbing you or a really giant knife being used in the stabbing or in the worst possible case, both) to some people while others hurt with a multitude of repetitive, bleeding pinpricks to the heart. On either ways, let me tell you right away, it hurts. Like Hell.
You wish desperately for any kind of activity which you can do together. The emphasis being on the togetherness. Things feel settled with the other person around.
Conclusion II : Love is the desperate want of closeness and sharing of experiences you get because the other person makes you feel happy beyond measure.
The third kind comes right about here. Fair warning would be that I’m very much excited about this particular kind and that I dream fervently of being in it. So would you, if you know what I’m talking about.
It’s the kind which just exists all around you, in the air you breathe in, and the dust motes in it which make you sneeze; it’s in the back of your head, like a half-forgotten dream, like a persisting brain tumour; it keeps you going in your everyday work, and makes you feel warm and content inside.
This Love is your soul’s comfort and its confidant. It’s not so much as public displays of affection or long-written love letters; neither is it constant texting nor trying to catch each other’s eyes and seeing the smile hidden in there. It simply exists. It strengthens and nurtures you in all possible ways.
The quote I put forth here is a song from Taylor Swift’s 1989.
“You can hear it in the Silence,
You can feel it on the way Home,
You can see it with the lights out,
You’re in Love.”
Conclusion III : Love is the invisible driver of the human self which overwhelms you into the richest billionaire and humbles you into the poorest critter on the streets. Every second of every day, you feel both surprised and not surprised by its existence, silence ruling over all these emotions. It feels almost too sacred to be spoken of.
There I have it. You can post the comments and enlighten me with your anecdotes about them. I would like to leave it at that hanging note.
PS : I think I added the ‘Coconut Water’ to the title because I started the draft of this post in the Summer days of April on my previous blog. Please forgive me for the stupidity, but it feels bad to have it removed, so its gonna stay there.
PPS : About that silly little depression phase, again, that was during April. So, forget it!
This is going to be much, much sooner than my track record says. But, that’s a damn good thing! Sooooo… Hi again, Reader! How have you been the last few days? Me, I’ve been fantastic! 😀
Now to the topic of discussion.
Writing.
Writers.
And everything that stands in the way of the latter to the former.
Okay. Big questions.
Why do we write? Why does anyone write? Don’t they have something better to do?
I’m NOT going to yell profanities now. I’m still this deluded, believing-in-the-goodness-of-people girl who hopes to clear some of the air between the lunatics who ask these questions and the writers themselves. (That L-word will be the rudest thing I use henceforth, I swear!)
When I think back to the time I started writing, I don’t really remember the trigger which pushed me over to the dark side, so I’m just gonna make some stuff up here. The essence of it is the absolute truth though.
Writing is a platform for the inner soul of a Writer. It’s a form of communication which is as vital as a mother tongue is to people. Anything we write is something we wish to express to the world. You wouldn’t want to stop talking to people, would you? We write to talk. The difference being the scope of the talk, and the audience of the communication.
We write (talk) to the entire world, mainly because that’s just the way we let out anything on our minds! But also secretly because we want people to absorb the information we put out. It’s just a very small part though. The main thing is the letting out what’s on our mind.
That’s why people I know write! Nobody can ask us a why to this explanation. Oh and by the way, why do you people jabber like jackdaws about random nonsense? Care to answer that?
How do you find the time? Where do you find the time? In between coffee and sleepless nights?
Okay, there is this very common misconception that Writers are high on caffeine and do not sleep or shave (in the case of a male Writer, and some female ones) or do much else.
This is strictly an extreme case of Writing.
I have a full-time career, involving a day job and lots of staring into a computer screen. Plus, I’m actually interested in what I do, it’s not just a money-making procedure to me. And I am a person who maintains vehemently that caffeine is a drug. And I force myself to taking only one cup a day, only on a work day in which I actually work at the office, and I avoid other sources of caffeine, like soda, on those days. Not to forget is my ever-lasting love affair with sleep. I cannot function with less than seven hours of sleep. I walk around like a zombie when I try lesser hours.
This is just my case. I have Writer friends, who do not take coffee at all, sleep for nine hours every night, and are getting a college degree at the same time. See?
It’s all about the priorities.
You want to write? Make the time, give up some futile thing you do everyday. Like watching some old TV Series to kill the time.
Passions always require sacrifice. You keep that passion alive by coalescing all the time globules you get in a day to fester it. That’s how it works. It’s as simple as that.
Fine. We get it. Blah, b-blah, b-blah, what do you write about? It’s not like you guys walk around with writing prompts plastered into your minds!
One of the few, genuine questions. Instinct is the best driver of all the conversations we have. We stick to things that move us, things that trigger a long train of thought in our heads, and things that we think we know and like to do. These are the typical topics. But, there is this other, hugely magical thing.
It’s fiction. Making up scenarios, happy endings, different pathways, a whole new world, parallel universes, magic wands, and glass slippers. This action is most involuntary, contrary to popular belief. You get yourself a teeny bit of plot, and there you go! The characters grow and the story lines meet and before you know it, it’s a whole new book!
The sad shit is that people don’t get the fact that we are ruled by our book. For example, I’ve been held on the noose by my two protagonists for about six months because one of them just point-blank refused to ask the other one out. They kept on flirting, and giggling, and admiring, and he never popped the question! It was maddening! They were too caught up in the moment! And when I narrate this scene to people, it’s almost always like, “Make ’em do it!” And I sit there feeling like an idiot for ranting this to the most unsympathetic ear yet.
This is the main reason to disappointed Writers. Call it writer’s block or whatever. But, one day, one sweet day, I’ll wake up to a finished manuscript, and I’ll draft that first email to a publisher, it’ll be the best day of my life.
Any concluding thoughts?
People are judgemental and prejudiced and a little rude. But, that ain’t gonna stop me from doing what I wanna do. Because I love doing this. Granted there are days together when I do not even open the Google Doc I use to write my novel in, and there are weeks together when I forget the existence of my blog. But, I will not care for continuity when all I need is the passion.
The world is filled with writers who have unfinished stories. Be sympathetic and be nice, they’re not disturbing you. Then why annoy them with all the tacky questions?
If you want to go on doing the crap, keep at it, fine by me! You’ll end up being one of the antagonists who die a cruel death. And it’s not even going to be handled tastefully. It will be gruesome and painful.
PS : Strictly for educational purposes, to all those who are not acquainted with our lives.
PPS : I have only given the barest overview, there are heaps and heaps of information under the hood.
