Tag: reading

Publishing a book doesn’t make you a writer

Neera

There is a misconception that all aspiring writers have. They are not willing to accept themselves as writers till they have published a book or an article or a short story. They are over the moon if their story wins an award because now they can call themselves a writer. There is proof now. Someone has published their story and given them an award.

But it is a fallacy.

You were a writer before your story got published. Weren’t you? You wrote the story first, then you sent it for publication.

And chances are you wrote a lot many stories before you sent one in a competition. I can bet my last dollar that you had written much more before you wrote those stories. A diary. A journal too maybe. Some poems. Occasional letters. You have written them and that makes you a writer. Then why don’t you call yourself a writer?

It comes down to acceptance. You are not willing to accept the value of your own work. You are looking for authentication from someone else. To give you permission to add the title of ‘writer’ in front of your name.

I have been writing for at least sixteen years now. It took me at least ten to call myself a writer in front of others. Like many aspiring writers, I failed to see that publishing a book doesn’t make you a writer. It makes you an author. And the two are separate terms. The writer is the one who writes, and the author is the one who publishes her writing. You become a writer first and then you become an author. So start calling yourself a writer. And when you publish your book, you can call yourself an author.

Use this philosophy to bury the critic inside you.

Focus on the ‘verb’ of writing and ‘noun’ will follow.

Write, and if you are writing, you are a writer.

A sketch a day

Neera

In primary school, we had a teacher who taught us drawing. In his eighties, he wore a white kurta-pajama, a white turban, and a white open beard. A gentle soul, he taught us how to draw basic shapes, use a ruler properly and draw still-life and landscapes.

Children didn’t take his class seriously. For them, it was a fun period, a time to talk, laugh, and throw paper planes at each other. To get us interested in drawing, he once told us a story that I still remember.

One of his students migrated to Canada, where he couldn’t find a job for months. A career counselor asked him what he can do. After thinking for a long time, he threw his hands in the air and said, “I can write my name in different ways.” He then showed the counselor the little calligraphy he learned in this drawing teacher’s class. Soon he was hired as a signboard writer.

It took me years to realize that, that humble man had instilled in me the love of drawing. I enjoyed illustrations so much that it became the reason that I chose biology for further studies. This passion lay dormant until a few years ago when I took a drawing class and had time of my life doing life drawing.

Recently I found a sketch a day challenge and got sucked in.

Why I started this blog

Neera 2 Comments

Most blogs have an enchanting founding story. Stories like:

A charming law graduate quit her job to travel and write; she is now eating her way around the world.

An industrial engineer and ex-employee of General Motors and Walt Disney World started a blog after having her first child and teaching other mums how to earn through blogging.

A depressed artist healed herself by teaching art through her blog.

The start of my blog wasn’t anything like that.

I have been writing since 2001 but didn’t have the courage to put my work out there. Not only that, I couldn’t even call myself a writer. Even though I had filled notebook after notebook in eighteen years of writing, I thought of myself as a failure.

My writing was not good enough. I had nothing to show for years of toil. I had published nothing. My name was not on the cover of any book. Not even at the top of a magazine article.

My writing buddies liked my stories, but I thought they were being polite and never considered entering my stories into any writing competition.

I kept on seeing myself as a failure and tortured myself mercilessly. I would set myself unrealistic writing goals and would beat myself for not meeting them.

My ‘job’ was taking up all my energy, and the rest was consumed in keeping the house and raising the family.

Something in me was dying, and I knew I have to do something. All I wanted to do was to write. Writing had become a compulsion for me. But I was too scared to put my work out there.

After weeks of agonizing, I bought my domain name. Something terrible happened on that day. My father passed away.

The next couple of weeks were full of confusion, numbness, guilt, and grief. In those days, I wrote madly, capturing every single thread of memory that came to the surface. Writing was my savior, as it was when my mother passed away three years earlier.

As I went through various stages of grief, I realized ‘writing’ was the only true tribute I could pay to my parents, who instilled in me a love for learning. They were both teachers. I felt compelled to tell their story, and through them, my story.

There was another powerful reaction. Their departure brought me face-to-face with my mortality.

How long was I going to live?

My time here is limited, and yet I was postponing my life. When will I live the life I really wanted to live? Was I prepared to die one day without even finding out what would have happened if I had followed my dream to become a full-time writer?

I wasn’t.

Hence this blog.