Dear Smart Kid,
Congratulations on your victory. I too use to win writing competitions and also help others in winning their first trophy, but that was long ago. Wearing big nerdy glasses, carrying a notebook and a fountain pen with a silk scarf tied around your neck does make you look like a writer, but you know, you are not a writer until and unless you want to write as badly as a barren woman dying to have a baby. Yeah, she can consider IVF and surrogacy but do not get so scientific here, I am talking in similes.
We writers have a big heart, so big that we let people enter in our lives. That’s when three guests decide to accept the invitation without our approval. Some writers are privileged only to host one of them, some host two of them and some takes all of them under their roof. The remarkable thing about these guests is they come smoothly but does not show any intention to leave.
THE DEPRESSION
Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.
-Roddy Doyle
Recently, I have read an article that says the suicide rate among writers is higher compared to people from other creative fields. Mood swings are heavy, worse if you have bipolar disorder, anxiety syndrome and then some of the people in this club have schizophrenia. People do not understand you, some good friends might suggest you to visit a counselor but you know that every act of counseling is a way of concealing in itself and it does not solve anything. Better save the money to buy an expensive Moleskine. You get suicidal tendency, I mean you do not want to kill yourself; you just indulge in the thought of how it will feel if you kill yourself. If you belong from a religious family then you will have the privilege to bring God in between, and if you are from a wealthy religious family then you will find yourself being lectured by the priest on how important your life is, like it is a gift from God but his words will be more like a eulogy over your dead body. You would really love to talk to someone, but that someone will have bigger problems than you. In the end, what you will discover is, the world has lost the art of listening. To you! My writer!
‘I know you are depressed and want to kill yourself not because you are ugly, poor and underrated (by the way, you can’t score three out of three) but because you cannot take the hypocrisy of the world. Dude, just look around and you will find yourself in a boat filled with crew; unfortunately, there too you are not the captain.’
THE RECESSION
I wonder how rich was the writer who wrote, ‘Money is nothing’. Well, money is not everything but definitely something. We all need money, lots of money at one point in time. Speaking of writing as a profession, writing does not pay well, not at all, some become successful and rich just because of some readers who worships the writer like some Hellenic goddess while other gets posthumously rich, in both cases the writer was lucky. Unfortunately, the larger section of writers has to embrace a part time job to pay the bills, while the largest section of writers goes for a full-time job, and writing becomes a part time job. But, you know what the most painful part is? To see a writer who is already a millionaire becoming a billionaire by writing shitty scripts, we call it the height of selfish overratedness. If Karl Marx was alive he could have said, ‘Literary credit depends on the economic base.’ Your dream of visiting Kafka’s Prague, Dickens’ London or Yeats’ Dublin will remain a dream for long until and unless you win a big lottery or marry a rich spouse who is generously mad enough to understand your fondness for traveling (in full Spouse Foundation Sponsorship). To you! My writer!
‘It is painful to be poor and a struggler in the field of writing but what is more excruciating is plagiarizing someone’s work and making millions and billions out of it. You can replicate with legal conditions, though.’
THE ACCUSATION
One of my male friends is an awesome writer, he writes on issues ranging from dowry deaths to sexual harassment. Guess what? Everyone does not look at him from the same lens like I do. I consider him as an intelligent, sensitive guy but some of the people consider him as a frustrated soul, trying to be the ladies’ messiah. You do not have to sympathize with him, keep some for me. Some vixens ‘who’ I considered as friends are of the opinion that I am a male attention seeker <reverse effect of updating one’s literary achievements in social networking sites>. I don’t blame them, the guys they go nuts over are after me, so itni si jealousy to apparent hai. But, the accusation I am talking here is not only about petty jealousy between a swan and a duck. The accusation is regarding ideology, it is about the failure on the part of the masses to understand that a writer has seen something hidden from the callow society. Something that plays the drum of so many tunes, and something which only a writer has known, she / he like a prophet sees it coming. To you! My writer!
‘Write about sex and you will be called a pervert, write against religion and you will have to seek asylum, write against the government and you will be killed by a secret agent, write about drugs and various addiction and you will be made the motivational speaker in 101 gatherings. The world can ban a writer’s book, seal the idea, refute the ideology, accuse and even ridicule him or her but the fact is, the generation that will come after us will testify who was so wrong and who was so right and who hung in the mid.’
***I don’t want to scare you or discourage you. I just want to let you know that sometimes writing is not as cool as it is depicted in movies or photographs or even in novels itself, but if you become famous by God knows how then I am happy for you. Anyway, eventually, you will be forgotten…who reads Shakespeare nowadays***
Love,
The Dumb Writer
