My Writing, My Mojo

Why do I write?

I have often asked myself this question, and each time found a different answer.

So, like Natalie Goldberg says, it is best to not ask that question, just pick up a pen and paper and get down to writing. Simple.

So that's why I write now. It is my voice to the world. It is the song my heart yearns to sing. And each time the song is different, the mood is different, the space from where it emerges is different. That is just the way it is. I write as I feel, and as I would speak, if only I had the same clarity in speech :). And right now, I write from a space where I don't quite care what the world thinks of it. I don't care whether it is perfect or not, or whether it has the choicest of words, or if it makes any sense or not, nor worry about how it is going to land on others. I just write.

Writing is like breathing. Sometimes the breath is deep and long, sometimes short and shallow, sometimes raspy. That is just the way it is. In that moment. And so I write from and in the moment. I don't stop to re-read and edit or change anything too much, because then I feel I am not being true to myself in that moment. Just like I don't aim to change my breathing pattern. It changes on its own, in its own time. The crux is to be aware of my breath, however it is now. And that is what I bring to my writing.....the gift that a moment in time brings to me, that I want so much to share with the world. That gift does not belong to me. It came from somewhere, to go somewhere, and I just happen to come in the way.

So it does not matter what people feel when they read what I write. Because I don't write to feel loved. I used to in the beginning. But not anymore. When I first felt that way, I withdrew and looked into myself. Was that the kind of love and support that I wanted? Stopping short in my tracks and reflecting, made the mirror clearer for me. I realised pretty soon that that kind of love or support was not going to get me anywhere. That was a turning point for me and my writing. My writing is now my offering to the world. What the world gives back to me is an offering to life.

Deep in my being, I know that I am loved and being held, even when I vacillate between feeling loved and unloved. The vacillation is I feel necessary, so that the pendulum can finally come to rest some place, in the middle, until it starts swinging again. It is only when I was able to touch this deep space, that I was able to accept compliments and criticism with ease. Because it was not about me any more. My writing is not me and it does not belong to me, and yet it comes from a space inside which is a part of me.

My writing I believe reflects the extraordinary in the ordinary...the way I see life and try my best to live my life. Simple. Not flowery and showy. Straight from the heart. Honest. Real. Alive in the now. The music from the daily grind. The rawness of being human. Just simple, everyday life, where details are not defined as being small and mundane. They can be large and wonderful. It depends on how we see them. Do we see them with ordinary or extraordinary eyes?

I also believe that my writing style cannot be original, just as no one else's can be truly original. Every breath we have inhaled, exhaled, or held, every book we have read earlier, every person we have met or spoken to, everything that we have seen or felt or experienced, has touched us in intangible ways. We are but a heady mix or cocktail of all our previous experiences. And it is from this unique cocktail that my writing, just as that of someone else's, emerges.

And so I write. I write about the pain and joy and struggles and about being human. Writing about it brings me face to face with it. It brings me to a space where I can look at it in the eye, embrace it and start loving it. Writing is a celebration of life as it unravels itself to me. I write to celebrate life and myself. I write to come to terms with my loneliness and the oneness that I feel. I write to share the separation and the communion. I write because I have been quiet for most part of my life, trembling with the fear of what people would say or think. And so I write to learn to hold that fear with love. I write about love because I am a woman in love with the world. I write about hurt because I want to understand it better. I write about coming home, because I am grappling with my understanding of home and what could be my real home in this world. I write about darkness because in that darkness, I learn to stand up for myself on my own two feet, without going in search of a light to hide it or chase it away. And when I learn to stand up for myself fearlessly, others may want to do that too, or at least think of possibilities.

I don't make my writing into a practice and chore. I don't have a time and place to write. Because my life is often fluid. I write when I feel connected, alive, burning with a passion and an inspiration to share something. That doesn't happen always and everyday. Yet, sometimes it happens more than once in a day. Writing is the window, pushed open by a gust of wind, to let me and others into a whole new world, even if for a few moments. The window is there; the wind is there. But it is only once in a while that the wind gets strong enough to push the window open!


And so I dive into my heart, into myself.....when the window is pushed open, and just write...just like I live life.