The Writer’s Dilemma

I enjoy writing. I have around eleven essays that I had written through childhood and adolescence. The topics covered random domains, right from hugs and eunuchs to science and technology. They were both written and read by me. I used to not write for an audience.

I find pleasure in taking time to pen down words on topics that fascinate me, and I have thoughts on. When I first started writing essays I thought about how I wanted to write: I lacked the imagination to write in the third person, so, to sway away the ‘I’s, I had ignored the first person and started off in the second person, only to come to a realisation that it sounded too authoritative and instructive for my style. So I had to settle for first-person writing, which gelled well. I used to (and still!) visualize myself as a columnist, sharing her knowledge and pondering with her fellow audience. But the role of an audience stopped within my head. I never intended for it to see the real world.

Sometime between 2006 & 2008, when I tried my hand with graduation, the idea of writing blogs dawned on me. I used to be on and off it for over 5 years, and still not wanting an audience. At some point in the last two years, I learned to let go of my inhibitions and aimed to reach out to a crowd. All this perseverance dropped dead when I reached around 10 blogs in this blog post. The reason, explained in the following para, is a threat to all writers in this day and age of access to information (Or at least I hope that I am not alone in this paranoia.).

When almost everyone can access any information, will my content be of any value? I am used to chipping down words that best explain my thoughts. These thoughts are triggered based on personal experience, and little domain knowledge that prevailed at that point. Nowadays when I decide to write, the mere act of surfing the net to add research, facts and richness to my content, obstruct my flow of thought and words. Regardless I continue, only to get confused with all the new information and end up brain dry. Following which I will fear that my essay would sound stupid since clearly there is so much more to what meets the brain. And so eventually, I will lose my plot and my life continues without having written the essay.

With a heart whelming love for writing, I don’t want this. I don’t want brain dryness. I want to be able to write what I want to write, in the way I want to write it, and when I have the words flow through me. I don’t want to take a stop at Google to figure what is more to my thoughts in this world. In fact, I want to figure that out through people themselves, who comment and respond to my essay. Is that too archaic? So be it. As human beings, we are limited. No one has all the knowledge in the world. And for all you know, even the little knowledge you have will be questioned or crushed to ashes by the next groundbreaking research paper.

In the light this, is it still ok for me to pen down my thoughts to share, in its imperfect partialness?

Originally published at beingsocial89.blogspot.com on March 4, 2018.