Writing about Hard Work

Writing does seem to have opened up yesterday, I managed 1300 words and counting, but it was laborious, hard work.

Someone I was talking to yesterday mentioned that I should include my blogging efforts within the said word count, but I disagree. When I said 1000 words a day, I meant fiction. If I can’t manage that, too bad, but I can’t possibly fill up the gap with all the stuff I write otherwise, my blogs, e-mails and so on.

It is a daily struggle, one I intend to win, irrespective of the cost. I have finally got a book I wanted as research material for one of my projects, so things should go better from here on out.

It is a gloomy, fuzzy day here in KL, and all the greenery surrounding my apartment looks dull and uninspiring. But it is sunnier inside my heart than it has been in a long time, and for that I’m thankful.

Writing about horror and self-loathing

As I’ve been moaning in the last few posts, I’m not getting much writing done.

Determined to reverse this situation, I sat my butt down this morning to write. But of course, I had to check out the mail and the news before I stared at the blank page. (ggggrrrrrrrrrrrrr…..)

I saw this piece , and it was not the incident that shocked me as much as my reaction: This would make a compelling story, was my first thought. Here were people who were committing suicides and killing their own children because they lost jobs, and here I was, mining for a story. Disgusting. For a moment, I really, really hated myself. And despite all the excuses I’m giving myself, (writers borrow from fact to write fiction, and other such crap), I can’t feel good about myself.

Hah. So much for a great start to a writing day. Maybe I can write all about self-loathing? See you all at the other end of 1000 words (hopefully) of utter crap (of this I’m sure)!

Sorry to be spreading negative energy guys, now for some mind calming exercises, and back to my notebook!

Writing about Memories

Memory writing

Memories

Images remain
as nails driven hard,
the eyes are gouged out
yet images remain,
limp eyelids blink
on hollow sockets,
blood trickles down.

Images nestle
in the raw flesh.
I should have known
that haunting images
floating random
in ether,
shall one day return
and go deeper inside,
as you hammer them
softly in.

Writing in pain, of pain and scars

When I wrote the post on the relationship between writing and pain, I knew I would have to go through what I am now, the surgery was planned quite some time ago.

I have a scar on my face, the result of an excision, and boy, it hurts! The scar throbs every time I look down, and I haven’t yet figured out a way to not look down when I’m writing.

Hopefully it will all get better soon, but till then, writing every word is a pain, literally! A bit like Harry Potter’s throbbing scar, I keep telling myself, only the darn thing throbs all the time. My husband looks at the stitches in rapt fascination, cos you can see them clearly under the redness and the transparent bit of plaster. Sometimes I feel he wishes he had it instead, boys and scars have a fascinating relationship:).

But it was an experience really, this whole excision thing, painless other than a few anesthetic injections, and the near headache I got from trying not to look at the glaring operation lights. But I could feel the blood trickling down my face, the doc working fast and easy with a thin thread to do the stitching, and I could smell the burning when the laser switched on.

The whole idea of broken skin is familiar, because I have been accident-prone the past year, small cuts, burns, broken bones. But deliberate cutting of flesh is something else. And so is the sight of blood-soaked cotton on the floor when I was asked to get up from the operating bed.

It is a bit hard for me to think of all the acres of tattoos decorating human bodies all over the world, how people undergo repeated pain in order to deliberately mark their bodies.

And harder still is the thought of all those people who go under the knife time and time again to change their looks: citizens of the glam world I understand, for them looks are livelihood, but what about suburban housewives who go through months of pain to transform themselves, getting addicted in the process?

What about people who get off on pain? Interesting thought, that, one that is a complete mystery to me.

Aargh, there goes my scar again, throb, throb, pull, pull,…….time to go back to some patient roof-staring till the pain subsides, and I can continue writing!

Writing on suffering

Sometimes it is a sentence heard out of context, from an unlikely source that gives meaning to what is going on in your life. 

Yesterday, I was watching a drop-dead gorgeous movie superstar being interviewed on TV, and the interviewer asked him about a not-such-a-good career phase of his life, a string of flops after a debut hit. 

And he said, “Well, it was also the period of my life when I was working hard on the movie that made me who I am today. 

That dark period of critical and popular oblivion was an incredibly depressing experience full of suffering. But I used it to ask questions, to find answers, to channel those answers into creative channels and evolve as an actor.

 
 I believe that it is important not just to survive through a difficult experience, but to actually use it to bounce back: if you do not ask the right questions when you are suffering, you are likely to merely live through it instead of evolving through it”.

 
This is excellent within the realm of materialism, but it also makes a great deal of sense in the spiritual part our lives.

They say that “Suffering ennobles a man”, but we know different. Suffering leaves some of us bitter, turns others into villains.

 
But only those of us who ask the “right” questions during their suffering, and reach out for the “right” answers are made more noble.

Of writing and pain

For some people, mostly writers, writing is a pain!

For others, pain is an inspiration, something to be fed on in order to write:

You must dive into the depths of your being and throw out everything but your pain, and then set to work on all those raw nerve cells, asking each one if it likes its pain, and what is its pain, and what would it like to do with its pain, and then you imbibe all that pain and you revel in that pain and you let that pain burn into your consciousness until the only thing you know is pain, and then you begin to write that pain, letting that pain be jetted from you like a white hot flame, and you let that pain sear the page so that others can feel your pain.

Pain brings with it a kind of disturbance, a suffering that shakes you to the very soul. You face fickleness and mortality, feel their breath upon you. It makes you ask questions, it makes you angry, guilty, frustrated.

You start expressing yourself in your writing, sharing the anger and helplessness at your suffering.

This can reduce your writing to the level of personal melodrama and self-pity, but the challenge is to rise above it.

Writing about personal suffering (be it physical and emotional) finds an audience not because a majority of people are happy to see someone else’s pain, but because the author has been able to portray it in such a way that it evokes universal empathy.

Not only does the reader feel an empathy, he or she sometimes also finds a glimpse of Truth, an insight into life as it is lived.It is for this insight that a reader ultimately remembers a book, an essay, or a poem that was infused with pain.

Sometimes the measure of one’s existence is the extent and intensity of pain one has suffered. It often becomes the measure of a writer.