On a Literary Journey Yet to Start

Words like “writer” are funnily baggy. Such words fit themselves into a wide range of meanings, often at odds with one another. Anyone, from having authored 40-50 books to four or five stories could be called a writer. Even the word “journey” could have sundry implications. A journey could be any movement — physical or mental, between two points in place and time. The stretch of distance between the two places is not very significant. Travelling from Delhi to Rohtak is as apt to be called a journey as doing so from Dehradun to Rameshwaram. Besides, it does not matter whether the person travelling is a first timer or a serial traveller.

The expression, “literary journey,” however, calls for a significant narrowing down of “the” journey. So, while with a few published stories, I can call myself a writer, I  doubt whether I have yet embarked on anything  that can be called a literary journey.

A decade ago, I had poured out the feeling of a broken heart on 30 long pages and presumed myself to be a sprouting novelist. The words in those pages probably contained the seeds of a prospective novel, but the seeds lay filed on my desktop for years without being sown and watered. In the meantime, I was pining for my distanced spouse, nursing a young baby and teaching batches of majorly disinterested undergrad students. Only occasionally did I think of what could be done about the draft. But I did nothing about it.

Around the same time, I chanced upon Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. The aspiring writer in me, also a novice and devout reader, perused the book with brimming expectation to find handy guidance and lasting inspiration. I submitted myself rather too thoroughly to Rilke’s wisdom. Reading his words with an intent to follow them, I  put myself in the place of the addressee of the letters. Soon, I came across the following lines:

“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of  your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of night: must I write?”

The lines seemed quite harsh to me. They made me think of writing as an outlandishly profound pursuit. I decided that writing was not a question of life and death for me. How could it be! I was doing everything else but writing. My preoccupations, each one of them, seemed distanced from writing. Intimidated, I dismissed my writing skills and aptitude after reading that part of the “Letters.” Self doubt weighing heavier on me, I concluded that those 30 pages I’d written were nothing more than an accident.

In next few years, a lot changed about my life; I was living in a bigger city, trying to find a job; my baby was growing up with little family support. The circumstances made writing difficult for me, but occasional poems came out of my pen; a few of them even making it to newspapers and journals. Most remained locked inside my desktop file, however. I was not proud of what I was writing and often oscillated between a desire to share it with the world and hide it from all.

One grocery shopping day, spread next to piles of onion and guavas, I saw a vendor of returnable half-priced books. From him I purchased a book called “Finding Your Writer’s Voice.” As if the book could unlock the “writer’s voice” in me, I read through it greedily after returning home. No secret tools to extract words and ideas from inside my mind and shape them up into creative fiction were found in the book. The tips it suggested seemed insipid. I could not relate to them and was highly disappointed.

Then, I met a new author in a conference and opened my heart to him. I asked him why could not I face my juvenile fiction draft and take it forward. He told me “you must try to develop it as a short story. Try writing short stories first, publish them, if readers like them, go for the big plan. You sometimes need to discard and dispose of, too. You can’t wait endlessly for an incomplete work to yield itself into completion. Get rid of it. Try something new.”

I published a few stories, began working on several others, and the idea of a book of stories formed in my mind. But my stories always seemed to be missing something. Each presented a different kind of challenge. The biggest challenge was slow progress. I could write a paragraph now and add another after a week. Little real writing happened. Sometimes a particular character would not show up as desired. Sometimes language would not seem appropriate. Did I need a writing course?  Soon, I came upon the trailer of Salman Rushdie’s Masterclass on writing. The video recounted the stagnation in Rushdie’s mammoth literary career and some key realisations he had had as a writer. One thing he said here hit me hard. He said, to write, you need to know “who you are.”

Not that I had not heard such a thing before. But, somehow, I realised its full meaning and significance only after hearing it from Rushdie. In the finely curated video, a handsomely aging Rushdie sat in his black suit against a bright red and yellow background featuring caricatures from his works. His voice rang with the humility and honesty of years and genuine accomplishments. He noted how stories were fundamental to human existence, how he too wrote garbage and writers must strive to “be interesting.” I could not tell between my ears and my soul.

I was not able to write because I lacked clarity about myself. My inhibition to writing was, in a way, my inhibition to recognise and acknowledge my own individuality. In retrospect, the messages of both Rilke, and “Finding Your Writer’s Voice” were clear now. It was I who was probably unwilling to embrace their implications earlier.

Based on Rushdie’s hints, I did a quick review of what I was reading. I realised I was mostly reading female writers and poets. What seemed like random picks of authors earlier, seemed not so random now. The choices were a reflection of a subconscious preference. I noted to myself how my published and unpublished stories were either about women or had an overpowering presence of  a woman in them. Coincidently, a line from a poet I was reading kept playing itself again and again in my mind; “Sing what runs in your vein.” I have been writing about women protagonists unintentionally.  But I needed to know why I was writing about women. Were those stories telling me who I was?

—-x—-

Bio note:

Dr. Jindagi Kumari works as Assistant Professor at Maharaja Surajmal Institute of Technology, New Delhi where she teaches English Language and Communication Skills to B. Tech students. She completed her PhD in the field of Indian English poetry from Indian School of Mines ( IIT-ISM) Dhanbad. The areas of her research interest include Indian English fiction, Indian English poetry, and post-colonial studies. She has published short stories and poems in journals such as Muse India, Setu, Kitaab, Teesta Review and The Bombay Review. Additionally, she has published several research papers and a book on writing skills.