Why Do You Write – Dig Deeper & Find Out

Writing about writing is not easy. You need to write for a long time to gather some knowledge about the craft. But the initial question is why people write on the first place? Why do you write? Is it the lure of fame or lucre that keeps you jotting words after words down on paper? Do you want to work on your own selected time and writing seemed like an easy way out? Do you write because you like to call yourself a writer? Have you ever tried to find out the answer to the question – why do you write?

Writing is not easy. You know it, if you have done it. Painting pictures with words takes time and effort. People spend years working without earning a single dime. They hide their work in secret places so that others cannot see it. Yet, they go on writing. Rejection slips mount over the table. But the writing session continues.

Why endure so much trouble? Why not just give it up and take some other mode of profession – like being an accountant. True, you will spend days staring at numbers. At least, you won’t face rejections and humiliations being an accountant. No one will criticize you either. Your world will be totally safe. The best thing is you will bring home a stable salary, every month.

Love drives people to tolerate the torment of uncertainty. Love makes people continue writing, knowing that no one will read the piece of work. Working without getting paid or without recognition requires undying passion, or, maybe a demon forcing you to do it.

Without love or the demon behind you, it is not possible to carry on with this type of torture. You need to feel that strong pull towards your writing space. This heave should be firm enough to keep you there for at least one hour everyday. Only the want of money or fame will not do the trick buddy. True, you need to have a goal. There must be a summit which you want to reach. Without knowing where you want to go, how will you find the right path? But, deep down within there should be the eternal love. This will pull you through when you are standing in the middle of a field and hail storm gets hold of you.

If you love enough, you will go down over the ground and wait for the storm to cease. And when it does, you will pull yourself up on your feet, brush the dirt off and begin walking again.

Ask yourself, dig deeper and find the answer before taking the first step. You may not have the opportunity to return unscathed.

Looking Back – Year 2011

Looking back is not easy. Looking back is facing both the triumph and the failure. Looking back is coming to term with the mistakes. Yet, it is important to look back, to realize, to face and to salvage.

The year 2011 has brought to my life a fusion of experiences. I have won some, I have lost some – tale of every living individual’s life.

What have I won? I have won the right to call myself a writer.

My life as a writer has started early. I cannot even remember the first time I picked up a pen and wrote something. I can only remember writing and….getting rejected. Before 2011 I used to keep my writing confined inside the drawers lest anyone saw them. I was not up for the ridicules of trying to do something I was not meant to do. I dreamt making sure that no one knew about the dream.

2011 had banished that fear. Today, I not only earn my living writing, I display my work too. I dream and dream big. I don’t hide my dreams anymore. I dream of being a better writer than I am today. This is my biggest gain of last year.

What I have lost?? I have lost the gift called faith on 2011. Earlier, I knew that someone lived up there, forever watching over me. I knew that all the wishes and the prayers were being heard by a loving soul and they would be granted someday.

2011 had robbed me off that faith. Today, I simply don’t know where to look. When I look up I only encounter a diamond studded canopy. I don’t feel what I felt anymore. The emptiness echoes within, yet I am helpless. I suppose, I will never be able to look up and see the heaven ever again. The sacred paradise has become exquisite horizon to my mind’s eyes.

You gotta lose something to gain something. This last year has done that both to me. Whether 2012 repeats the trend is a thing to see. When I look back, I smile in fondness and say good bye to 2011 with affection.

The Book That Saved My Soul

From the days of childhood I am an avid reader. Reading is salvation to me. I go through pages after pages like a person whose life depends on reading the last line of the book. In this lifetime I have read numerous books, thousands. Few of them vanished the moment I finished the story. Few have made a permanent place in my heart.

Torn Apart by Hal Friedman and James Patterson is such a tale. The true story of a child’s struggle to return to a normal life after being shattered by Tourette syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and anxiety disorder, made me blink tears uncountable times. This non-fiction has all the twists and turns of a well plotted novel. The enthralling tale of suffering and defeat made me forget that I was reading a non-fiction.

When I started reading the story, I was going through a tough time myself. Life, all of a sudden, felt like a burden to me. Every morning I woke up with the question buzzing inside my head – is this life worth living? Tragically I could produce no answer to that question. This is the tale of another lifetime, one that I have lived and I have left behind. Whether I have won or fallen flat over my face defeated, I have no idea. I just don’t ask myself anything anymore. And yes, today I believe that life is worth living.

As I journeyed with the characters and experienced first hand the pain they had suffered and the strength they had displayed to conquer the setbacks, my own problems suddenly reduced before my eyes. I felt almost ashamed of the sulking and whining that I had done. I read the book crying and smiling at the same time. I cheered Cory whenever he overcame a drawback. I admired the courage of his father. I loved his mother when she stood by her son and faced the world. The fact that I also have got a mother like that made the affection even more real to me. I could connect with the mother and her pain.

After I finished the book, I sat silent for a long time, replaying the tale of struggle and success in my mind. I told myself the characters in the book were not the paper characters they were flesh and blood human beings. They had won because they refused to lose. They made it because they wanted to.

Sometimes reading becomes more than a pleasure trip. Sometimes reading holds you by hand the helps you cross the path, you dread the most. This is not a book review. There is nothing to write about the plot or the story. I don’t have anything to say about the writing either as James Patterson is a master storyteller and knows how to hold the reader by the neck till the story comes to an end.

Everyone who thinks there is no hope, not anymore anyways, should read this book once. Read it carefully and feel the pain. You will realize that even at the beginning of darkest dusk, there is still hope. And hope remains as long as you keep trying.

Read, discover and heal your scars. Live because life is beautiful……….

Fearing Failure is the Steppingstone of Failure

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear..” Mark Twain

I did not know the truth of this sentence for a long time. Since the days of childhood, I feared failure. That time it was flunking the final exam and remaining in the same class. Later it was being rejected by the publishers. But there remained the big, scary F word.

As I grew up, along with me grew the fear of failure. This fear kept me away from doing a lot of things. I was scared to admit that I wanted to be a writer. I was also scared to show anyone my writings. There was a sense of comfort in keeping the writings locked inside the drawers. I was comfortable. Showing my work to the world means enduring criticism, rejection yet. I was not up for that.

For a long time I adhered to this comfort zone. When I began trying my hands on creative writing, I stayed within the threshold of this region. Crossing this meant to me crossing the line of fire. I rather be at ease all the time.

This habit had cost me a lot. Whenever I walked into a block while writing a story, I stopped. Instead of trying to find a way to get past the adversity, I gave up writing it altogether. I kept saying that real writers never experienced this kind of blocks. The fact I faced this problem was the evidence that I was not a writer. Writing being a hobby was fine but taking this as a profession? No ways……..come on guys get real.

I failed to finish numerous stories which I would have loved to read because I was scared to make mistake. I wrote each line with the nagging feeling in my heart that no one would read this, publishers would reject this because this was not good enough.

All my life I feared failure. In the end this fear almost possessed me and got me down to the dust. What you fear, you become.

I had to force myself to deal with this. Kicking the ass of the fear was not easy but I had to.

Now, I write because this gives me pleasure. I know that even if no one reads what I am writing, at least my soul will derive solace from the fact that I have created this. I make mistakes and bindas do it. Being able to learn from the mistakes is the best thing that had ever happened to me. Believing in my ability to create has done wonders to my energy.

Today, I am a professional writer. I earn my living writing for websites. Am I proud of the fact? You are damn right I am. But this would not have happened had I not fucked the fear and made myself go with flow.

Don’t I fear now? I do fear. Only I have turned that into a driving force. Now I keep improving myself everyday because I am scared. I learn because I am frightened. I read like I am gonna die tomorrow. I live like life will end tomorrow. I write like this is the only chance I have to make it.

You see, earlier I used to fear blogging. I asked myself all the time, would anyone read this? Today, I have just expressed my feeling at a go. Who reads this does not really count as long as I can go on writing.

“Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain..” Mark Twain

Taking a Moment Off to Say Thank You

I have always wanted to be a professional writer. The joy of creating something out of nothing has driven me towards this path. All I wanted was to earn a living selling my writing. A simple task, don’t you think? Wwwweeeelllll………not really. Ask me what I have been through before I sold my first writing.

I have passed out from a school where the first lesson of English started from the sixth standard. The day I held my first English text book in my hand is still vivid in my mind. I remember touching the cover with the affection of a painter touching the canvas of the painting after finishing it. I remember feeling a twinge of fright. I knew that I was stepping into an unknown territory.

Not knowing what awaits in the turf I am about to traverse, sent a sharp shiver down my spine. I welcomed the fear. It felt good. It felt almost sacred. I turned the cover of Learning English (the English text book for Bengali medium students) and looked inside. It started with a lesson of ABCD. Imagine learning ABCD at the age of twelve. It’s true my father had taught me the alphabets long before I reached sixth standard. But the lesson ended there and I learnt no more.

As the lesson in school began, I discovered that I was not at all good in the language. Still I felt drown towards English and wanted to learn it. How I did, although I am still learning, is another story, one that I don’t want to tell.

I kept trying until I could overcome the fear and begin to enjoy the splendor of English. My next hurdle was to get myself a job of a writer – any job would have done it. This obstacle almost shattered me to the pieces. How many times I got rejected, I don’t even know. Some employers laughed at my attempt to write for a living, some challenged me and told me that I would never make it. One of them even went ahead and told that I write words without even knowing the meanings.

I took them all. Embraced the criticism, sometimes antagonism and proceeded. When I failed to walk, I crawled ahead. But I kept moving and kept learning. I wrote things knowing that no one would read them, knowing no one would pay for them. Yet I wrote.

I won’t say I have reached my destination. In this profession there is no such thing, there is only a road through which you can walk ahead. But no matter how far you walk, this path will never end. There is another specialty of this boulevard – here exists no rule. It is amazing. And finally I realized that nothing does matter. Whether I get published or I get rejected hardly counts to me. I have the ability to create and now I am making a living writing. Every paycheck that I receive is a reward to me. I cherish money now, because now I make money doing what I do best.

Never had I thought about stopping and bowing my head down in respect and say thanks for all these. Never had I cared. I never expressed gratitude for the nudge I received whenever I stopped. Today, however, I think the time has at last come to say thank you to the angles who has guided me throughout and hope will be there forever.

Tomorrow You will Die – What Is Your Plan for Today?

Yes, each one of us will have to yield into the arms of death someday. This life is about to end. Someday, you will no longer remain as you. Your mortal body will perish and cease to non existence. You only have one lifetime to make your dream come true.

Dreams are expensive. There will be a price tag. You will have to ask yourself whether you are ready to pay the price or not. Leaving everything you have, giving up the security for an unknown path takes courage. You will have to be insane to walk the walk, knowing the peril of chasing your dream. You may be wrong in doing so. You may even be right – you never know that, do you? Making mistakes is the best way of learning.

We spend our lives fearing failure. We say to ourselves that we don’t have what it takes to make it big. We fear – thus we fail. How are you to know that you don’t have it? How can you decide that unless you try?

Success and security cannot go hand in hand. You will have to make a choice. Either you embrace security or you reach out to success. The path which leads to security is easy. Strolling down to this turf will bring you only that security. The other one leads you through the unfamiliar mazes, the difficult one. You won’t know what awaits you. The thrill of not knowing, the fear of danger will force you to keep improving yourself.

There were people who chose this unknown road and emerged out the winner. Some died trying to make their dreams come true. Some survived to enjoy the glory of success. But none died regretting not trying when there was still time.

Open your arms and welcome your dream into your life. Pay the price, make the sacrifice and love your dream. Love yourself also for having the courage. You will make it, if only you believe it. Plan today, reach out today. Life offers no guarantee. Live today because tomorrow you may die………….

20 years from now you will be disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the one’s you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover ~ Mark Twain

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – A Review

The Plot at a Glance

A man stabbed to death inside a locked room, a set of footprints below an open window, a blackmailing scam about to be revealed, nine people with motive and an overly clever sleuth. That more or less covers the entire plot of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

This book has cooked up a whirlpool of controversy. Yet, this one is regarded as Agatha Christie’s masterpiece and a treat for any mystery lover.

A Glimpse of the Story

The story opens up with a death. It is a suicide. But, there is always a big but in every mystery story and nothing happens without a reason. The cause of death is blackmailing. The woman fails to deal with the continuous pressure for money and kills herself.

The next evening, right after dinner a letter from the deceased woman arrives at Roger Ackroyd’s doorstep. The first few lines promise the disclosure of the blackmailer’s name. But, Mr. Ackroyd dies before he gets to finish the mail. Few hours later Mr.Ackroyd’s family doctor discovers the body but not the letter.

Hercule Poirot takes the matter in his own hands and begins the investigation. What follows next is a torrent of clues, along with revelations of secrets. Each one of the nine suspects has got something to hide and it is up to Poirot to unearth the secrets one by one.

The Conclusion

Agatha Christie wrote this book to fool the readers. Every mystery writer wants to do that. But, everyone does not fulfill the task as effectively as Agatha Christie did in this book. Poirot reveals the name of the murderer in the last chapter. Before that it will be a guessing game for the readers. Each character as a suspect has played the role well. Each one of the motive is so strong that only an airtight alibi can save the suspect.

Finally, the red herring, the major weapon of any mystery writer, is so wonderful that you will see through the misleading clues, you will know that the particular character is being framed, but alas, the face behind the mischief remains hidden.

I sat in dumb silence for a long time after finishing the book. I was disgusted with the author. I was enthralled by her also. It was a kind of a grudging admiration which she won that day. She did her job and fooled me. She also did another thing – she churned my curiosity and made me crave for more of her.