Hi!
Growing up, I was a hothead, and my mum often talked about me as a "moody child" before guests. In my defence (then and now), I grew up surrounded by hot-heads and hence anger became the natural response to most things. Even our love and concern for each other are wrapped in expressions of wrath. But the 'moody' bit of this personality description felt a little offensive. I never wanted to be known as a person who is so incapable of handling their inner battles that the entire world has to stay clear of their moods and phases. It took me a good 21-22 years to change this detail about myself and evolve into my current version, where I'm 90% less moody/unpredictable and inconsiderate than before. In retrospect, a lot of the credit for this self-evolution goes to journaling and mindful living practices. I'm still evolving, but I do see that people find it easier to hang out with me now than, let's say, in pre-COVID times. Of course, there are still weak links in this equation; for instance, I'm still as moody, grumpy, and unapproachable toward people who have forever been mean to me and made life difficult for me. You get what you give, right!?
Image Source: StockSnap
Anyway, this self-analysis isn't the point of this post; writing is. I tend to begin writing where it makes sense in my head, and so, you had to read the above paragraph (where I made a very poor attempt at highlighting how healing and therapeutic writing can be), but what brought me here today is the idea that no matter how intensely I yearn to write these days, motivation is always scarce. I am definitely becoming a lazy writer. But, more than that, I think it's the realisation that whatever I end up saying here on my blog, or perhaps as a WhatsApp status, already exists in a much more catchy, crisp and entertaining format in an Insta reel or YouTube shorts video. No information is new today, no idea is unique. The same goes for my field of research in ELT, for content creation, and for book themes. We've advanced a lot in these aspects over the years, generations and centuries to have any new seed of thought left unexplored. You can have examples of poorly explored ideas, yes, but you can seldom find an area that is uncovered by existing artists.
In the absence of that recognition of novelty, how motivated can a writer/artist be?
This question often worries me. For as long as I've known the written word and loved reading literature, I've wanted to be a writer. As a child, if someone asked me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I'd often say that I want to see my name on the cover page of a best-selling book. Today, I can't even sit for a minute straight without worrying about a task I've been procrastinating on at work, a probable family or relationship issue, or perhaps enjoying the guilty pleasure of doom scrolling when I should instead be working on my thesis.
Where does one find the zeal to be creative when one is constantly scrolling through others' creative pieces online or struggling with adulting?
Thinking for too along along these lines makes me wonder that perhaps I've already fallen into the loop and am too far ahead in the rat race of life to find the time and space to let my imaginative brain take lead and weave beautiful stories of fiction inspired from my life events, which I swore as a kid (while secretly shedding tears) will become subjects of discussion in my big novel, and will serve as opportunity cost of the next big piece of literature people read and admire? The other thought that makes me skip a heartbeat is this: what if that imaginative brain no longer exists? What if I've used up all my writing skills and can no longer produce anything worthy of people's time, and the pressure on their reduced attention span? Often, this line of rumination makes me sigh and accept that perhaps it's okay to not be a known writer, perhaps my earthly roles and duties are more important than the inner kid's dreams that originated on her home's terrace. Perhaps destiny has other plans. So easy to put things on destiny, right?
Well, yes, it's extremely hard to find the space (physical, mental and emotional) to bring the characters in your head to life, and harder still to formulate those characters from scratch on a random day when you decide it's time to finally sit and write. But some people have done it, done it hastily, done it painstakingly, done it casually, done it ardently, but basically done it. Not all readers become writers, and not all writers are readers. The latter often end up producing cliched work, and the former often overlook and undermine their potential to come up with something original. Blaming things on destiny is uncool, but sometimes, people are destined to be writers (case in point: Arundhati Roy, she mentions it in her memoir). I cannot say for sure if I'm destined to be a writer (you'll find out if I ever write a memoir, which would essentially make me a writer, LOL), nor can I call myself an avid reader, since my reading habits have visibly declined ever since I became an adult. Weirdly enough, when I was a bookworm, I often found myself incompetent to write any long-format work of fiction, but this was possibly because I was still a teenager back then with very little worldview. Going by this logic, we have narrowed me down to a probable writer of cliches (look for my name on GoodReads in the future to check if this is true)!
Talking about losing the writer's pen or *spark*, we cannot deny the fact that the presence of social media and GenAI has been a slow killer of a writer's creative voice. But that being said, I am hopeful that the inner writer isn't lost after all! I tend to avoid going to ChatGPT for anything that needs me to write. On 9 out of 10 days, I'm successful; for the remaining black sheep of a day, you might find me stuck in a self-loathing spiral in my head. But that's okay, self-criticism is necessary (at least in this context)!
P.S.: No AI tools were used in writing this piece. Use of asterisks above is intentional!
