The Agony and Ecstasy of Writing

Many a time while writing, I suffer miserably. I find it to be mediocre. Self-doubt plagues me when I reread what I have written. There are days when I look at the blank screen for long periods of time in frustration. During the long breaks from writing, I roam around the house, feeling guilty and annoyed at myself.

- Smt. Sujatha Rao

Then there are those rare times, I have to rush to my laptop, or pull out my mobile phone frantically to capture my flooding thoughts, even if it is in the middle of the night, lest they should vanish into thin air.

I read and read in an effort to imbibe the best practices of my favourite writers. This habit, however, more often than not, reminds me of my own inadequacy to write so beautifully. While I marvel at their perfectly crafted sentences, it makes me feel jealous. But still I read on. While I am immersed in reading, those sentences mean so much more to me than what is going on in my life at that point in time. Some of the sentences just leap out of the page with their pregnant meaning, leaving me pining for more. I feel connected to the characters on those pages and empathize with them, as if they are part of my life.

I realize reading and writing make me live in the moment to the exclusion of past or future. They often allow me to experience the richness of multiple lives within the span of my single life.

Though I don't know who my readers are going to be, I feel and hope that I have the power of reaching out to them and drawing them into my stories so that they too can experience the world created by me, just like I had the privilege of inhabiting the worlds created by others.