Nupur Chaturvedi

Words are all I have.
But if words are all I have then I am sitting on a goldmine, right? Well, sometimes words are not enough.

My writing struggles have not been so much with form as with content. That is not to say that I have perfected form. I’ve taught writing skills in my organisation and I usually put forth the editorial power triangle, which comprises of grammar, style and content. I have the formula down pat. I know where and how to improve grammar. I even have the route map set down for style. But content? That is the heart, isn’t it? So what do you write about when you are not clear what the heart wants?

Whenever I have chosen a medium of self-expression–photography, theater, music, writing–I have picked it up and then let it go. Yes, attention span has something to do with it. So does a general laid-back attitude.

What I have realized over time, however, is that there hasn’t been any compelling reason to make me stick to any of them. Form or medium, for its own sake hasn’t been enough for me. (I am sure there are many for whom that is not true, for whom honing their skills in a particular form is a pursuit in itself.) If you give me a reason to write, commission me to write something, I will. Leave me in a room, however, and ask me to come up with a topic for writing, and you’ll have to give me several days’ worth of ration to survive. I can sing fine, but ask me to come up with a song, and my mind freezes. It’s like saying you have the money to book tickets and hotel, time set aside, leave sanctioned, but you don’t know where you want to travel to!

Take this blog, for instance. I signed up on WordPress, inspired by another friend and also motivated by own conviction that if you are a writer, you must have a blog. And yet, for months, I just couldn’t conjure up a post. Another blog I began years ago sits unattended, a repository of my poems and short stories, written in a previous lifetime.

It’s not that I don’t have anything to say. It’s not even that I don’t have any interests. My problem is quite the opposite actually. I am interested in everything. I am interested in technology. I am interested in culture. In history. In community development. In economics (okay, maybe I am exaggerating to make a point!).

The issue is to zero down on that one area, and then within that to one sub area, and then within that to one topic. Who wants to read stuff written by li’l ol’ me on everything in general? My friends, family? Well, I talk to them directly when I want to. If self-expression has to happen at this scale, where I am expecting people to read, I need to respect my readers and give them something worth reading, right? And so I mentally pick topic after topic and discard it. Maybe I should write film reviews. Maybe food. Maybe technology. The maybes continue but no writing comes out. And meanwhile I am ghost-writing blogs for others.

Anyway, long story short (yes, I know, too late for that!), I am starting an experiment. I will just pick one of the topics that even vaguely interests me and write whatever that inspires me to. Let’s see where this goes. I could continue to meander, but I would have practised my writing. Or I could find something that holds my interest for longer than one post. The idea is to post.

So, ready, set, go!