Better egoistic than poseur

As a writer, one question you will come across a lot is "why do you write?" It is a wise question, for what was it that make people walk the path of self-torture to fill empty pages.

For me, It all started with a bluff. In my country, students get divided into various streams after 10th grade according to which field of work to they want to invest the rest of their lives. The well-known options are Science, Commerce, Liberal Arts and Diploma Courses.

On one normal day when nobody wanted to study our teacher asked us what we want to become when we grow up, no ambiguous answers were to be accepted. The activity stirred up everyone's brain and their secret ambitions of becoming doctors, engineers, CA were shared. While I was busy making a list of all the things I did not want to pursue.

The closer the teacher get to my place the speedier my brain get at rejecting all kind of respected jobs and between all the chaos a tiny part of me bluffed, "Writer,"

Certainly, the task was easier said than done. As when I took the initiative to pen some words down, I came across the writer's universe and it left me horrified. People kept fighting on which genre is superior, Scifi VS Melo, Romance VS fantasy, Teen Fic VS Chic Lit. The fire kept growing and reached to the means of story distribution. In this universe, which I expected to be a safe haven of people with similar goal turned out to be nothing different than the reality where a novelist or Poet was equivalent to surgeons while a movie scriptwriter or a drama writer were considered dentist or local physician.

So, I could relate and understand the pressure a Storyteller must have running in a race to become the perfect 'heart surgeon' writer. What I couldn't fathom was the ideology of measuring a writer's work based on what genre or what medium they use for telling a story when we are living in a period of time when people are against discrimination.

I wondered how deeply rooted the thought of others failure is my success must be that it is so hard to understand that a poet is a writer, a novelist is a writer, a columnist is a writer, an essayist is a writer and a person who writes quotes or six-word story is also a writer.

But then again, becoming a writer doesn't need anything more than some passion for telling stories while sustaining as a writer is a whole different story. So, my fellow writers If you are making deadlines and forcing yourself to write in hope to become J. K. Rowling then I am sorry but that isn't going to happen because the world already has a J. K. Rowling. So, don't write to her readers but write to get your own readers.

Just like every dish doesn't have to be Michelin star to be delicious, not every writing has to be remarkable to be worth reading. So, even if your grammar needs a check-up, your vocabulary needs Google, your punctuation seems to be on vacation and your plot sounds more cliché than a breakthrough, know that it's okay. And just write, for your story might make someone's heart race, it might show a new path to some lost soul or it might turn out to be a perfect escape for someone.

So, writer for yourself, for those who believe in you but most importantly write for the non-biased craft of writing.