I was a compulsive reader by about the age of ten but hated anything to do with writing. That was work. In school, the topics for essays were guaranteed to freeze the fingers and atrophy the brains. One of our teachers had a system of grading that always tripped me up. Students who showed considerable improvement over the previous week got A’s, while those who didn’t, got D’s and had to do the assignment again. Thus, weaker classmates could get higher grades than the better ones. True, this encouraged those who couldn’t write, but for others thought capable of producing good work, those weeks when our efforts were “deemed inadequate” could be discouraging. I was writing essays for friends who did my math or Hindi homework. They’d get high marks for composition but I’d have to rewrite mine because of “insufficient improvement”. The number of ideas I had was limited and trying to ration them out amongst the 2-3 essays that I had to write the night before put a strain on my brain, my fingers, and on my grades.
In my early 20s I thought I’d like to be a writer. I started off with a couple of letters to the editor and though I had some short stories published I didn’t see myself as a writer. Writers were people who wrote books, I thought. And that was hard work.
Then with my 25th birthday approaching I was expecting a massive depression.
On that day, a year before, my heart had been broken and I still hadn’t got over it. I decided that I’d be able, from the depths of my despair, to write something really profound. I was on holiday, far away from the city that we both lived in. It was my birthday and I decided to treat myself to lunch in the beautiful, and expensive, Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur. I was a bit overwhelmed by my surroundings. But there was nobody to share the meal with, or the shock of the bill when it arrived.
My birthday came and went. Weeks later I remembered that I had forgotten to be depressed. I had missed the chance to wallow in despair and profundity. So I faked a depression and wrote a short story. I thought it was really good and sent it off. But it got me my first rejection slip. The editor had got it wrong, I thought. This was real literature. Submission after submission was followed by rejection after rejection. Seeing all those rejects gave me a depression. And this one wasn’t faked.
Based on the story, one magazine did offer me a job as a staff writer. That was some consolation for the rejection slip they included in the envelope. But if they had a problem with my story, I had a problem with their politics and I declined politely.
Since then there has been little inclination to write. Once in a while I feel differently but prudence and procrastination suppress any literary urges.
@ Percy Aaron, 29 July 2013
Wow Laos 