Writing for the purpose of pleasure

It has been quite a while since I wrote a post here, the last one was on 29^th September, 2009. This was 508 days ago, or 1 year, 4 months and 21 days, or 72 weeks, or 12,192 hours, or 731,520 minutes, or 43,891,200 seconds, ago!

Well, I didn’t need to be so overly melodramatic about the duration but I kind of need the reminder in such an intense manner; that is exactly how long it has been since I last wrote something for pleasure, and with this post, here I am, trying to get back into it. I made it my New Year’s resolution for this year to get back into the lost habits of reading and writing for pleasure. I guess I can not really call them “lost” habits for I wasn’t in those habits so passionately ever. Sure I read a lot, half of it as a requirement in school and college, and half of it for pleasure. But the reading habit I talk about here concerns mostly books, paperback novels, non-fiction, fantasy…just about anything interesting.

Along with reading I told myself I should get into the habit of writing, writing for pleasure; I mean, this is why I created this blog in the first place. I’ve had this kind of inclination to write many a time, and I hope this time around it stays for good.

Thus, the topic I want to base this post on is about the very art of writing itself. In calling it an “art” I want to lead myself to think that like how all works of art are executed, writing should be more about the idea it is expressing, the fluidity of thoughts in motion, an outlet for emotion. I want to write on this simple premise, writing for pleasure, not for any kind of purpose whatsoever.

I’m faced with this conundrum every time I even remotely think of writing something down – I think of the article that’d shape up in the end, the one who might read it, the impact it would have on him/her, the way it would maybe change someone’s life, make someone laugh, make someone ponder. That way I throw a huge gauntlet of expectations upon myself which I think I can never possibly hope to live up to. And thus that germinating seed of an idea gets smothered under the weight of gargantuan expectations, most of them plain outrageous.

My writing will maybe fade away into the sands of time, maybe stay in this blog on some server for eternity just to be forgotten, it surely won’t be changing anyone’s life, and the fate of the world will never rest upon my written word – this is the reality I need to bring myself to face. I need to tell myself that I should be writing for my sake more than anyone else out there. Out of all the things I could be doing, this is selfishly for myself, I’m doing this FOR ME!

So there you have it, I have a purpose now and what better purpose to write for than me, myself. Folks, it doesn’t get any more selfish than this! I need not have taken such a vile and despicable means of pushing myself to write, but who knows, this guilt trip might just work after all.

Before I end this post, I want to go back to the beginning, the inspiration this time around that made me write again – a post on my Facebook Wall by my high-school English teacher, Ma’am Phuntsho Choiden Wangchuk.

We had been talking about our New Year resolutions and the topic of writing came up. Ma’am Phuntsho used to give us writing assignments which we thought were unconventional – we had never heard of free-writing, where you just pick up a pen and start writing about anything that comes to your mind, no dwelling on any one idea for too long, no need for polished words, just your mind pouring out on paper.

We had heard of journals, I even maintained one each during my 7^th and 9^th grades. But the summer writing assignment she gave us in our 10^th standard was to maintain a journal during our summer break and write about some 20 topics she had hand-picked for us. There was no connection between one topic and the other, no continuity so to say, and it wasn’t a daily diary entry either. Any topic could be written on any day, just that every topic needed to be written on. I remember getting really excited about that assignment; I always loved writing, just never got around to writing on my own, for reasons which have been hitherto mentioned; I loved writing essays in school on topics handed to us by our English teachers, but if I had been asked to write an essay on any topic of my choice I would have given up just trying to choose one topic out of many. But here was a list of topics I could write for fun – a ‘purpose’ of writing ‘for pleasure’. I completed the assignment in much the same excitement as I had started it.

Now, why did I need to mention about this particular journal at all?

Well, there I was, chatting with Ma’am about writing and how I had almost given up on it, and then she told me something that blew my mind away – she told me she still has that journal of mine with her. She went on to say that I write well and I should stick to it, not for anyone out there as much as for myself. And a few days later came the post from her on my Facebook Wall which went:

“ ‘A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.’ - Zinsser

And why did you come to mind when I read this? There was something else he said that reminded me of our conversation.

‘Assume that you are the writer sitting down to write. You think your article must be of a certain length or it won't seem important. You think how august it will look in print. You think of all the people who will read it. You think that it must have the solid weight of authority. You think that its style must dazzle. No wonder you tighten; you are so busy thinking of your awesome responsibility to the finished article that you can't even start.’

And why am I quoting him to you? You know why!!!”

The role of a teacher is not limited within the confines of the classroom, it extends well beyond it into the realms of our daily lives, and this is one such example. I owe Ma’am Phuntsho a lot just for making me write, even if I don’t make it beyond this one particular post. If, God forbid, that should happen, I’ll come back to this post one day and be reminded of the “selfish purpose” for which I should keep writing – to write for myself, to write FOR ME!