Bite Size Miracles

I began my stint with writing 11th June 2018, 5.32 a.m., out of nowhere and for no reason. Just wanted to break out of a monotony, tide over an indifferent mood, and do something different. So I did the first thing that came to my mind. Write!

It’s not that I wasn’t aware before of my capabilities with language / penning down my thoughts. But never really believed much in my own self. Until, last year.

When I started the blog, my first thought was – “Oh God! Please let this not be like so many other things that I have started with a bang, and couldn’t finish them even until the fat lady sang!” There’s a famous quote – “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings” :-).

At that point, I was not sure myself whether I had even the motivation, let alone the capability, to continue writing beyond that week. I had started like a man possessed, now, it was time to channelize that energy into something sustainable and useful, rather than a spark out of nowhere that turned off even before it could light up its surroundings.

So, I decided not to think too far ahead, but to approach it 1 day at a time. Or one event at a time. Every special occasion turned into a thought. Every event, every little observation I could make of my surroundings, turned to prose. Every emotion turned to poetry. The idea was not to write randomly, but to anchor my writings to stuff I could see around me, to stuff that I could relate to.

To turn this into a stronger motivation, I started sharing my writings with friends. A lot of you would have received spam from me quite consistently. 🙂 It is said that nothing motivates like feedback – good or bad! And it started to flow. At first, random positives and constructive feedback. Most people didn’t even notice initially that it was not random forwards but my own writing. Few even asked me who wrote these messages, beautiful as they were. Several commented on the long and rambling nature of posts.

One of my biggest challenges was to find time to write. A time when I could be alone and think freely, without bias or agenda, without having to account for that time. So, I started becoming more particular about my travel routine back from work. I started writing on my way back home. Randomly at first, the thoughts wouldn’t flow so easily, the writings seemed forced, the desire to impress people weighing heavily on me. I have always been a perfectionist – a little too harsh always on myself. And for a perfectionist, I have the most ridiculous habit that would kill me always, the inability to say no to people, the stupid mistake of committing too much. Would the same also apply to my writings? The task of editing them to make them crisper and shorter, so that people would read them, like them. A task I hated.

I tried this a couple of times, before I realized that I am not a great writer when I start to done the hat of a perfectionist. I cannot play to the gallery. So, I made a minor adjustment to my style – I dropped out the editing – completely. What fun is a scripted emotion? Better to deal with the raw nerves. None of my writings have any editing whatsoever, except for maybe the occasional spell check. Even the rhymes in my poems are mostly spontaneous, rarely forced.

Talking of poems, I started writing poetry a lot more, simply because it was more creative, more fun to write and more fun to read. And, poetry provides creative license to let your imagination run wild – that’s how “The Storm Catcher”, one of my works, came about. And so did its part two – “The Perfect Storm”.

Habits are difficult to form. Especially the good ones. The most difficult task is to break the monotony. Even in something you love. Even in your passion. It is important to, every once in a while, break the chain – do something different. And so, I started taking on challenges. I would ask people to give me a thought or a statement or a chain of words – related or otherwise, and I would try to create a thought piece or poem out of these random inputs. I also attempted to write the same poem in two different languages, with exactly the same meaning, line for line. And I am talking of 50 line poems here, not 5 line ones. I became even more spontaneous this way, extempore writing of sorts. I may not have perfected this yet, but I am certainly much better today than when I started.

It is hard to create powerful emotions around mundane things, and so I attempt this genre quite often. Hence, “The IAF Strikes”. It was also my first attempt at humour, a genre I am yet to master.

Nothing gives a kick like an impossible dream made true. Last June, I picked up the pen, literally, for the first time. In just 2 months, my writings had started to get noticed. By the end of the 4th month, somewhere around early October, someone suggested for the first time, why don’t you write a book. Or something along those lines? My first response was a big smile, “thanks for the compliment”, with a secret glee on the inside – me? An author? Hahaha ….. My second thought was that of nervousness. It seemed people had found my crazy, silly attempt at writing, good enough to actually think I could write a book. And here, I am finding it more and more difficult to find a good topic to even write a few lines on. God, what was I getting into!

But the thought didn’t go out of my mind. It stuck. I began contemplating how I could put it all together. It took me 2 months of persistent thinking day and night, and another 1 month of relentless editing and publishing gimmicks, including an audacious title and a beautiful cover design, to get to my first book “Ouch! Middle Age! A Song, a Prayer, some Scare, some Flair!”. Published on Amazon Kindle, on 3rd Jan 2019. Another difficult item ticked off. I even entered the book into Amazon PenToPublish competition, though predictably it has not done much.

For the past 1 month I have been grappling with identifying the right format and medium to share my works to a wider audience and extending my range of writings to more serious topics. Haven’t cracked it yet, but if you have read it all above, would you bet against me? 🙂

What was the objective of this super long post? Well, it was to share my thought for the day, a simple message I could have written in just 3 lines. But when nothing in life comes easy, why should my thoughts? 🙂

So here’s the crux:

If you had asked me on 10th June 2018 that I would ever be contemplating a career in writing, that I would run a blog, author a book, and be actually known more for my words (atleast to some of you) than for my investments, I would have laughed it off myself. I wouldn’t have taken it on as a challenge no matter how much time or money you gave me to achieve this. Yet, here I stand today….. Simply, because it was never presented to me as one large challenge, unsurmountable; but as bite sized challenges, fun to crack, falling into a beautiful pattern.

When God gives you a challenge too difficult to overcome, do this – break it down into smaller tasks, keep breaking it down, to yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, even hourly challenges, and keep achieving these challenges one at a time. Forget the big picture, focus only on the challenge that’s next in front of you. And as you crack them, they will start falling into a beautiful pattern, and lead you to your goal.

Rather than hoping for one big miracle, pray for “Bite Sized Miracles”. In hope lies joy, in hope lies life!