BUDDY,
WILL YOU WRITE WITH ME?
Writing is a skill and
creative writing is not only an individual need but it is also a collective
desire: there are writers who want to write together and readers who want to
read together. We therefore, have writers’ workshops, collaboration among
writers, and readers’ clubs.
However, there is another
aspect of this exercise that I explored and gained immensely from, during a
particularly stressful period of my writing journey.
While I was pursuing my
studies in Durham, I was required to write a lot of content, of different
variety. The demand to produce good content with narrow deadlines, was a
stressful period for me. I am a person who likes to take her time to be ready
to write and to write what I feel like writing, writing to a brief was new and
difficult, initially at least.
The practice that came to
my rescue at this time was, developing a schedule with a friend who happened to
take to writing around that time. Navjot had landed in a situation where she
had to write a book, much to her discomfort. We were in constant touch with
each other despite the distance and the difference of the time zones that
separated us. So when she took up writing, she would sometimes ask a few things
about how to write a certain portion of her book in a better manner. I remember
that more than the technique, we would discuss the suitability of a particular
content for her target readers.
I too began brainstorming
with her about the ideas and themes that I would want to or have to write about,
in my creative compositions at that time. We would discuss and debate for hours
about our pieces, and before we knew it, we would have settled on something
very different from where we had initially decided in the beginning. However,
this was not the case every time.
I am fortunate to have my
sister and my father to review my work. Their inputs have helped me immensely,
always. I believe my sister who is an intelligent reader with a refined taste,
truly understands my sentiments in my writings. I attribute a lot of my
transformation in my writings lately, to her review of my work. Despite this, I
felt that my interactions with Navjot aided my writing process to a great
extent.
While my sister reviewed
the drafts of my work, Navjot helped me to crystallise my thoughts on a theme
before I began writing. Navjot, also gave inputs from the situation of a writer
who is not a stickler for technique, my peers in the writing course are, and
thank God for that. Navjot’s circumstance of being in a challenging position of
beginning to write was similar in a way to my situation of writing under
duress, this helped us become each other’s buddy in writing. We planned our
writing schedules together and ensured that we adhered to them. We pulled each
other out of procrastination or the fabled writer’s block (we never had the
luxury to experience one, in fact not even now). We kept each other in an
environment of writing, in order to elicit the best writing from both of us. We
became each other’s writing buddy much like ‘gym buddies’. In fact Eli Roth, an
American media personality who is also a writer has said, ‘Creative writing and
shooting are muscles that atrophy. But when you work them, you become a self-generator
who can branch out.’
So, we need to workout
our creative writing muscles and who better than a buddy to workout with?
