At the beginning of 2015, I didn’t know where I was going. I wasn’t motivated to do anything other than my 9-5 job. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job. But it was that period, that the job wasn’t challenging anymore. I was going through a relationship turmoil and had my own troubles with motivation. Life was monotonous. I was looking for a respite, a change. Writing came along.
Week after week, I would go to 9–5 job and spend weekends socializing with friends. It all seemed great. I felt I had everything. I had enough money, friends, but what I lacked was something to look forward to every day. It wasn’t the challenge, the next big project or travel that I was looking for. Frustration had reached the pinnacle. I had to get out of this rut.
Finding the writing process
A trip to Miami with a close friend and it changed the perspective for life. It brought me closer to the process. Process to write. I started to write. At first, it was scribbling, writing my thoughts, understanding my thought patterns. Deep inside, there was a lot. Writing started to make me feel relieved, challenged, motivated. I wrote everything I could. But then I saw this painting.
This painting changed everything. It brought back so many memories from childhood that I was overwhelmed. I knew what I was getting into. This painting tells the story of common people from India.
Writing in Childhood Memories
Growing up in India, I had traveled through trains all the time. All those days, those memories flooded the heart. How we used to panic about train delays, how we use to eat food on train journeys. As a child, I did most of the traveling in the second class tier in Indian trains. My parents didn’t have money. Reservations were expensive. Most train journeys were 2-3 hours long, occasionally they were 8-9 hours. But never more than that. Even for those 2-3 hours, life seemed serene while being in the train. Every train journey was different. People were different.
When I was in school, we used to learn “Unity in diversity”. It was nice that as a country India had diversity. Trains were the place where we saw unity in diversity often. Most of India was on trains. You were able to meet people from all walks of life. Some days when we used to get in the cramped bogey, I used to envy people who were in first class. Rarely anyone from Jalgaon traveled in first class. I traveled in the first-class bogey from Jalgaon back in 2004, a station master stared at me for a long time.
A train has a poor memory; it soon puts all behind it. It forgets the cornlands of Illinois, the rivers of childhood, the bridges, the lakes, the valleys, the cottages, the hurts and the joys. And it spreads them out behind and they drop back on a horizon.
Like a memory, a train works both ways. A train can bring rushing back all those things you left behind so many years before.
– From The Lake by Ray Bradbury.
Inspiration to write first book
That painting touched me that I started writing every day. I wrote about trains, I wrote about people who were part of my journeys, I wrote about people who made train journeys possible. Trains had magic, my writing took off. It took me 6 months to finish the first book 500 Miles in the first draft. And another year to edit, publish and market. That one painting changed my life and brought me closer to writing and all those memories.
Journey Begins
Now I wake up every day thinking of how and what I will be writing. I don’t need motivation, I look up to my writing time. I have a world to conquer, I have a journey to take through my imagination so I can write down in my notebook. Writing is a process, it’s a journey down the memory lane. Writing is breathing. Some days, you may not write, but ideas to write about will inundate your heart non-stop.
“We are writers, and we never ask one another where we get our ideas; we know we don’t know.” — By Stephen King in On Writing.
Therefore, write. Writing not only provides me a way to tell stories, but it also helps me discover what lies within. It’s a way to serve others, help them find their story.
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft” — By Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird
I write and I love it. In conclusion, I couldn’t do it any other way. Read about my Writing Process.