How I Became A Writer
By: Vinitha Dileep
Tags: Literary Impulse, Becoming A Writer, Self, Creativity, Non Fiction Story

How I Became A Writer

My story of how it all began

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

My first attempt at writing happened when I was in sixth grade. I wrote those four lines in my mother tongue, Malayalam. It was about the words — mom and dad. I showed it to my parents and my dad was impressed. My mom didn’t say much about it. Of course, it wasn’t a great piece of poetry. That day, I wrote six more couplets. And that concluded my poetic attempts for a while.

I don’t remember when the dream to become a writer sprouted in me. I do remember though, that I admired writers, especially poets more than storytellers, though I loved reading stories also, a lot. I believe it was in my ninth grade that we had a lesson in English, a poem by Emily Dickinson and I fell in love with her words from that moment onwards. The poem was called ‘Success’. I was blown over by how deep and meaningful words could be depending on how one chooses to use it.

Then there were other poems, most of them were in my native language, Malayalam, that took my breath away. The famous poet G Shankara Kurup’s ‘Ente Veli’ was another such piece that left me amazed. It was a tragic poem equating the feelings of an old person nearing his death taking his last breath to the one of a young girl who was being married off to an older man without her approval (not that anybody asked for her approval!). The parallels drawn between the two lives made me realize the eloquent way of thinking and the evocative way of using words to convey those thoughts. It never occurred to me to attempt anything like that. But I did in my own limited way. Of course, those were mere attempts, but those attempts gave me the courage to put my thoughts on to the paper.

In my tenth grade, I wrote a longish poem, again in Malayalam. It was a great accomplishment for me as I wrote about the evening sky that always soothed me with its appearance every day. But it took a long time for that poem to gain some new readers other than myself as I was so unsure about showing it to anybody.

The last pages of my notebooks were filled with one-liners that you could call a poem, or prose, or simply nonsense.

I continued to write poems when my mind couldn’t bear it inside any longer. Pen and paper were my rescuers. I scribbled the nonsensical thoughts that ruled my head in my notebook when I had to, not because I wanted to.

I never thought of this act of scribbling down random musings as my writing. It never crossed my mind that I was writing.

I never thought of myself as a writer. It was more of a fluke than anything else — that’s what I thought! The verses I penned happened because a few vagrant musings refused to stay in its assigned path and spilled across mine. I couldn’t take credit for those musings. I couldn’t count on those irregular thoughts and call myself a writer!

Somewhere around those days, I started to dream of becoming a writer. But then, I never knew this dream growing slowly inside me. All I did was write when I couldn’t keep it under the wraps.

A few of my poems found its place in our college magazine. Not that I thought of them as worthy of getting published! The editor who was a friend, when got the wind of my poetic attempts coaxed me into writing some for the magazine, and I, after a lot of resistance on my behalf and with great reluctance, obliged. The journey which began then, continued. In 2008 October, I created my first blog as a means to document my poems. I wasn’t a blogger. I wrote and published poems in my blog when I felt the urge to write. I had a couple of readers, one of them being my husband.

Then in 2014, I created another blog to write down my parenting adventures. I explored and met with a world full of bloggers. Meeting up with like-minded people was a turning point in my life. I started to blog regularly since then. And before I knew, I became a blogger, one who write random thoughts, lessons from life, parenting mishaps, along with the poems that couldn’t stay away from my head.

All these while, I hesitated to say out loud that I was a blogger or a writer. When I did talk about my blogging adventures, I was extremely modest and was careful not to let the other person think that it was a big deal. So what if a few stray words conquered my head occasionally and made me write words that I called poems! Of course, it was a pleasure to write about the giggles of my little bundle of joy and share it with the world. But how did it make me a writer!

Then one day — a lot of days, months, and years later — in the recent past, I started introducing myself as a writer. It took courage to own up to who I was. My reasoning was, I was writing a lot — more in my journal than on my blogs. The dream of becoming a writer has since then stepped out from the shadows and reared its ugly head at me, wide and clear. I had nowhere else to go. I knew then that this was it.

Then I revived my medium account and started to write a lot more.

You become a writer when you write as if there is nothing else you would rather do.

Now I write daily from the time I wake up at 5:30 in the morning till the time I take a break in the evening. I sit at my desk and type whatever comes to my mind. I step into the kitchen and cook and come back and type again. I answer my kids' needs and questions and everything in between and get right back to my desk and write again. If musings do wander into my head after hours I make sure to pick up my journal or phone’s note app and note it down, pronto.

I am a writer.

Writing is my work.

I write from dawn to dusk.

I am a writer.