To My Writer Friends....

I’ve been moved to write. Sometimes these moments come and if I ignore it. I would lose it forever. So here goes....
What got the wheel turning or the thinking started was when I wrote in my previous blog about the limiting quality of words...I, for some bizarre reason thought words were so limiting. The language of the tongue, so to speak, is so restrictive.
But then I realised it’s also probably because of my lack of dexterity with words. I can’t seem to twist and turn them. To stretch and compress them. To make pudding and sand castles at the same time, with words.
I have seen some do it. Of course! A lot of them do it. All those Dead Poets did it. All the Dead Writers did it. Not to mention the living and the known. All the names on our libraries and bookshelves have all done it.
But I am curiously inspired by them, the lesser known ones. The aspirants. The teachers who never won. The fiercely insecure and utterly brilliant. The passionate and the driven. The procrastinators and the lily-livered geniuses.
I know some such. And one is an old friend who just completed the first draft of a novel. Of which I am reading chapter by chapter. The more I read the more I am convinced this is a narcissistic exercise for me because the pleasure I derive is that of the author himself. Complete with the sense of achievement but sans the insecurity and defensiveness. For some outrageous reason I feel a part of the process of creating this masterpiece. I am bulging with pride for being that reader who is privileged for being the first one to be reading, what could be a remarkable piece of prose, which just wouldn’t be ignored.
But then that is what every insignificant stay-at-home mom would feel when entrusted with a task such as this. Firstly she’s so taken aback for having been chosen from among the multitude to read the work. (She allows herself the luxury to imagine that it is because of some merit of hers...which, what and how, she can’t remember. But she is hoping against hope that there is some such reason.)
Dear Writer friends,
You have all enriched my life just being a part of it. It just moves me to tears, to think that I have all of you in my phone list and to have been able to rub shoulders with you. What more to have you as friends. My deepest hope and prayer for you all is that, you never abandon this path you have chosen for yourself. You are destined to spin yarns, weave poetry, expel your shadows and shun the ghosts that haunt you.
Like a good friend once told me you need to be either ecstatically happy or miserably sad to be able to write. Therefore I wish you much misery and senseless joy. I wish you madness and discipline. I wish you devotion and detachment. If that’s what it takes for you to set the pen moving. This could be your path to salvation. Therefore I wish you a good journey. God speed!