The trouble with being
a writer is that your output is out there for the whole world to see. In other
jobs, you’re part of a larger collective set of cogs and clockwork and somewhat detached from the end product. But as a
writer (or a journalist or even worse, a blogger) your work is you and you are your work; you pour your soul into
cyberspace or printed pages and hope for the best. More often than not, I find,
the responses are overwhelmingly positive and it makes the risk all worth it.
Many people will write messages of solidarity and congratulations and many more
silently resonate. In some cases, strangers will respond negatively and you
have to take it on the chin and learn for next time. But sometimes, people who
are close to you will change their opinion of you and worse yet, get hurt
personally.
I only write when
something inspires me enough to affect my emotions so much that I can’t do
anything until I’ve articulated them. Those initial few seconds after you hit
publish are fantastic because a great weight is off your chest and for a
moment, you are totally self assured. But if the piece is serious or emotional (or
seriously emotional) then you start to worry and second guess yourself.
“What
if _____ reads it? What will they think of me?”
“Will
______ still like me after they’ve read what I’ve written about them? Or will
they appreciate the guts it took to share those feelings?”
“Should
I have shared something that personal?”
I think you always live
in fear that, while 5 people may love your post there will be one whose
perception of you will be dramatically altered even if he/she may not tell you.
For example, my family inspires me to write. I wonder how they feel when
they’re the subjects of a piece of writing that’s out there for the whole world
to see. Am I allowed to write about anyone? No one has written about me so I
don’t know what that feeling is - the feeling of seeing your name or your character being picked apart and observed by someone else. But there have been times when I’ve written
things about them and it has affected small parts of how we interact.
I remember writing an
email to my parents (who are followers of this blog anyway) which I thought was
really from the heart. To me it seemed like any of the long emails I’d sent them
once in a while, detailing my position on things. But this time it ended up
causing a lot of pain to them and on hearing about their reaction, immense pain
within me. I think one of the hallmarks of our family is our ability to share
things – but is it OK if I share those feelings with the entire internet?
It’s the similar
situation with my impressions and skits in my stand-up routine; people who I’ve
impersonated have stopped the little idiosyncrasies that I picked up on and I
feel awful. But at the same time, everyone wants me to impersonate them – I’m
caught between a rock and a hard place.
I’d like to believe
that the people who really care about me will continue to treat me the same way
regardless because they know that the need to express myself is something I can’t
fight. It’s a trade off: do you release something into the public domain that
could benefit many, at the risk of alienating a few? Maybe this inertia is what
holds most people back from expressing themselves artistically.
That’s why I think it
takes a tremendous amount of courage to be a creative person who shares his or
her work. Getting up on that soapbox isn’t easy and I think audiences/readers
take it for granted. Unless you have put yourself out there, you have no idea
how hard it is and how easy it is to criticise from the back of the room. When
I see a comedian on stage or a blogger really writing from the heart, I
immediately empathise because I know how long they must have struggled with
themselves: wouldn’t it be more convenient to not express anything?
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