It all started with The Hindu
Open Page publishing an article of mine article of mine ; I even got paid for it.
Till then, I was happy parking my writing in my blog or eloquently
delivering my thoughts to sympathetic friends.
But things changed once I saw the article published; people unknown to
me read and commented on it. Suddenly
I had acquired the status of a writer, a freelance writer actually! Now all I
had to do was dish off article after article (after all I was brimming with
ideas) and my articles were going to be in papers, magazines and online
sites. I would picture myself gracefully
acknowledging Hindu’s role in my new alternate career. I graciously decided to share my income with
charity since I was not writing for money.
And I was not going to just sit
and dream. A good friend introduced me
to an online group of writers. Weren’t they
privileged to have me in their group? Words
like pitch, on spec, by-line became part of my vocabulary while kill fee, slush
pile were something that others had to worry about. I ripped all the ideas I had for my blog and
created pitches based on them. I resisted
from making more than a few pitches as I was not going to have time to write
the pieces once they have been accepted, given my regular day job, and other
commitments at home. I prepared to take the probing questions from my readers. I even came up with this brilliant idea of
writing about my work and getting it published.
What happened then was I stopped
reading! All my life, I have been a voracious reader (courtesy Eloor library
for the fantastic journey through the world of books). Now Whenever I saw an interesting article or
feature, I would first look at the author detail before even attempting to read
it. I would then start thinking about how he/she got the idea, what pitch she
would have made, how long it took to write it and finally asking myself why I
cannot pick up such ideas. I would
browse the features pages, all the while digesting what people were writing
about and relating them to some ideas I had. This meant that my news paper and
magazine reading was reduced to a quick browsing and then furiously thinking or
writing another pitch. I stopped reading
books as that was taking a lot of my time, which I could better spend on
pitching. I also neglected my blog terribly letting down the five people who
were following me.
Then it became worse. I did not want to read those papers and
magazines which were not considering my pitches. You don’t patronize me, and I won’t – fair
deal! It bothered me a bit that this was not fair to the authors so I made
exceptions for those authors whom I knew. Others can wait, in the larger
interest of providing moral support to a fellow author.
Well, you got it – all this meant
that I could not read anything (nor write)! It then dawned on me that I had to
make a choice – to read or write (well, not just for the blog!). I know
there are people who do both or claimed to do both, but there were from another
planet. It was not working for me. It also looked like the Universe wanted me to
read rather than write, as my inbox of rejected or unacknowledged pitches
showed. Who am I to turn away from the
wish of the Universe – I bowed and have got back to reading. Till I reach that moment in the future which has me as the writer!
