A Writer Without Readers

Lonesome set of eyes stare at a collection of bleeding words.

Words are magical. The cadence of each text is an art form. Beautiful and impassioned collection of words is a craft that a man-made android can not replicate, it’s the quintessential form of human brain power. One hue that drip into another. The creativity that spills at the edge of the ink and the remarkable tribulations to harness a solitary word, to arrive at the immense feeling of marking the most definitive punctuation mark of all, the period. It does come without bleeding rage as it becomes my outlet from the world view that revolves around me. One word, two words, unsure phrases then sentences that evokes a beating heart. Stop-motion movements in-sync with poetic consciousness. This is how words circle in my mind as they get summon to the production line, filtered and non-filtered. Nothing highfaluting, just the basics.

I am 28. I’ve been writing since I was 17 and started posting on Blogger. The euphoria of staring at your own work for the whole world to read is oddly satisfying because I do not even know if there is someone on the other side. You simply have to believe that there is. freedom to be raw as you fiddle the keyboard, the simplicity of publishing was underrated at that time. Everyone writes but not all became writers and the ones that did, struggled in finding their readers. How do I know? Because I did. It was a bearable nightmare as the writing itself kept me sane. The nuisance of writing for an audience has been documented in cliches and even dismissing the need for readers as long as you wield your mighty pen, you have an audience, the wordsmith. However, writers are egoist. It’s how it is. If your job is to project your thoughts as an holograph to unknown eyes, you will desire an audience to your craftsmanship. If you’re a writer, you need readers. If you tell me that you write for yourself then you are journaling, you’re talking to a diary and that is fine. But if you call yourself a writer then you need people who will capture your words and its temperaments. And the first few manuscripts are tough, and it only gets tougher.

Reminiscing the early days of blogging when everything was just a tad messy and unglamorous. Figuring it out is part of the euphoria and the community do not worry about algorithms. You simply visit everyone’s blog for new content every single day. It was organic, no wannabe influencers, no unnecessary elegance, just pure realness. The stories I wrote in high school never found a place in our school newsletter where only a few were selected by a criteria I can’t even fathom. Blogger gave a home and an audience to my idiosyncratic stories. No editor and no one to tell me my work is rejected. That big “B” logo with an orange hue background is groundbreaking for aspiring writers like myself. The world became an open arena for ideas and personal narratives. It became the launchpad for the penultimate information age. All of a sudden, the enormity of the universe felt smaller. Most of my writing at that time consists of fictional stories set in almost Utopian realms. I revel at the positivism and the world building that is in contrast against living in a slum neighbourhood. Nothing was a deterrent for writers to post online, not even the dial-up connection and the frequent interruption when you get a phone call. It’s about the passion ignited by the Internet hyperspace.

The good old days, when the World Wide Web is brimming with rawness, gone are the days of merely typing a website to read your favourite writer. Now, everything is Googled. The quest for readers still rages on and now more than ever, people clamours for realness amidst the proliferation of fraud. It is saddening that genuine writing is in a modern warfare against apathetic keyboard warriors. But that’s the reality and the only way to come up on top is to keep on writing. Readers will eventually find their writers.