First Draft

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” 
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I had always wondered how do people write novels? Do they borrow largely from real life or are they mostly fictional? Do interesting things need to happen to people for them to write about them? My life is interesting in parts but mostly just normal, ordinary and boring even…can I ever write about that? This was somehow in a serendipitous way answered by Haruki Murakami, in an article titled “A long way from the stuffed cabbage”, he precisely talks about this and many more…He even goes on to say that sometimes when unbelievable things happen to people they find it hard to tell their tale…as if the words fall short of their experiences…this is really reassuring for someone like me, I could completely relate this, sure there are exciting even life changing events which take place and have taken place in my life but my everyday sort of life is quite mundane. So why haven’t I every ventured into writing something longer than a chapter (short stories are usually a chapter or two long)…I could come up with many explanations like not enough time, not enough material, sometime I even feel I may not be a novelist at all…but why do I crave for it so? To understand what I crave for, I must explain what I feel when I write…I always feel that I express myself much better on paper (or computer! Given I mostly type these days), there are two ways for me to get relief from the dull reality of everyday routine, read or write, and writing does help me escape to a better place (I remember how much I enjoyed writing in a diary when I was an adolescent, granted things were easier to write about, petty jealousies, young crushes, I was less cynical then). On some days I can’t shake this feeling that I was meant to write something, some story stored deep in my subconscious, maybe that’s why I dream such vivid dreams every night…I have written from my dreams before, but they usually turn to short stories…and I have written novels before as a child (when I was 12) but those were greatly influenced by R.L. Stine style of short novellas about teen angst and ghost stories…pretty juvenile! There are two things that bother me when I think of writing a novel, firstly have I found my voice? And secondly, do I have a story to tell? When Murakami talks about how he wrote his first novel, and the circumstances surrounding that, I feel better and worried at the same time. Let me briefly describe the incident, so he had gone to see a baseball match, and suddenly he thought to himself if a player called Hilton strikes a double (I don’t know anything about baseball!) he would start writing…and the player did strike a double and he did start writing, and his first novel was a success! He does mention that he doesn’t know if he hadn’t been to the game that day what would have happened? Would he still be running a jazz bar, not writing but thinking about writing? This story really moved me in a very deep way, somehow on a very ordinary day something extraordinary happened and he started writing, it was quite serendipitous...this really encourages me that unexpected things can happen to very ordinary people but at the same time I am worried what if I miss the bus? Would I then keep thinking of writing and never get to write my first novel? 

Lastly I would again resort to borrowed words, maybe just to express what I feel and what I dread...

“you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” 
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.” 
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince