Writer's Dilemma

First of all let me make this clear that I don’t see myself as a writer, I prefer myself as a storyteller or something like that. But still, the title says writer because you know, it looks cooler. I have been thinking about writing some of my thoughts down for a while now, but never quite had the time or the decency to put them into words. So, the stuff written now is a bunch of disorganized thoughts but don’t freak out, it will all make sense in the end, at least I hope they do.

First of all, I want to tell everyone that I don’t only write love stories, yes they do form a majority of the stuff I have written, but again, doesn’t love form the majority of what we are and what we live for? I, for example write my stories about stuff much more than just love, of course it includes love, but only in a much larger form then people usually infer. Like in one, it was much more about loving yourself then loving someone else or in the other it loved your dreams more than anything else. Moreover in the short stories I have recently written, there is nothing about love. They are related to other strong emotions such as rage or hate or stuff. Moreover I don’t like to write about my life, as many of the engineering pass outs from IIT’s are doing these days. It was once a nice feeling to read about someone’s campus life, or how they did something, but now it seems like everybody got through the same shit. Everybody is as screwed as the one before them. I like to write stuff I like to read. I am more of a fiction guy, kill me for that.

Secondly one of my very best friends once said that she thought writers have a really boring life, I couldn’t disagree more. I, for one think that I have had one of the most dramatic lives anyone has ever lived. You know full of drama, heartbreaks and happiness etc. But then again, everyone thinks of their life like this. If someone is a writer doesn’t mean that his/her life is going to be any different than any Tom, Dick or Harry out there. Everybody is the hero of their own story; I like to think myself as one, just like everybody else.

Thirdly my relation with all the main characters of my stories, people seem to think I write from my life experience or stuff. I do, but not as much as you think. The only exception I would think of is the lead male characters of ALL of my stories. I have been all of them, at one time or the other. I, and this might be only my opinion, but I still think every writer knits his lead character from somewhere deep inside of him or her. So even if there might not be any direct relation between the writer and his lead character, there will be millions of them indirectly.

And for the fourth and last point, I have been many times criticized that my stories don’t have a happy ending and someone or the other gets kills in them. For this I only have one thing to say, “Life has no happy endings, even if it does, I haven’t seen it. Believe me, when I do, I’ll write it.”