As time went on I desired to reach a wider audience outside of my family and friends. There is the question of what one must do with their stories once they have been told on paper. I too asked myself that question until I came across internet submission calls. All of a sudden there was this possible world that was interested in what I had to say and I could reach a wider audience once the editors found my work acceptable. Month after month I poured my heart into stories inspired by my own life and sent them out only to receive rejections leaving me forever disappointed. I wondered why different editors rejected my writing based on authentic experiences I had lived. This went on until I learnt that laying down facts and creative writing are two different things. I needed to learn of the many literary devises and writing tools that could transform my stories into reader-worthy pieces. Easy to think I had now cracked it, that I could now read a few requirements and tailor-make my creative pieces to suit them but not at all. I was back to square onewith learning, sitting at the desk and waiting for inspiration to come, a little wafting of an urge like smoke, catch it if you can otherwise try tomorrow. The creative process for me most times is a lonely path pursuing inspiration, creating, recreating and questioning; a constant shifting. It is days or sometimes months of battling with a thing on the inside of you that wants to come out but does not know how to. A thing you don’t know how to sit with and set it free. What often jumps off from the page or performance as brilliant art is what many times has evolved through several versions of itself. Even after living to a ‘finished state,” it often keeps changing over time. They do not lie when they say, “art is never finished.”
As Louise Brooks said, “Writing is 1% inspiration and 99% elimination,” there is also the labor of editing, the sometimes undesirable work of deciding which part of what’s created does not belong with the piece. This too is a necessary step in bringing the best out of what is already there. It is holding the piece against the mirror of its best self and seeing if it holds, if it bows to creativity and if all the details in it are necessary. Sometimes a different set of eyes would come in handy walking through the piece and clarifying the bumpy areas that need ironing out.
To create with words has been both a blessing and a curse for me. A lonesome journey with little reward beyond feeling good about completed work. We mostly only feel heard when we are heard, so there comes the question of,‘Who am I writing all these words for, who will follow their trail to find me, a twenty-seven-year-old dreamer with no qualification under her belt and nothing else but all these words?’ But there is the blessing of having a voice and the privilege to use it, to own your opinion and share it, to bring about social change by initiating a conversation about many different things that affect everyone. To have it resonate with many and make itself relevant in every audience it reaches. I think of the work I put out there as dandelion seeds floating around, unafraid of being read wrong or being mistaken for something else. This is because when work is out of your hands it is out of your hands, and all you can do is trust it, trust that the process was worth it and that in the end, it will speak for itself.
So if I could, I would say to my younger writer self, that its ok to feel like this too, writing might be a dream too lofty for one person, that the nights will be long and someday inspiration will be a stray cat that forgets home. It will be gone for days and not even the milk of reading will lure it back home, but when it does come back, it will all have been worth the wait, worth the sleepless nights and the extra books read in waiting. Like a trickster, inspiration seems to enjoy hiding out more than it enjoys coming in. I know now to wait for it while busy experiencing life a little differently, trying out new things, breaking from my daily routine and striking conversations I do not normally have with strangers. It is a search I embark on gently and when I have forgotten that I was searching for inspiration, I find it, or it finds me. Then I am back to writing again.