My Prose Writing: How it Started...

Yo! Have you had these moments where two to three bulbs glowed in your mind after reading or watching something thought-provoking. When a new paths of organic thoughts unfold before you like cool breezes from the sea and your mind runs after them like an excited child behind a butterflies. That's how I got lots of topics to write about and finally decided on writing about writing itself when I started writing!

My initiation into writing, like for many, started with diary entries as summer assignments from my English teacher. My interest in the task started and ended with the joy of owning a thick diary...the writing itself left for the last week of holidays hehe. But yet, there was a time when I started journalling on my own volition, inspired from books.

Diaries of Anne Frank and Helen Keller had interested me for the real and intense experiences they shared in lucid language. Personal writings have a way of providing inspiration, encouragement and comfort to readers through its relatable humaness. It feels like a direct connect with the author from a person to a person. But it was not these that pushed me to resume journaling, but Bram Stoker's Dracula!

Why? Because of its eerie detailing of atmosphere and events! The sentences are not as simple as the diaries I talked of above (as far as I remember), but it is so mood-settingly descriptive that a motion picture begin to play in my mind as I read. So I decided to imitate the style and wrote extensive entries during the Covid pandemic lockdown days when I was at my paternal grandparents house. Reading those entries, with their minute-to-minute update, never fails to crack me up. But it sure improved my diction, as I understood the subtle nuance of meanings that made each word unique in what it signified. I learned that being scared and terrified is not the same.

Another form of writing I got into was summary. A period that can make P.E hour make a run for its money during school days was the library hour. Initially the task of writing summary prevented me from taking up bigger books. But once I started writing them after finishing my reading—instead of simultaneously doing both—it became easier. It was not about writing pages and pages or describing everything in detail in your own words, but tracing the main plotline of the novel in a few paragraphs! It was interesting and marked the beginning of my summary providing service where I took books in the name of my classmates and provided summaries in return. A win-win for both back then. But now I realize what they missed out on...poor chaps.

There are a lot more I wish to talk about... like poetry, letters to myself and penpals, but the post is lengthy as it is and I'll stop. So until I blabber again, byee.