I’m a compulsive , obsessive writer of sorts myself … and I can very well relate to writers like me who ask themselves the Hamletian question “Why do I write?” …
Writing for me is just a healthy daily habit. It’s no different than what “working out daily” is for those physical fitness freaks .
I started out with writing small essays back in school and thanks to a very kind English teacher who encouraged me, I picked up the habit and it refuses to leave me today after even 60 years .
In Loyola College, Chennai, where I graduated from 40 years ago, I was editor of the campus magazine ( used to be called “campus rag”). I was a freelance stringer for ToI YT and JS (Youth Times/Junior Statesman). My pieces then graduated into newspapers papers like the HINDU , a few business magazines like Businessworld ….
With the advent of the worldwide web and internet , I too went digital. I switched to blogging … I’m a compulsive blogger today … It’s a habit I don’t want to quit because it keeps me mentally lithe …. And, yes, it’s my own private connect with the rest of humanity… … https://mksudarshans.blog/?page_id=143
After publishing two books — my first in 2016 and my second recently in 2021 — I feel good today about myself in the same funny sort of way some senior citizens I know pride themselves on their physical fitness and boast to me they have “done both the Boston and Bangalore full-marathon runs” twice in 5 years and completed them in … well, er … in about 8 hours and a half (concealing from me the fact that the recorded average for 70-year old marathoners is under 5 and a quarter hours) ..
While finding myself one night labouring away at a possible 3rd book of mine that I might publish sooner or later, I had an epiphany when I found myself suddenly asking the same question to myself you might ask me perhaps i.e. “why the hell do writers write”?
After much soul searching I did at last discover something about myself — that I didn’t really care to, or want to publish everything I write to be published as a book … that would be just foolish vanity .
All I really want is to publish only what I thought and hoped … and wished … my children and grandchildren and extended family, circle of friends and relatives too who I will leave behind in life, might one day fondly remember me, with bemusement if not admiration, not as a “best seller” but as someone who suffered lifelong from having been bitten very badly by the “writer’s bug” … and succumbed to the virus at last.
Now that I have told you a bit about my journey of authorship in life I do hope you will not mind me now signing off with a bit of amateur salesmanship too … Become a good friend of mine now and if you do, then would you kindly order today on Amazon a copy of both my published books and read them and indulge me please ?
https://mksudarshans.blog/unusual-essays-of-an-unknown-sri-vaishnava/
Thank you ,
Best regards ,
M.K. Sudarshan