Guest Posts Series

On Writing, and anxieties

Hello all! I just realized that it is close to five years since I started blogging. For someone who has been at it for five years, I am remarkably inconsistent as a writer. In my very first post I set myself an agenda that I didn't expect to follow. I am quite surprised to find that I have kept up to that agenda in a few ways. Like Ajinkya Rahane (minus his talent) in his one day international career till date, I haven't managed to become half as good as I can be. I still fish for balls that I shouldn't be playing, I still get myself into knots, I still flounder good starts, and I still distract people into thinking of "what-could-be" instead of "what-is". 

Writing has been extremely difficult. Every time I publish a post, I get a bout of anxiety. I wait for feedbacks, and I rarely get as many as I would like. Almost every night I publish a post, my sleep is disturbed, at least once, whilst I wake up at ungodly hours to check if anyone has anything to say about my writing. No one has. Almost always. Strangely, the more the positive mismatch between my expected response to a post and the real feedback I get, the more vigorously I end up writing. 

Some thanks in order

I was wondering why I still persist. Among many reasons, one of the most important is the handful of readers I have. At any point of time, an average post by me gets only a couple of responses. Often, these responses are very unexpected. I write a post, wait with bated breath, sigh, and totally give up. And then I find someone who liked parts of it. A lot of wonderful people have come across these blog (for some indiscernible reason, they rarely come together for the same post). They don't always stick on, but at various moments, they have encouraged me immensely to write. I hesitate to admit this - a quick message or a comment helps a lot. And I am increasingly finding that clicking a link to read random ramblings is tough for people. We live in such an age where time is scarce. You have still managed to spend some time here. Thanks :)

OK. But what the heck is this all about?

On a day of crazy ideas, I imagined asking a few people to write for my blog. As I kept giving more thought to it, it became crazier. But thankfully, it did not sound impossible. A few days of getting in touch with a lot of people, and I am now pretty confident that I could pull it off. I really hope that I will be able to.

Why am I doing this? Short answer - publicity stunt. There are a few supplementary answers too. Firstly, I feel sincerely thankful to all of you. There are times when I have wondered if all my writings are my own delusions, and if they are totally invisible to all other human beings. You have shown me that they are not. Secondly, I want you to experience writing. Many of you already write, in which case I want to introduce others to you. There are a few of you who haven't written anything that is in the public domain. I want to urge you to. Why should I be alone in parading all my insecurities and inconsistencies? Moreover, I also want to test out my theory that the link I have chosen for my blog has been cursed by black magic. If your wonderful writing still fails to draw any semblance of attention to this accursed location, I will be filing a case with the cyber police. Additionally, I wanted Posterity to know that you have been here. Like one of those shameful childhood photos that capture you in some location of time scale and end up in an entirely different time scale to embarass you, I will file this safely. Its main purpose will be to ward of my own anxieties. Finally, when I thank you sincerely for reading this blog, I expect you to feel guilty in the future when you skip certain posts. Through that guilt, I expect to chain you to this boring and hopeless place. I am hoping to trap you into a vicious circle.

Why should you be interested to read all this?

As readers, you get to see some variety at the blog. For a change, you will encounter some decent writing. If you care about me, you might even meet some of the people who have shaped me. Many of my readers, and friends, have perspectives that are very different from mine. Some of them might even have some positive, motivational, useful things to say. I am extremely excited about a few people who are about to write, and I hope you will be able to discover why.

So, who are all writing?

Some of the people I have asked to write are very important in my life outside this blog too. A few others are not as close, but they have been very important to this blog. A few have forgotten the existence of this blog, and few might not even know that it exists. I am still thinking about people I could get in touch with, and the list keeps on expanding. Let's wait and watch. This could be a dud; a failed project. Or this could be a mega project that brings back peace to a World that is in dire need of it. Like most things with me, I expect it to be somewhere in the vast middle.

Any final words?

Since I happen to be conceited, selfish and self-centered, I won't be really quiet during the posts. I will be behaving like an over enthusiastic Master of Ceremonies, introducing everyone who is writing. I have tried to get in touch with a lot of people, but my memory is fallible. If you happen to be reading this and I haven't got in touch with you, please free to remind me. You can always kick my backside for the oversight when we meet next time. If I have already got in touch with you, I request you to humour me, and write. Please.

List of posts
1) Vagabound by my father.
2) Anjaan - A Review by my brother Sri Vittal
3) My Most Memorable Cricket Match by Gowrisankar
4) Bureaucrat Bloody Hell by Shyam
5) The Vulnerable Queen by Lakshminarayanan
6) Poison Ivy by Supriya
7) Reflections by Shriya
8) God's Own Guests by Vidhya
9) From Hell by Arun Prasad
10) On Writing by Srinivas
11) Recos by a bored Engineering student by Pavithran

12) Cancer by Vaidhyanathan M