Saturday Special: I write

Hello and welcome to Saturday Specials in May! As promised, I am back with a special series having guest blogs on Scribbles@Arpita. 

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Today’s guest is Nimi Naren, who blogs regularly at Simple Moments of Life. It is a pleasure to have her as the opening guest blogger of the season. In my brief time at WordPress, I have been lucky to have come across some really wonderful bloggers. Nimi, is undoubtedly, at the top of my list of favorite bloggers. The first thing that attracted me to her writing was the sheer simplicity of it. She writes about simple day-to-day moments, but with her penmanship even the most mundane of things appear so beautiful! The other thing which amazes me is the discipline with which she writes every single day, never failing to update her blog on any day.

Today, Nimi shares with us about her journey as a writer and tells us what shaped her writing abilities. She also speaks about why simplicity is such a crucial factor in her writing. 

Read on, and don’t forget to leave a comment at the bottom. Also, while you’re at it, do visit her blog and read an item or two. I can bet you’d be fascinated!

 I Write

Guest post by Nimi Naren

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I write. I blog.

A few hundred words carefully picked and chosen from the ‘English Word Pool’, tweaked to convey a particular thought or story; a few ‘Word Spices’ to add a dash of emotion to the piece, a few ‘Building Blocks’ thrown in to give my article form and structure.

I write the last few words of my blog.  I go back and read it, again and again; looking for errors in grammar, flow and other things I may have missed.   I press the publish button.  My blog gets added to a million others on blogosphere, waiting to be read.

I write. I remember.

My earliest memories of writing are from school. We had a lovely English teacher in Grade 6, who played a game called ‘Word Sculpting’, with us.  The game was very simple. She would write 25 words on the blackboard, based on a theme such as nature, beach, holidays etc.  We had to string these words together into a short essay, to convey the theme effectively.  We could add our own ‘Word Spices’ to enhance our writing.

I simply loved this game.  I loved the thought that we were sculpting essays from words, and giving them life.  I still remember an essay I wrote, in one of her classes, about ‘A Rainy Day’, which got me a ‘Very well written and creative!’ comment.  One of the lines I had written in the essay went something like this – “…the rain fell on the thick brown mud, creating chocolate puddles that the children wished they could eat”.

Even now, when I see wet mud, I am reminded of these lines that I wrote in Grade 6. Such is the power of the written word.  Sentences that I love from the books I read float around in my head and give me joy. I always wonder how the author chose those particular words in that particular combination.

My parents loved to write.  My Dad wrote poems and short essays. He drew inspiration from nature. He would read them out to us occasionally.  My Mom, on the other hand, wrote powerful essays about social issues and women’s empowerment.  Both of them loved quotations, and we had many lovely books with quotations and essays, by great writers, in our home.  These had a great impact on me.

The seeds of writing were sown in me at a young age, watered by lovely books, nourished by powerful essays, and given blooming expression by my teachers at school, through their English lessons.

I wrote essays about our bus journeys from home to school; I wrote about holidays and picnics, I wrote for the school magazine.  When I started working, my job involved a lot of business writing…and the journey continued.  I learnt that each type of writing needed a different flavor, and a different word-combination.

I write. I learn.

There was a time when I used complicated words, words that I had encountered in my reading, which I then looked up in the dictionary, and used for effect in my writing. Many new words! Trying them on for size, and slipping them into my writing till they became familiar.

However, one of the most important lessons that I learnt about writing was when I had to show a product-pitch write-up to one of my superiors at work.

After reading my article, he said, “When you write, the reader should understand exactly what you are trying to say.  Keep it simple and effective. Simplicity is the essence of good writing.”

I was fairly new to the job, and what he told me stayed with me.  Whether it is writing for business, or creative writing for myself, my motto is ‘Keep it simple.’

I write. I express

What we write is forever.  Writing enables us to crystallize our thought process. When we write – we think, we dwell, we analyze, we see things from other people’s point of view, we play many roles, we sink into the characters we portray, we laugh with them, and we cry with them, we live through them for the short time that they are in our lives.  We experience the entire gamut of emotions through words. We create entire worlds with these words, we create happiness, humour and music; we trigger memories and bring joy to ourselves and others.  We can slink back into the worlds we’ve created at anytime by merely re-reading our work. 

Each time I write something, I feel a sense of accomplishment; that I could actually shepherd all those floating words and sentences in my head into a cohesive story or an article.

I write because this is the way I best express myself. I write because it gives me the greatest happiness.

I write.

The End

Note: I am Mala has been published in the May 2015 edition of eFiction magazine. Buy your copy on Amazon and the eFiction website.