A writer struggling to call himself a writer
By- Sarpreet Kaur
My mind was wide awake but my forever heavy eyes refused to open. They wanted to enjoy the deep slumber for a few more minutes. I was still in the middle of lamenting when the sun’s rays tapped on the window shield of my soul. Controlling my urge to backtalk the sun, I yawned and started my day with a swoosh sound of email on the phone. The mail was from a leading magazine where I had submitted my article. My heart leapt at the prospect of being published and then quickly sank when he read the rejection mail. Nowadays they have a unique way of rejecting you- “After careful consideration, we have decided against publishing this submission”. These smart publishing platforms always keep a ray of hope hanging, which you can later use as a support to climb up or mostly as a nook to hang the writer aspiring inside you.
The curse of trying to be a writer-Mostly Rejected Hardly Accepted. Today with one more addition to my ever-growing rejection list, I would quote and explain the cumulonimbus cloud of rejection and the related struggle that every aspiring writer has to carry on his head.
* The Pre-Existing Idea- Millions of ideas cross our minds daily. Then suddenly after umpteen electric pulses have poked our brain, a rhythmic chord of a beautiful idea string in our heart and make the writer in us sing. You gather all the melodies of the words and are ready to put them harmoniously in a thread, suddenly Google taps on your speedy brain and entails, it has already been done by three other writers.
* The Crazy House of Metaphors- Metaphors are loved by writers but it is a crazy jumbled house in which a writer gets so involved ends up losing the meaning for the readers. Hence the rejection is on its way.
* The Story Block- Writer’s block is a fascinating term. I fancied it imagining it to be a black hole in writer’s mind, every thought being sucked into the abyss but suddenly with a Big Bang, the writer is struck by a thunderbolt of ideas and all the creativity showers on him at once. Alas! That seldom happens. Writer’s block always exists in the mind and that creativity is what comes in patches.
Even after writing my heart out, still, my brain has not stopped contemplating the enormous burden of rejection emails piling up. I waved off a few with a sympathetic smile and some with an angry tear. But the one thing that is sure for all and every aspiring writer out there is that no matter how many times you get rejected, you again have to pick up the pen, copy another beautiful piece of your soul on that paper and be ready to get rejected. A day will come when there will be that tiny mail of acceptance lurking around.