Faced with a critical choice, I pondered whether to employ my excruciatingly technical and highly esteemed degree to build a prosperous career, ensuring that money was not among my problems, or to audaciously take the opposite route. I chose to discard the painstaking, tortuous blood, sweat, and tears of the past four years, along with any hope of success, and embrace a life that would make me a living, breathing cliché. I would chase my dreams, following my passion… and all that clichéd rhetoric.
As I write this, I am genuinely laughing out loud. Let’s just say I’m grateful that I made those decisions when I was younger – I lack the courage and energy to do so now! Many would label me a millennial, which means I had to disregard all sensible advice and logic, and pursue my creative aspirations, fully aware that I would face financial ruin, excruciating agony, and degrading rejection. And like a fierce, relentless adrenaline junkie, I would relish every single moment of it. I would become unhinged and fixated on creating magnificent things, without concern for whether others appreciated them or not. Because if I didn’t, I would feel like my very existence was at stake!
Well, that’s how I felt at the time, at any rate.
Armed with a “want it as much as you want to breathe” mentality, tinged with a dash of unacknowledged entitlement, I embarked on writing my first novel, which, to put it mildly, turned out to be an absolute and utter disaster.
Soon enough, I came to realize that writing comprises two essential elements. First, there is the art of storytelling, in which I happened to excel. Just ask my former school teachers about the creativity I displayed when concocting stories to evade homework – those tales were so impressive that I suspect children are still using them to this day.
The second component is the skill and craft of writing itself – an area in which I was utterly clueless! Writing is a discipline that must be learned and diligently practiced. Although I excelled in English exams during my school years and possessed a profound love for reading, I arrogantly assumed that I could simply set pen to paper, and the words would magically transform into a bestselling book. One that publishers would fiercely vie for, with millions of copies sold worldwide, translated into every conceivable language on Earth, and even into tongues spoken by extraterrestrial beings.
Needless to say, my assumption was grossly misguided.
It took numerous arduous years of learning and the composition of hundreds of thousands of words, only to ruthlessly discard them, before I managed to produce anything worth reading.
For me, becoming a writer was by no means an easy feat, but not being a writer was virtually impossible.
