Why do I blog?

Because I love the attention.

Now that I’ve said what everyone wants to hear, let me answer the question.

Because I love to write.

Period. (Although being a highly opinionated person helps tremendously.)

And I love to write because it's the only way I can say whatever I want about anything without being interrupted. (translated as 'pure bliss for a female')

If you’ve read through a bit of my blog, you’ll notice that I write about varied things. But more importantly, I try to write in varied styles. I love words. I love to play around with them. Be it poetry or prose, I like to try to word them differently. As much as it is flattering when someone reads my work and identifies it as mine, I want it otherwise. I want people to read my work and not believe that I wrote it. I want to be unpredictable.

I’d recently written a poem “Unstrung” which I am quite proud of. A friend (Mahesh) commented something along the lines of “I didn’t believe you wrote it… but then I saw your characteristic last-line punch.” That's when I realised it. I don't want my poetry, my prose or even my blog for that matter to be able to be typecast, even if in a positive sense.

I don’t know how good a job I do but I try to experiment with my writing. I usually am not one for subtletly because I couldn't care to be polite. I think the problem is that I can't hold back what I truly have to say when I write. But it will some day be part of my experimenting. One trademark however is that I keep it simple. It’s not because I don’t know big words, but I believe the beauty is in being able to portray a sentiment using lots of simple words rather than one flowery word. This helps especially when I go back to read my work. I can relate to the feeling I was experiencing while writing it if I have it explained in terms like “I was so happy that I was jumping up and down with joy” rather than “I was over the moon.” Not to say that I don’t use complicated words and phrases sometimes because after all, that is part of my experimentation process. But you would never need to use a dictionary while reading my blog. If you do, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your English sucks. Sometimes though, I come across a word somewhere that I have never used in my vocabulary and it strikes me as odd, so I will make use of it just for the heck of it. Though I am aware that there is a plethora (word-never-used-in-vocabulary alert!) of words out there and one can probably never use every English word ever documented in his lifetime.

I am my biggest fan and my biggest critic. I believe that to love to write one has to love to read too. Which is why I love to read through stuff I've written earlier and feel either terribly proud or absolutely disgusted.

I appreciate the fact that people take the time to read my blog and leave their comments – be it so that I return the favour or whether they truly enjoy what they read. After all, feedback is always useful. But if all my readers were to disappear and stop commenting, trust me, that wouldn't stop me from continuing to write. I hardly ever write to please the people who might be reading. In fact, I’m a rather selfish writer in that aspect. But if my words do please people, I am more than happy. There is nothing I love more than to be able to put a smile on someone’s face, but writing is one of the last ways I use to consciously do so. As someone well-known-but-obviously-not-famous-enough-because-I-don’t-remember-his-or-her-name once said, “Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”