Mary Angelou, the author of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, has said,” There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Being a constant writer I fully agree with this statement as writing things down, be it feelings, expression, things-to-do or even a silly story my mind has been developing since a few days; is equivalent to getting rid of a persistent itch. Writing is a way of “cooling down”, a stress reliever, if you must say and the benefits of writing are hardly unknown. People say that writing can be a way of coping up with a difficult situation, it can help in avoiding clustered thoughts and helps in better communication.
Bill Gates has described writing as a way to sit down and re-evaluate his thoughts during the day.

One of the best novelists in this world, Paulo Coelho, says,” Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.

Now speaking on behalf of a regular writer, a novelist, an editor, a content writer or a freelance writer; the above mentioned facts about writing holds true indeed but when we uncover the curtain of the mind of a writer, bittersweet truths pop out.

It is a feel of extreme exhilaration to see your articles being published with people congratulating, appreciating and sometimes critiquing your piece of work. But in actuality all readers get to see is the final work: a piece of writing. What happens in the process of writing that article down? I am here to uncover the intricate details, good and bad, that goes into the process of pouring the thoughts down on a paper (or a keyboard).

1. The excitement of “beginning“.

For a writer, there is no better happiness than the excitement of starting to write things down that the whole world will be able to see. As the popular phrase goes, a pen is the most powerful weapon of a writer, we writers take the thought “with a great power, comes a great responsibility” a little bit too seriously. That responsibility being changing the world by our words. We pen down the possible article topics that will woo the world. We hit our ‘motivation song track’ and we get to work! Come on writers, you agree with me on this, don’t you?

2. The First Publish.

Time to hit our ‘victory song track’. That first published article, the dearest to our heart, is something that we read and reread and so on and so forth. It is the article with which we start getting recognized. It is a proud moment for us and we can’t stop shoving the article in people’s faces for them to read (yes sometimes we do do that, doesn’t make us desperate though. wink). On top of that, this article is a great reminder for us to write more and more and develop with it gradually.

3. The reality after the first few published works.

This moment arrives at every writer’s doorstep. A few of our works have been published. We are doing great and we can’t stop patting our backs. But after the thousandth article, we run out of topics. The enthusiasm and motivation morphs into dilemma and confusion. With great power comes great responsibility and it is our responsibility to keep wooing our readers but this is the moment we start panicking a little.

4. The ‘search’ for new ideas.

Trust me, this is as herculean a task for a writer as it is to a doctor saving a patient. Yes a writer is known for his creativeness and his acute sense of grasping motivation from anything around him. But the reality is a little different than that. To come up with ideas we sit down on our couches, maybe with our laptops, and bow down to the ultimate master, Google Search. If that doesn’t work out, people like me call up our friends and nag them to give us ideas. And sweet and dear friends like mine dig up amazing ideas for us but we writers being choosy deny most of them! Most writers will agree with me on this.

5. We are our best advisers.

After listening to possible ‘my ideas are gold and you will regret not writing on it’ comments from our friends, we begin digging the ‘gold’ in our minds. Because ultimately we are the best advisers of us, ain’t we writers? Surprisingly, we do dig up that possible gold of a topic to write on. Sure it took time but hey, we are back in the game! Time to pat our backs, hit the ‘motivation song track’ and start working.

6. The sudden best friend- the Dictionary.

We prize our treasure of vocabulary. We are confident enough to write something ‘bang-on’ without anybody’s help. But when the deficiency of topics/ideas creeps in, it sometimes tags along its bestie i.e the deficiency of quality words. And with this comes the ‘hesitant at first but a necessity later’ friendship with our dictionary. Soon enough it becomes our best friend and we keep telling ourselves,” Eminem used to sit down with a dictionary while writing his songs and boy doesn’t he rock?” This also helps us shatter the image of being over-confident and adds up to our already fabulous treasure.

7. The fear of the deadline.

Normally people fear heights, death, ghosts etc. but the deepest fear of a writer is the DEADLINE. Yes we strive hard to make our work impressive but what really drives us is the fear of catching up with the deadline. We try so hard to write something powerful, efficient, to-the-point and revolutionizing within a set of fixed time. No, it isn’t a piece of cake to compress all these qualities in a writing with the pressure of the deadline on our heads. And when we do do the impossible, it feels as we have won a war!

8. EDITORS.

For a writer, his editor is his greatest blessing. We rely on our editors all the time because they know our mistakes, our strong points and our weak points. And in this way they save us from embarrassing ourselves in public by reviewing and correcting our mistakes well before publishing. But impressing them isn’t easy always. It is mandatory to keep up our A-game if we want to see approval on their faces every time.

Yes, we do have our little secrets hidden behind our piece of work but it is an amazing feeling to be a writer. We do appeal a few minds and we do revolutionize the world. Also, writers are the best friends anyone can have because we always have that perfect piece of advice or motivation. Cheers to the writers!