Why did you start to write?

I started writing in my O’ levels. Every day in class I would get the lowest grade on my essays. My mother would give me hour long lectures; my friends would look at my English notebook with disgust and me with pity. To be honest I am making it sound much more dramatic than it actually was but anyway my writing was depressing; poor grammar, bad spellings and the horrible horrible handwriting.

So yes back to what I was saying. I started writing in this rough notebook at home. It wasn’t a journal it wasn’t a diary. It didn’t have stories. Just random thoughts - long chain of weird random thoughts - about clouds, religion, people, how a bulb functions etc. Thoughts cannot be rethunked (I know its not a word :p), which is why I never read those articles after writing them.

With my O levels cleared the writing part came to a halt. This resulted in my thoughts going up as Facebook status. Seeing the same name in ones news-feed again and again can be annoying. My friends, especially Naseer ud din sahib, pointed this fact out to me several times.

That said, I would also like to mention that a few people said in the past that “you have nice ideas in your head and that you should try and express them”. By that time I thought I was okay enough as a writer. Quiet passionate about the current affairs (not so much anymore), I applied for a writing job at a newspaper agency. They were kind enough to send me a reply which said very very politely that I should try out something else.

 Last year I spent one semester as a hostelite. My roommate, Idrees, was the head of publications in a few societies and would sometimes ask me to comment on articles and reports. I started enjoying that kind of work. With his help, I wrote a few articles for the department’s newsletter and received encouraging response.

This summer when I had some time off, and I thought I have a few good ideas and stories to share, I decided to make a blog. Aaminah (weird spellings but she is doesn’t like it if you spell it differently) helped me out with all the small things “Farrae bhai you can make a blog by registering to blogspot.com” ”you will have to make a template” “this is how you can draft a post on it” etc. More importantly though, she encouraged me consistently.

This is not an article that famous people write after they become millionaires and then reflect on their past. This is just an answer to a good question. Why did you start to write?

(question credits: Maham) :p