PROSE AND POETRY Or: My Descent into A Literary Madness...

Writing is a strong medium. Whether it's in the form of a short poem or in the form of a complete full-length novel. It's cathartic nature is mostly why it holds such a strong power and ability to shake one to his bones. I've always found to reading to be magical experience and writing even more so. Though at times it may feel frustrating and too pressuring but if you are in the possession of a story that you truly want to tell (show don't tell, but I'll get to this later) then writing can be the thing you'll look forward to when you wake up in the morning.

Some find prose easy to write, while others poetry.

For me, it was the latter. In the beginning, I did try my hand at writing prose; specifically fiction novels and novellas it didn't end well. Although I could write what I wanted to write in the way in which I wanted to write it, but it hadn't the flow I hoped it would have. See what I mean? I wasted too many words. About 13 or 14 chapters in, I decided to take a look at what I had written. Frankly at this point it was already too late. I found that the story read tediously, it kept dragging on. Basically: it was bad. You'd get what I had written if you tore out a few paragraphs from fantasy fan-fiction short stories that are often posted online, pieced them together and then decided to call that a novel. Like that's going to be published, right?

Sure enough, I had lost heart.

I sketched the outline of my next attempt at writing a novel but I had hit a roadblock. Instead of journeying into the bright land of Completing-A-Novel, I had taken a turn into Writer's Block. Though not a stranger, I prefer to just be a guest in that block. Writing prose was getting difficult for me. Even if I figured out the plot, I wouldn't even know where to begin writing the novel. Plot isn't the only thing that makes up novel after all.

I was devouring books at that time like a hungry dragon with too much time on it's hands. Wings. Claws. Whatever.

John Steinback, James Joyce, Ray Bradbury, JRR Tolkien, Agatha Christie, George Orwell, you name them. I read them all. Although this was definitely the best reading experience I had, it left me burnt out. I couldn't stand novels anymore. I was in over my head, to be honest. I didn't know what to do on my vacation anymore. I needed to read stories, develop theories, guess my way through till the end. I was burnt out from the only one thing that did it for me. You could call it a madness of sorts. An insatiable need for something to occupy myself with. Mind you that I had only recently started reading after finding out how much I had missed out during my early years. And this was all on my few months vacation. I had bought a pile of books. Read most of them but couldn't finish all of them. I needed something short and sweet. Not short-stories. I had read enough collections of them too. Poems were what I needed. The cure for a temporary disease.

Soon I found out that forming long sentences isn't what's required if you want to send a powerful message.

A powerful message requires powerful words.

Seems obvious, isn't it? You don't always need a whole paragraph if you want to send your point across. Most of the time, you need not but just a few words.

Reading poems was the fuel that lead me to start writing them. I was scared at first, I didn't know what to write. Novels you can write anything about; fantasy, thrillers, romance. In poems, it's not always so straightforward.

I think it would be fair to say that although I still write articles and essays from time to time, I really enjoy writing poems and it's what I do in the free time I get. Until I find a new way to get my dose of entertainment, prose and poetry is my addiction.

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