Tag: Writing

My Past, Myself, Preeti, Writing

My Writing Sucks: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Janss Steps, Royce Hall in background, UCLA
Image via Wikipedia

For the first time since I started on my UCLA extension classes, I am wondering what made me think I could actually write.  This is the first time also I took only one class, and yet it feels as if my entire certificate for creative non fiction depends on it.  The class is for personal essays, how to write one and get published.  We have only written 5 essays but it feels as if I have written 50.  The worse part: my writing absolutely, without any doubt in my mind, sucks.  I mean it’s awful.  Instead of showing, I am telling. Instead of describing people, I am using stock characters.  And grammar? Forget about it, it looks like I stopped around 8th grade.

At first, it was easy to blame the class (teacher sucks, essays too general, no lectures, etc) and then I realized that the issue really was me.  My first topic was about my grandfather, the second about my mom and sisters opening up Ziba, the third about my difficult writing, and the fourth and fifth about cancer.  Each topic emotionally loaded for me, but more importantly not really dealt with at the time so as I began writing, I lose myself into that time period so the writing resembles that of a child.

Writing about Ziba and my dad;s drinking is just plain hard mainly because I have such mixed emotions about it.  When Ziba started, I was at UCLA and then Law school and I was 13 when my dad drank and it has had a powerful effect on me.  The main reason its hard because Ziba is in my lifeblood and I love my dad so much now, more so because he is one of the few people I know in my life who did a 180 turn in life to save his family.  I have so much respect, pride and love for him that it’s hard to look at a time when I felt nothing for him.  As for Ziba, it;s just hard to write about it because I have the guilt that I could have done so much more and that perhaps I didn’t have much to do with it for it to be successful.  In a way, maybe I am riding it coattails, but then I see my family and they just don’t see it like that and won’t let me either.

Finally, my love and cancer. This part’s the hardest just because it was so recent but more importantly it involved someone I love so completely that it’s hard to imagine being without her.  So here I am, in a personal essay class where all the essays are so personal that they don’t mean much to others because I havent dealt with my own issues, and thus the writings are full of meandering thoughts and emotions that frankly aren’t very fun to read if I was totally honest with myself.  Let’s hope I figure it out soon before I truly feel like a failure.  I am open to suggestions 🙂

Related articles
Myself, Writing

The Artist’s Way

Sanjay Sabarwal

It took me quite a while to start writing today namely because my eyes kept wandering over to other sites (flickr/install new mac updates/Mac App stores) and thoughts (I really need to finish watching the Justice League of America Season 2/I need to get a physical/why isn’t my Apple TV synching to the Macbook). It was as I was starved for intellectual stimulation or perhaps because I knew I was already behind on my post a day self-promise.  Yet somehow, it does not sting as much as I thought because I an constantly thinking of writing. However, there is the 900 pound gorilla in the room: what to write about.  As much as blogging is satisfying in that I get to vent, I know I haven’t gotten to the real task: to writing original content.  That’s a new problem because in high school, I stumbled onto short story writing, at UCLA personal columns, and now blogging.  It appears I cannot write unless there is a significant part of me invested into the words, and that’s a bit scary and troubling at the same time because I truly believe if you are a writer, you should be able to write in just about any genre and so with that in mind I am going to attempt to write my first short story in years.

I haven’t decided if I am going to post as I write or when it’ complete, but I know the progress will be noted in my writer’s group (the first such group I ever have joined), and perhaps as a testament to the seriousness of my writing when I start my Writer’s Studio seminar at UCLA.  Either way, I know I need to do more than just whine on here or talk about her friends or my feelings.  I need to produce so I can finally make the transition from would be writer to actually being one.

by Jemal Yarbrough

 

Related Articles
Journal, My Past, Myself, Writing

Fraud: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
The Secret Life of Words
Image via Wikipedia

I have a need to be read so I know I exist.  These are my words, and I need to share them.  Too long, they have gone silent, and worst of all ignored by me.  I had convinced myself that writing was enough, just like breathing.  But after a while, you need more than air to live.  Life isn’t just a series of breathing exercises yet for a while that’s how I treated my life.  Something I just had to do.  No vision. No motivation.  Just passing of the day and really just being lucky enough to be around people who loved me for existing and providing me with everything.

So why am I whining because I know I am a fraud.  I know that the words coming here now are just so simple and don’t even come close to the poetry in my head.  It used to be so easy and now I am lazy and dull.  I stopped listening and hearing what the words were trying to tell.  So now I just sit here, listening to amazing religious songs with a cold cup of coffee trying to convince myself at 38 that this is what I want to be.   Yet every moment feels forced, made up just so I can say I wrote. 

I am a writer.  It’s what I tell myself when I wake up every morning, and the first strokes of the words comes easy.  Yet after a minutes, I find myself tweeting/emailing/posting/reading/searching/paying bills all throughout the precious time I have managed to find to write.  It’s as if my body is telling me to get real and go back to my superficial life. And I oblige.  That’s the sad part.  I know I am failing myself and yet somehow I still continue on the path. 

I am a fraud, but at least I know it.  And knowing is half the battle, Gi Joe reminds me.  But wait, I feel like a fraud but does that really make me one?  It’s the question that nags at me.  Who am I, really?  Am I the thoughts in my head or am I to be defined by actions?  What is it about slamming these letters down that makes me feel like a light weight heavy lifter?  Is it the guilt that the joy I felt when I first learned to transform my thoughts into reality seems buried, muffled underneath the chorus of doubt and guilt? Or is it just not meant to be? 

Should I remain a fraud or for once be the man I said I wanted to be?

And then there was silence…

Brownness, My Past, Myself, Writing

Swirling Thoughts

Sanjay Sabarwal
i hope they serve beer in hell
Image by kangarootone via Flickr

1) Remember grabbing KFC in Iran as a weekly ritual and going to the park (5ys)
2) first day in boarding school in India, I had peed the bed and was ashamed (8yrs old)
3) arriving in london to stay with relatives with my oldest sister (10 years old)
4) driving from the airport towards my parents after not seeing them (12 years old)
5) Being humiliated in my 7th grade english class because the teacher felt my English speaking skills werent up to par, and her being unsure if I would pass the class.
6) Getting on the volleyball team and realizing I was a bench player, getting subbed in and my only shot was tipping the ball in and scoring for the team (14 years old)
7) remembering that I followed Sumita (my middle sister) into almost everything she signed up for writing class, student congress, human relations camp, india boarding school
8) Returning to india after receiving green card, and seeing my grandfather for the last time before he passed away (18 years)
9) my first published story “Rain Fire” edited by a dear family friend who recently passed
10) Winning the National Conference of Teachers of English award (included a recommendation from the English teacher who didn’t think I would pass.

I remember being empty. Time ticking away, coffee getting cold and me just empty. It’s as if I had no memories, no past. And then I remembered the no. Mrs. Maruna didn’t think I would ever pass 8th grade English class. I looked up into her unsmiling face, looking for understanding. Nothing. The redness of my shame circled around my cheeks but hidden by the browness of my skin, it just squeezed my heart and soul.

I was single, young, and horny. We chatted online for a few minutes, and after a few sexual innuendos, decided to take our activities offline and meet up. I am ashamed now at my sluttiness, and willingness to meet a complete stranger just to satisfy myself but really not that ashamed to be zooming down on the freeway to meet her at 3am. She had left the door open as we had discussed. In hindsight, it made sense why she did. I shoved the door open, immediately banged my leg on the bed, and to hide the pain told her I needed to take a shower. Perhaps my only concern for safety was to be hygienic. She was already in bed when I walked out. I climbed right in, but couldn’t quite get comfortable. I kept moving around until she asked if her leg was bothering me? Huh? “I said, is my leg bothering you?” removing the blanket to reveal a steel leg. Holy shit, I was about to fuck the terminator. My penis tried to hide inside of me. The meanness in me proved my immaturity and explained why I never again tried to hook up online.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max

That was the inspiration for my post about my online adventure gone wrong, and while I wasnt as bad as Tucker is in his many “misadventures” with women in college, I think I came quite close to being Tucker with my comment that I was about to fuck the terminator. The sad part is that I had done a much longer graphic post mocking the girl and myself, and really made it my “Zinger” story. I usually told it to a group of new people, and usually it would draw huge laughter, but then I realized it didn’t make me look very good to my girlfriend to be. In fact, she was disgusted not at the fact that the girl had 1 leg, but the fact that others laughed so hard. That was probably the first time I realized what an asshole I came off to be. Sure, once people got to know me, they knew different. However, my choice to share this story as a starting off point really just made me another Max Tucker. And that’s not something I wished my legacy to be standing on. Especially on one leg. Yea, I havent matured much.

Related Articles
Myself, Writing

October 17, 2010

Sanjay Sabarwal

Woke up, put my one contact one, opened up my blog, and began writing. No hesitation, no distractions, just me and the words. Small hesitation on what topic to begin, my trip around US or the leaving topic mentioned by Goldberg (I had chosen leaving) and then decided to combine both in a just a second. House was quiet and so was my mind, just the fingers decided for me. Thought alternating paragraphs made sense and then it hit me that I went on my trip few weeks after breaking off my marriage and that was the main reason I went on this trip.

Next hard part was remembering all the places I went so hands started to hesitate and the words slowed but then I called my cousins and a brief conversation added more detail and I realized I need to sit with him and remap the journey, his memory was definitely better memory (considered he had a brain tumor that’s pretty telling).

Although I woke up quite late, i didn’t know this till I finished past the house, I was surprised but thee were a few things that helped. While writing, I started the kettle, made me some coffee, turned on some religious music (meditation type) and for a while I was lost in my thoughts on paper. It has been years since I reached that stage.

Its decided, whenever I wake and before bed I will write, regardless of the time. Ideal is 8am and 10 pm but even i miss those deadlines, I will still write.

Mainly edited what I wrote in the morning, around 10 pm, took an hour but also managed to add 200 more words so perhaps I shall be writing in the morning and editing at night.

Myself

Friday, October 17

Sanjay Sabarwal
A representation of the Lion Capital of Ashoka...
Image via Wikipedia

For once, I jumoed out of bed. No resistance. No complaints. I thought I would be tired but although I was slightly groggy, I managed to drag myself to the other room.

I had gone to bed with ideas swirling through my head, and was actually looking forward to write (a new strange anticipation).

Sat down. Nothing. Saw the clock, promised myself 30 minutes. Tapped out a few words, deleted, tapped few more, deleted some more, tapped few more, glanced at the word count and was dismayed to see a 59 word count and 10 minutes elapsed.

I realized, I was trying to force the words because I want my first work to be about Ziba, but the start is the same. My mom and 2 sisters started Ziba beauty in Little India with a 500 square foot box of a store and a $2000 credit card. I get caught up in describing the initial scene and then nothing. I have to admit to myself that I need a new setting because I have used the same one for so long, it doesn’t even seem real to me.

Worse, my writing time went down. Glanced at clock every 2 minus and instead of 30 minutes, barely managed 15 minutes and compromised by adding another 15 minutes doing this journal.

Still unsure as when I will do the next time. My instinct says to do it twice a day. Once I wake up and once before going to bed, but I suspect that its being vague in order to avoid committing so for now I will commit to myself to write twice a day. Just gotta commit.