As the lockdown and stay at home aspect of COVID-19 continues, we believe it is extremely important to make the best use of your time. A lot of us are bored, frustrated and really tired of the entire scenario and indulging in some healthy and uplifting habits which boost our physical, mental and emotional health is of undue importance. For this reason Pulse is Proud to present the “Lockdown Motivation” series, where students who have successfully ventured into new hobbies, improved their existing ones or try something new, share their experiences with the hope of motivating you.
In the third part of the series we have the experience of Liz George, a final year BTech student from Mechanical Engineering. She has a successful writing page on Instagram where she posts her poems.In this part, she shares her journey, inspiration and approach to following one’s hobby and passion while also giving advice on how one can get started with the same.
My earliest memory of writing poetry was in 1st grade when I wrote a poem on ketchup. I absolutely hated ketchup and wrote a poem with respect to how lonely it was. As far as I can remember I have always written. Writing is a complementary hobby alongside reading and travelling. A lot of inspiration and motivation for writing come from them as well. I vividly remember this poem I wrote in the 9th grade which I was genuinely impressed by and decided to show it to my English teacher and she really liked it. Ever since that day, I have actively written articles and essays. Back when college was offline, I did not have much time to write. Usually I write while listening to music. Its such a surreal and engaging experience because thousands of things occur to oneself over the course of a single day itself. As a result of them, at the most unpredictable and unanticipated times, lines just come into my head. I base my poems on these lines and build the rest of it around this central theme.
I joined Lit Gig in my first year and I still remember the prompt I wrote for. It was a beautiful prompt and to this day, my submission for it is my favourite poem. I was not in a habit of putting everything out there. Writing was more of a personal hobby to me and a means to reduce my stress and pen my thoughts. I eventually started participating in competitions and events as I saw no reason why not to do it. The flow of writing just comes and goes naturally – something most writes call the “writers block”. Although it is extremely frustrating, I remember the words of Charles Bukowski. I am a huge fan of his work and admire the amazing lines in all his works.One of his earnest beliefs was that one musnt force themselves to write, they must let it burst through from within. I try to follow this adage as much as possible and this also helps alleviate the pressure and stress of having to force words out when they just won’t come.
As anyone could have guessed there were multiple issues before starting the page. First and foremost was motivating myself to put content I had written recently and over the years out there for people to read, scrutinise and even comment on. I was genuinely surprised and grateful when I noticed the number of people supporting my content and ideas. It really motivated me to put a lot of poems on my page. I mostly tend to write emotionally touching and deep poems, a majority of which can be perceived as tragic. This somehow has led to some people mistakenly believing that I am penning thoughts based on personal experiences and real life events, when in reality there is no such connection. This made me stop posting for a while and I often began hesitating to put out content as I was afraid of how others would view it. A poem also opens up about you, your private life and more. All of a sudden there are so many things to keep in mind and multiple alterations are done in order to add layers of concealment to my work. This helps maintain that sense of personal security while also sharing my thoughts and art with the rest of the world.
My advice to aspiring writers and people who want to start a page for the same is this, just get started. Write and truly enjoy it. Honestly, I love it and intend on doing it for rest of my life. I understand that I may not be able to rely on it. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to write more and put out more of my work. The whole activity demands time but it is deeply gratifying so I dont mind investing deeply into it. I truly believe I express myself better in words better than anything else and if you share the same belief, just go for it. One tends to worry a lot about such an endeavour before starting out on it. It’s actually not as hard or challenging as it seems to be. Being a poet, I feel it would be a shame if I ended this without a poem I wrote. It isn’t one related to my experiences with writing but an example of what I mean when I say that poetry truly comes from one’s deep thoughts and emotions. As long as it comes from within, you won’t have trouble writing poetry.
He was dancing,
to a song,
she had told him about.
He was moving,
too close to the edge,
with her voice playing in the background,
tiny murmurs in the back of his head,
he could hear it in the silence.
Soft kisses,
now just a memory.
Fingers intertwined,
his heart,
once beating along with hers,
can’t seem to remember,
exactly how it felt.
Closer to the edge,
looking for any escape,
drowning
for air,
he could feel himself fading.
Closing his eyes
he let himself go.
Falling,
dying,
imagining himself
lying in the arms
of the girl he once loved.
