Portrait of a writer as a writer

By Atiya Abbas

I am staring at the blank page before me and I am thinking about what to write. And then it hits me. Yes! A stream-of-consciousness piece would be a great idea. Of course, I cannot liken myself to the great stream-of-consciousness masters, James Joyce or Virginia Woolf but hey, it is worth a shot.

I once did this exercise for literature; trying to write freely about the senses with sustained attention for 10 minutes. I wrote everything about the fan and people coming and going to see how the action of the mind works and now, I am suddenly thinking as to why I didn’t take literature as a major or even a minor. I tell everyone that I wanted to keep a passion a passion, but shouldn’t one make a career out of what they love? That’s what most self help books say. I love literature…whoops there I go again staring into space, playing with my hair thinking about what to say because all this is starting to sound very clichéd. Think, think, think Atiya, what more can I say? Why not write about the blogging experience (now, there is something we have heard of before)? Nah…but I was telling Ayesha today that I don’t want this last piece to be about goodbye and all that because this is something that could materialize into something new if we try.

Wow, re-reading it again it does seem like a muddle of thoughts. I can just picture my fellow bloggers going through this, crossing out and fixing sentences, seeing how it is shaping it up. Sometimes there is a method behind the madness, but in writing there is no method, there is that ‘Eureka!” moment and sometimes it is “the sound and fury signifying nothing”…Oh way to go Atiya, literary references, that will make you sound so smart, NOT…and now I pause again thinking if that is too self-absorbed and weather my tone is coming off as sarcastic just like I want…don’t know if this will stay in the blog piece or not. Maybe by the time it goes up it will be completely changed. So there you have it, thoughts in their all their raw nature…I think that line in my brain just went straight now.