THE FIRST DRAFT
I read somewhere that “the purpose of the first draft is to simply exist”. This was an idea that gave me immense relief in recent times - times when I wrote nothing other than what I absolutely had to. In the pursuit of academic writing and a short-lived content writing job, I forgot the joy of writing. When I finally told myself that I had to go back to leisure writing, I was appalled at how empty my head was. I could not think of a single thing to write. Sure, if you gave me a topic, I could make up something and put it out there - but they were not out of my own imagination. The pandemic took away my ability to see beauty in ordinary things. I could no longer look at a passenger in the metro next to me and romanticize her life. There was a lot of strife and conflict around me, that every version of the future looked bleak. I found escape in fantasy books and movies as I was scared of relating to the harsh realities in other kinds of media. It felt like while I still had a lot ...