Years ago I had participated in a writing workshop called ‘Still Waters’. Back then becoming a writer was the last thing on my mind. Having come to a new city, the idea was to emerge from my comfort zone of solitude and make new friends. When the group met on the first day in the conference hall of Hotel Ramada on Cunningham Road, Bangalore, I was visibly nervous. The other ten participants were working professionals, amateur journalists and literature students. On the second day, after informal introductions, we were asked to write a short story of less than a thousand words. The prompt for all of us was the same: Meera, the protagonist, wants to see the world but her aunt is an obstacle; Meera overcomes the obstacle, learns to dance and gets to fulfill her dream. An otherwise simple task was made noteworthy on two counts. First, I was amazed to discover that despite being given a common prompt, each of the participants had approached the story quite differently. Our stories and thought processes were so diverse. My Meera became a part of an international troupe and performed next to the Eiffel Tower on a moonlit night; a college student’s Meera joined Summer Funk dance classes and visited several countries via exchange programs; another Meera learnt Bharatnatyam and performed against the backdrop of an ancient temple in Bali; a working professional’s Meera learnt jazz and escaped to Venice after murdering her aunt. However, despite the diverse perspectives we all arrived at a common goal - a happy ending. This made me realise how our social milieu, upbringing, age and culture impacts us in the way we write and treat a subject. That is perhaps why it is rare to see a woman write a murder mystery or a man pen an emotional drama. And yet, excellent works of fiction have emerged when writers have explored the alien. Second, we were surprisingly able to guess who wrote what, despite not knowing each other. The ten of us had been asked to e-mail our stories anonymously, and then told to read and rate all the stories. We were able to find out the author of each, barring one. This exception was written by a reticent professional, who had somehow introduced explicit sex in an otherwise staid story.
Do we really leave traces of our personality in our words? I write humour and satire, but I am anything but funny…or even witty or clever. Of course I do enjoy watching and reading things that are funny. Perhaps I am so dumb that when I write serious I appear a bit funny. And what about our all-pervasive Net presence? Do we create a certain image about our personality, upbringing and thought process when we interact on social media? I interact with several virtual friends on a daily basis. And when we have met (physically), most of them have turned out to be exactly as I had imagined them. It appears that creative writing can reveal several aspects of the author’s personality to his/her readers. So, maybe this ‘funny writer’ excepted, the mighty written word does seem to mirror the heart and mind of its author.
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