Trying to Find My own Voice as a Writer

When I started blogging, I felt very happy as finally, my days of a struggling writer were over. I could earn enough money to pay all the bills without any worry. This is the best part of blogging but it came with a price. I became addicted to blogging and then I got addicted to learning about Search engine optimization to get more traffic for my blogs. In fact, in the last 4 years, I have read so much content about this matter that I know that I have really become expert on it. However, I have lost the abnormal passion for writing.

Now, I have become more mechanical in blogging. Yes, I am getting good amount of traffic. For example, this month, my major blog, South Asia Blog has almost touched 180,000 pageviews and most probably, it will pass 210,000 pageviews. It is considered to be a huge success for most blogs. Yes, I am successful but I am not happy because I don’t have my voice. When I started blogging, I wrote a short story and it was not bad. In fact, it was good to read and sometimes, I like to read it. Here is the short story:

http://write-translate.blogspot.com/2006/02/helpless-short-story.html

I uploaded it on 22 February 2006. It was more than 4 years and two months ago. After that I did not write any short story because I was busy with blogging. I always wanted to write short stories. I had so many ideas to write short stories on. Especially, I had the dream of writing short stories on historical events.

Today, I was thinking that when I suffered a lot from poverty, I could write the things I liked. I wrote a novel, I translated a famous book, I wrote at least 5 short stories. May be I wrote a drama too but it was not good. I guess that I will be never be good at writing dramas but I think that my short stories and the novel were good. Should it really matter if others liked them or not? I don’t think so because I wrote them from my personal convictions, passion, belief, dream and most of all, I really enjoyed.

Of course, I am not that foolish to say that I must quit blogging and go back to the uncertainty of money that was my daily companion. However, I surely wish to go back to writing short stories and novels. Perhaps, now, I can afford it and I also dreamt to write some research based books.

In a way, this blogging and Internet have brought the best blessing. I don’t need to think of money, I don’t need to think of finding a way to sell my writing. I can simply publish them in this very blog and I know that some people would read them. Some of them would like them and some of them would not like. I will have all the happiness in my life. I had so many ideas in my head in the past that I wanted to write short stories. I have to get back to these ideas. I have to go back having my own voice.

I really enjoy writing more than any other thing in the world. May be I enjoy teaching too but not that much like writing. The last one year has been very tough for me. The economic recession cut my income to just half. My wife became very sick and then I became very sick and then another member of my team. For nearly one year, I could not work full time.

This one year has done one good thing. It has helped me to become matured and today, I feel very happy. I have learnt the importance of having my own voice and expressing it.

So, I guess that I don’t need any coffee or Coke anymore. I don’t need TV or movies. I don’t need to watch sports or listen to music a lot. I just need to write from my heart just like the past. After all, this is the real me. I just missed my real self for a long time.