The effortlessness of creation bothers me. A painting, an illustration, a song, or an essay is a mere byproduct because the magic lies not in the finished work but in the process of sitting on it for hours, sometimes days, and patiently trying to translate your deepest thoughts into something tangible. Something that can be held or read or listened to by other people. Something that emerges from the trenches of one person’s being but reaches many. Something that makes another person — sitting in a different corner of the world or a different time — feel seen and heard.

Struggling through the work is extremely important — more important to me than publishing it.
- Toni Morrison

Use the machine to assist you with the struggle: a keyboard instead of a pen, an iPad instead of a sketchbook? Ask the machine to teach you a language, consult it for synonyms, query the damn device to help you learn the syntax, use it as an assistant, not a master, because really, how are you going to spend your days, your lives, if you condense the process of creation into mere seconds? What will you do with all the time that you’ve managed to save?

When you create quick copies of another artist’s work that they have spent their lives on, I am not really worried about the artist. Someone who has been practising an art form for their entire life doesn’t really need our concern. They don’t need to be told the value they derive from the process of creating. If you look at history, most artists have lived dual lives; they worked in the day, created art at night, and still continued to do it despite the lack of recognition or remuneration. The same is true today, with young people having hobbies or side hustles that feed their passion or bring them joy. Artists are resilient; they have always found a way to survive.

Who I worry about though are the young people — the ones who haven’t started yet or are just starting out — and the precedent we are setting for them. We are inadvertently telling them that there’s no point in spending hours on something when you can give a command, get a perfect product in seconds, and move on. I am worried that we are stopping them from tasting the kind of joy that only comes after putting in the work and not by writing a couple of half-baked prompts. I am worried about a society that is so hell-bent on being devoid of artists. We were never good with giving artists their due anyway, and now we are busy finding ways to replicate their originality and convert their art into products.

The process of writing or drawing or creating is addictive, exhilarating, and terrifying. It brings you closer to yourself like nothing else does. Attempting to give shape to your innermost thoughts is a leap of faith that an artist takes; what comes out is great, but what happens inside the artist while taking that leap is the real thing.

I’m aware that I am a noob, but indulge me a little while I think about what writing regularly has done for me. I was one of those kids who wrote poetry in their lock diaries and sometimes published silly little stories in the school magazine. But it was never a career option, for the world was quick to teach me that writing won’t run my home. The priority was to complete my education and get a decent-paying job. It was also the most important thing for me as a woman.

I got back to writing regularly and sharing it with the world only when I was done doing things that were expected of me — when degrees and duties were sorted. The first, and probably the biggest, challenge was accepting my mediocrity and coming to terms with it — hating every word and still putting it out. I judged myself really hard before anyone else did, and it took a few years to say that, okay, if I am not among the greats, should that mean that I am not supposed to be here at all?

The acceptance you learn while creating bad art also transcends to other parts of your life. And if I have learnt anything in the past couple of years, it is that acceptance of what life throws at you — and it does throw a lot — is probably the only way to keep your sanity intact. Your well-laid plans often fail spectacularly, the expectations you had from your closest people fall on their faces, and the future you imagine for yourself keeps changing shapes. And the best way to move ahead amidst all this is to accept what you cannot change.

Every time you put out your work, you also forgive yourself a little for not being good enough or consistent enough, for not sitting at your desk every day, and for creating art that does not look like what you had imagined it to. You forgive yourself also for that hour you spend at your desk diligently while your child needs to be attended to or a parent needs to be cared for. In learning how to extend forgiveness to yourself every now and then, you also learn how to do the same for other people. You learn to love better.

Putting in the work to create something teaches you acceptance, forgiveness, patience, resilience, and humility, but more than anything else, it lends you the empathy to understand the ‘other’. The more you read and write, the more the boundaries between you and the ‘other’ begin to blur. It would be hard for you to hate another being (irrespective of who they are) because your mind will crave to understand their story.

People could be in different life stages and situations, but the human emotions they are navigating through are still very similar. Your grief might be about something entirely different than mine, but it punches my gut exactly the same way it does yours. You could have never been to my part of the world or eaten my food, but if I send you a poem I wrote about my favourite meal, it will remind you of yours. It will also remind you of your home like it reminded me of mine while I was writing it. There are a few ways of connecting to other people, and art is probably the best among them.

Practising an art form never exists in a vacuum. To create something new, you have to engage with what has already been created. You read to write, listen to sing, observe to paint, and feel to emote. Engaging with other artists’ work allows you to experience a world and life that’s far from your own. Practising an art is doing a favour to yourself. Not to others, not to the world, but to yourself. You wake up and do it every day in pursuit of living a life that’s richer and more fulfilling.

If you’ve read till here, I am so grateful. Thank you! This is the ninth essay in a series of 40 essays that I am going to publish this year, on Sundays. I hope you like them; if you do, share it with a friend?

You can also find me here and here!