In 2011, poet Sarah Kay performed ‘If I should have a daughter…’ at TED. I had started writing poetry but Sarah Kay inspired me to perform and share my poetry. In the hope of getting better, I started a community called The Poetry Club in 2013. The poets improved my taste in poetry; they were wise and well read. But as time passed, I did not enjoy attending the readings. I felt out of place in the community I had created because I didn’t feel like I belonged in the same league as these poets. Taste and ability both can improve with practice. But while it is easy to improve taste by consuming other people’s art, improving ability by creating takes longer. Eventually, my taste in poetry surpassed my ability. I stopped writing.

My oldest memory of wanting to write is from when I was nine. I remember asking my mom for a diary. She said, ‘On the news, all the kids that hurt themselves have diaries. I don’t think it is a good habit’ and refused to get me one. That only made me want to write more. I wrote to myself on the back of school notebooks, letters to my brother on Rakhi containing love I couldn’t express in person and elaborate emails to friends hoping it would erase the distance of time. Good books made me want to write, too. Sometimes, my mother would return from a day of errands to find me in the same position on the bed, reading, as when she had left eight hours ago. Sometimes, she would wake up in the middle of the night to find me reading under the covers by torchlight.

When I imagined being a writer, I thought it wouldn’t feel like work. And if it felt like work then I shouldn’t do it. In the creative job of my dreams, my mondays sing. My poems were bouts of inspiration, followed by 20 mins of an edit. I didn’t realise the poets who looked effortlessly talented were on their 15th draft written over 3 months. Stephen King, the author of 78 books, says, “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

When we imagine doing our dream job, we imagine the outcome. The blockbuster movie, playing your favourite sport, being on the bestseller list, the outpouring of love for your work. Everyone enjoys the outcome. But the process is laborious. In an interview with Novak Djokovic, the interviewer says, “Mental strength, which is what I think is your great gift, is much harder to articulate. Can you help us explain…” Djokovic interjects “I'd have to correct you…It's not a gift. It's something that comes with work.”